If you think about everyday gaming, the New York Times is a company that might not spring immediately to mind. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Even before its acquisition of Wordle, the famous newspaper has had its crossword puzzle, played by millions, for decades. Now the New York Times has built a whole platform around just such low-stakes word games that people can play everyday.
Zoe Bell, the executive producer of games at the New York Times, is one of the stewards of the company’s gaming platform platform, having been part of the NYT since before its acquisition of Wordle. Alongside Wordle and the aforementioned crossword puzzle, she helped develop titles like Connections and Strands. She also assists in the creation of new games for the NYT Games platform.
I got the chance to sit down with Bell at GamesBeat Summit, where she spoke at our Women in Gaming, Entertainment and Tech Breakfast panel. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: Could you tell me more about your background? How did you get into the games industry?
Zoe Bell: I’ve been in the industry, I think, 16 years or so. I started out at Zynga. I didn’t really know what Zynga was, because I joined the week after it launched Farmville. I had no concept of what it was to become, but it was a great intro into the games industry. I started when it was 300 to 350 people, and then it went public and it got up to 3,000 people. It was a crazy ride!
I got hooked because I really like working with creative people, smart people, people who actually want to be where they are in their jobs. When you have artists, game designers and programmers all together in the same room, I think that’s when it’s really magical. So I got hooked on that, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else after Zynga.
They shut down my studio in Baltimore, so I moved with my husband out to San Francisco and worked for a variety of different game companies, including Kongregate, where I worked on the mobile publishing side. Then I had a kid, moved back to the East Coast, worked for Big Huge Games for a while, which is a studio that I’ve been tangentially involved with for a while.
Then this job at the New York Times came up, and I said, “That sounds like the absolute perfect job for me!” And I applied for it, and I got it, and I’ve been so happy.
GamesBeat: Did you have any personal experience with games — video games — or was your introduction to them professional?
Bell: I was banned from playing video games growing up. My parents didn’t think that was a thing I should do. But I had a cousin who was really into board games — so I played a lot of games growing up, just not video games! I played Reader Rabbit, and those types of things.
GamesBeat: I think those count!
Bell: Yeah, I do too, actually! For what I’m doing now, I think they are relevant. But when I graduated college, I knew I wanted to do entertainment production, and when the job at Zynga in Baltimore opened up, I thought that sounded great and it was entertainment production. That’s what I was interested in. Finding games was really fortuitous because it’s really fun!
GamesBeat: What exactly is your role at NYT Games? Walk me through what your day-to-day looks like.
Bell: I’m the executive producer. I work across all the games and I work a lot on new game development. All of the producers report to me, and we’re divided up into little squads — a fairly traditional setup. I’m dealing with questions of how we ship new features for our games and how we make new, fun games. We have hundreds of ideas. How do we find the ones that are valuable?
GamesBeat: There are a lot of people who might look at NYT Games and think that it’s not a “gaming company” in a traditional sense. Personally, I think it taps into our oldest gaming impulses of rearranging words and putting words together in fun ways. So my question is, how do you develop new gaming properties that fit that mold but also still appeal to modern audiences?
Bell: First of all, we have a head-start on everybody else trying to do puzzle games right now because we have the crossword, which goes back 80-plus years. People have been solving the crossword and having fun in paper form for so long. But the New York Times is, first and foremost, a journalism company. It’s not a game company, but the work we’re doing on the games team is the same as anyone else in the games industry: Trying to make the best possible games.
We think about a lot of different things. Is it going to fit into our portfolios? Is it curated? Does it have an editorial element to it? Is it rewarding? Is it approachable? Is it time well spent? Is it something you could talk about with your friends? Not every game is going to fit every single one of those, but we’re trying to find something that fits.
We’re trying to build something that can last 10, 20, 30 years. How can we make it something that’s really going to last forever?
Anybody on the games team can pitch ideas. We do game jams. We solicit ideas from within the company. If somebody has a good idea, they just need an executive sponsor from the games team to come pitch it to us. We try to make the best possible games we can, but the most important thing is we try to stop working on the bad ideas as quickly as we can. That isn’t groundbreaking, but I think that’s a mistake that a lot of people in the industry can make. You fall in love with something and you work too long on it. We try to set up a rigorous green light process.
GamesBeat: That’s something that I think companies, especially in this day and age, are starting to realize as well. I feel like every other news story we hear about is a game being canceled. It just sucks that it’s always so far into production that people’s jobs already depend on it.
