With the release of its new, dedicated puzzle gaming app, Netflix is signaling that its gaming offerings are intended for new audience members — not just pre-existing subscribers.
Released on November 26, the Netflix Puzzled app allows users to play eight different puzzle games, including both homegrown titles inspired by Netflix properties and games licensed from third-party developers like Lil Snack. It’s Netflix’s first-ever dedicated gaming app — previously, users could access all Netflix Games offerings through a gaming tab in the dedicated Netflix mobile app — and is free-to-play for everyone, a conscious choice intended to help the app “reach as many players as possible,” according to Saara Bergström, the managing director of the internal Netflix game studio Next Games, which developed Netflix Puzzled.
“We expect a mix of both puzzle enthusiasts and Netflix fans who want a little more of their favorite show or movie,” Bergström said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We have lots of puzzle enthusiasts in our member base.”
Netflix Puzzled games are also available via web browser through Tudum.com, Netflix’s fan site. In addition to using its platform to market Netflix Puzzled to its pre-existing subscriber base, Netflix is making additional investments to ensure the app is a success in the form of both paid user acquisition and influencer marketing, according to Lil Snack co-founder and CEO Eric Berman. A Netflix representative declined to share more details about the company’s marketing and user acquisition plans.
“They’re definitely going out to puzzle audiences,” Berman said in an interview with GamesBeat. “I even saw that one of the influencers we’ve used for LilSnack.com marketing, they’ve used to talk about Netflix Puzzled.”
Although Netflix Puzzled is available to non-subscribers, the developers of the app are not shying away from Netflix’s owned IP. The company intentionally launched its puzzle gaming app — and its “Stranger Things-themed” puzzles — on the same day as the release of the popular show’s fifth and final season in order to spark interest in the offering among “Stranger Things” fans.
“Each day there’s a new themed puzzle to solve that unlocks behind the scenes footage from the show. This is definitely speaking to a much larger audience: the entire Stranger Things fan base,” Bergström said. “We have a very exciting lineup of collaborations planned for next year already that cater to different tastes.”
A boost for third-party developers
Two of the eight puzzle games offered via Netflix Puzzled — ”Waywords” and “Crossover” — are licensed from Lil Snack, which worked with Netflix to rebrand the games and fit them into the broader aesthetic Netflix Puzzled. Netflix paid Lil Snack a licensing fee for these games, in addition to compensating Lil Snack for the development time needed to update them for Netflix Puzzled.
Lil Snack is thus far the first third-party developer to license its games for Netflix Puzzled, but Berman said that the app represents a significant opportunity for third-party game developers to work with Netflix — and that his company has reframed its entire business strategy to focus on its partnerships with platforms like Netflix and Amazon Luna.
“Either we can go compete with these juggernauts that already have those audiences, or we can lock arms with them and effectively create a new content format that sticks across all of them — be it Netflix, Amazon, Peacock, Reddit or more that we have coming,” Berman said.
Looking forward
As Netflix grows the user base of its first dedicated and free-to-play gaming app, the company plans to implement additional new puzzle types, IP integrations and live events, per Bergström, who told GamesBeat that “this is just the beginning for Netflix Puzzled.”
Launching a standalone gaming app shows a sharpening of focus for the company’s gaming strategy, allowing Netflix to more easily track metrics like player engagement and relative popularity of various gaming IPs, “with substantially less risk related to the primary video application,” according to Gareth Sutcliffe, the head analyst covering the games industry for the market research service Enders Analysis.
“There is clearly still a long road to travel before we see a full integrated single button Netflix app, not least as the vast majority of Netflix subscribers have yet to even enter the discovery phase on gaming, but a dedicated single gaming app would seem the obvious next step,” he said.
Although Netflix is explicitly making a play for new audiences with Netflix Puzzled, the app does not currently have any mechanisms in place to turn its free users into paying Netflix subscribers, with Sutcliffe pointing out that the company currently enjoys “huge amounts of funnel from other sources than gaming.” Instead of acting as a subscriber funnel, Netflix Puzzled is simply focused on capturing the attention and engagement of puzzle gamers — and making them want to return to Netflix to game on a daily basis.
“If we do what we do best — which is making daily games — and have the opportunity to get those games to the largest audience possible, I don’t believe that’s through the app store anymore. I think it’s going to be through these five-to-ten massive companies that already have all of consumers’ attention, and delivering them there,” Berman said. “So, we do think this is an entirely new distribution strategy that a lot of folks haven’t undertaken, that has been a really unique wedge for us into the market.”