Why doesn't everyone just do puzzle games?
Maybe I'm a colossal nerd but it feels like LinkedIn MIGHT be onto something with the decision to add games to the platform.
We’re living in a post-Wordle world, where the New York Times reports that games have become one of its main revenue drivers. In 2023, the paper’s Games section had more than 1m subscribers (I’m one of them), and it feels like there’s a huge opportunity to tap into people’s love of tiny and mostly pointless activities. Let’s not forget the great Facebook FarmVille craze of the mid-2000s. And let’s also not forget the recent revival of Neopets, which seems to have given a lot of milennials a much-needed digital comfort blanket.
So it makes total sense that LinkedIn continues its mission to keep everyone inside its B2B hellscape by offering a set of daily games. Looking forward to seeing the platform’s gang of aggressively upbeat business influencers go head-to-head via puzzle mode.
Meanwhile, Puzzler – the one company that really could and should be getting this 100% right – is pushing out some of the most hideous UX design you can think of. Please, Puzzler, hire yourselves a proper digital agency.
Other things I read and saw this week
🐇 I read quite a long piece about who’s really behind Rabbit. Long story short, it doesn’t sound promising. I also, now that we’re mostly past the NFT madness, had a good laugh at the premise of the Rabbit founder’s original company: a kind of decentralised, carbon-negative, virtual space station inhabited by anyone with the cash to buy their way in. Oh, and ✨Web3 gaming✨. These people could also just pick up a copy of Mass Effect.
🕶️ No-one really seems to be able to agree on this, but there’s a definite sense that Apple’s Vision Pro isn’t doing that well. I feel like VR just isn’t going to take off until we move beyond clunky, ugly headsets. Just plumb it straight into my eyeballs please.
🐖 Starbucks seems much more interesting in China, where pork-flavoured coffee (garnished with, incredibly, pork) is a thing, as well as jujube macchiato and almond tofu macchiato.
🍜 Uber Eats is testing their own version of FoodTok. Love that TechCrunch’s example is ‘a video of an Indian restaurant packing rice separately from curry so it doesn’t get soggy’. Let’s hope it’s a bit more enticing than that.
👞 Ugly shoes are dominating. According to Snacks, Crocs is doing very, very well. Birkenstock is also on the up, and New Balance is releasing a ‘snoafer’ this summer. Hideous footwear for all.
🖋️ AI writers are already everywhere.