Bell: Our advantage is that our games are relatively inexpensive to make when you compare with a triple-A studio, right? We can make a new game, try it out, prototype it, play it and that might take two months or less. Then, if it’s successful, it might take us a few more months to get it ready for a beta test, and that’s it.
GamesBeat: Hypothetically, how would a developer step outside themselves and say, “This isn’t working?”
Bell: The thing that I’m always focused on is retention. Maybe in a big triple-A game it’s not as relevant. But if you have the metrics and you’re tracking it, then it’s not about somebody spending $60 to $80 upfront. It’s about whether people are going to come back to it day after day. Are they still going to be thinking about your game 30 days after you made it? That’s a really hard bard to meet for a lot of games.
You have to think, “Is this going to be fun?” If you can find the fun enough for people to come back, if you can find a way to really test that, that’s key. We’re able to do some geographically-based testing and figure out what retention is like. That’s really important for us.
GamesBeat: Can you tell me what NYT Games looked like when you joined? Was it the crossword-plus-Wordle?
Bell: No — no Wordle.
GamesBeat: Pre-Wordle?!
Bell: I joined five years ago, before we bought Wordle. I helped buy Wordle! In 2009, we had a mobile app for games and that was the beginning of our work. It only had the crossword in it, and when I joined the Spelling Bee was available only for subscribers. We slowly added the rest of the games in our portfolio to the app, and that has made all the difference.
Then we bought Wordle, added a few games, sunset a few. We added Connections and Strands, which I also helped develop. It’s been this process of trying to find the right games to add.
GamesBeat: Are you gamifying the New York Times experience? How do you bring the New York Times brand into NYT Games?
Bell: We try to stay away from the news, because we want you to have fun! We don’t want you to be thinking about whatever is on the front page of the paper, but we have an editorial team that has to uphold the same standards as the Times newsroom. We have fact-checkers. We write corrections if there’s an error in the crossword or in a Strands puzzler. We follow all of the standards of the New York Times and that lifts us up a little bit.
Inspiring others to do the best that they can possibly do … means being a strong leader by also a vulnerable one who’s willing to talk to anybody and listen to them.
But I think what you’re getting at is what makes a New York Times game a New York Times game. It’s a combination of different things, but it’s something with a success moment where you feel that you’ve solved it. You feel like you had to work for it, and you want to do it again. You know the saying “easy to learn, hard to master?” You can understand how to play the game, but to do really well at it takes time.
GamesBeat: What do you see for the future of NYT Games?
Bell: We’re trying to build this portfolio that spans generations, that my parents can play and hopefully my kids will play when they get older. We’re trying to build something that can last 10, 20, 30 years. How can we make it something that’s really going to last forever? The choices we make now about the types of games that we’re making are about growing that portfolio.
GamesBeat: We’ll talk about this more at [the Summit breakfast panel the following morning] but if you could give advice to the industry … what could they take away from NYT Games and what do you think you’d be able to impart from your own experience?
Bell: It’d be hard to emulate NYT Games because of the brand of the New York Times. But I think the story of finding something unique about you or about your game and capitalizing on that — figuring out what it is that people want about your idea and your game. I think that’s really the challenge. So telling a story, not just to investors but also to your players about what makes this game so special and cool.
GamesBeat: What would you say is your Boss Move, which can be some milestone in your career, some philosophy you hold?
Bell: I think I go into the office every day trying to do the absolute best job I could possibly do. As I’ve grown into my career, that means inspiring others to do the best that they can possibly do, which means being a strong leader by also a vulnerable one who’s willing to talk to anybody and listen to them.
Beyond that, I don’t know. I mean, there were bad choices that I made, and then I recovered from them.
GamesBeat: That could be a Boss Move, too!
Bell: I think when I left Zynga, I was unhappy and decided I would go anywhere that would pay me the exact same amount. That was a poor choice.
GamesBeat: It’s an understandable choice.
Bell: I don’t think so. Well, I guess it’s understandable, but I think that’s a trap that people fall into sometimes. They make their choices for money, and don’t think about how happy they’ll be or the end result of their work. I spent a year-and-a-half in a company that I wasn’t very happy at compared to how happy I was when I went to Kongregate. I think finding people that bring out the best in you is really important, too.
GamesBeat: And what would your boss music be?
Bell: I don’t know why, but the thing that came into my head when you asked is probably “99 Red Balloons.” I don’t know why that came into my head — I think because I think a lot about possibility space.