CASE STUDY

NYT GAMES METAGAME ENGAGEMENT SYSTEM

Role: Product Director, Gameplay (2022-2025), Subscriber Retentions (Current). Managed PM for New Games (2022-2025)

Wordle Archive (LEFT) & Badges (RIGHT)

︎ CHALLENGE
I joined NYT Games during hyper-growth following the Wordle acquisition, with millions of new casual players entering the ecosystem. Before, users were primarily news readers who played Crosswords, the pinnacle of puzzle games, and a traditional anchor for subscriptions. After Wordle, the influx of new audiences was more casual and less attracted to Crosswords.

The business model was simple: play the daily game for free, and subscribe to access the Crosswords and all levels in Spelling Bee. But the daily puzzle had a fundamental limitation—a 24-hour shelf life. After that, it was gone forever. With millions of casual Wordle players, the strategic question became: "Come for Wordle, stay for...?"

The strategic framework for growth
Increase player engagement by moving them down the funnel to the most habituated surfaces and deepening their relationship with NYT Games. This was a multi-dimensional strategy set forward by the VP of product that mapped the user journey across three axes:

Monetization: Convert free players → registered users → paying subscribers (My responsibility)
Engagement depth: Convert low-engaged → mid-engaged → high-engaged players (My responsibility)
Platform: Convert mobile web + desktop users → Games app

The hard parts

Organizational alignment - Leadership wanted features before the technical foundation existed, and validation of user needs. Getting buy-in and alignment across teams for resource negotiation and priority trade-offs was critical to completing the job.
Team and tech stack maturity - Joined during org transformation from siloed game teams to a more fully integrated tech organization. Navigated growing pains as teams developed mature processes, adopted enterprise-standard infrastructure, and built capability to architect systems at scale.
Go-all-in culture vs. ship-learn-iterate - Every launch carried high stakes and scrutiny when experimentation was misunderstood or not leveraged as an optimization tool. It took

︎ APPROACH
Build interconnected value pillars that compound over time and work across the entire portfolio:

Puzzle Archives – Maximize ROI for Every Human-Crafted Puzzle. Launched full archives for Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, and Strands, expanding our core value proposition to the most engaged games beyond Crossword. Transformed 24-hour shelf-life puzzles into permanent, playable libraries. Extended delight and allowed players to catch up on missed puzzles. Positioned archives as subscriber value + churn mitigation tool.
Stats & Streaks – Modernize Progress-Tracking Infrastructure
Advocated and partnered with the platform team to fully migrate game progress from client-side to server-side. Introduced the concept of game-agnostic metrics and game-specific stats that set the foundation for calculating gameplay achievements, deepening player habituation.
Achievement System – Celebrate Wins and Capture Memories
Built a scalable achievement system that drives engagement across player types and business needs. Designed earning paths for a variety of player types: casual to hardcore, all-in completionists to gregarious sharers, collectors to overachievers. Built time-limited badge drops for special moments (annual events, personal milestones) to create FOMO.

︎ IMPACT

Drive Subscriber growth
212% of Games-only subscribers from 2023 to 2025

Increase conversion and registration

Wordle Archive: XXXX incremental weekly starts, ~10.4% of Games starts attributed to the archive
Connections Archive: XXX incremental weekly starts, ~2.5% of game starts attributed to archive

Connections Stats: ~14k incremental registrations/week.
Strands Stats:~2k incremental registrations/week

Increase player engagement

Spelling Bee Archive: +10% active days for subscribers
Connections Stats: +0.22% active days among registered users
Badges: +0.36% 30-day retention lift
Sudoku: +4.1% increase in subscriber user active weeks on site

︎ LEARNING

Compounding systems beat isolated features for retention. Stats drive archive play, archives unlock achievements, and achievements create stats to track. Each pillar reinforces the others. This creates durable value that algorithm changes can't disrupt.
Builder-first culture requires foundation advocacy. In organizations that aren't naturally builder-first, you have to trade short-term feature pressure for long-term platform capability. I learned to show incremental ROI (2 years → 1.5 years → 1 year → <1 year) to justify continued infrastructure investment while navigating resource constraints and competing priorities across peer teams.
Execution Reality: Building a scalable foundation. Each iteration taught us how to build faster, better, and more scalable—creating a turnkey foundation that drives higher ROI with each subsequent game.

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