LinkedIn Rolls Out Brain-Busting Games To Create New "Connections"

(RTTNews) - Starting today, Microsoft-owned (MSFT) LinkedIn users can play three "thinking-oriented" games — Pinpoint, Queens, and Crossclimb, on the job seeking site's mobile app or desktop.

The free games would be available under the LinkedIn News and My Network section on desktop, and the My Network tab on mobile. The users could play each game once a day, share their scores with their connections, and check their position on leaderboard.

Lakshman Somasundaram, LinkedIn's product director, commented, "It's time we turn over a new leaf in how we deepen and reignite relationships at work, and put fun at the heart of it."

The newly introduced Pinpoint is a word association game, where a user has to put words in different categories, whereas Queens is basically sudoku, but instead of numbers the user has to arrange crown emojis on a grid. The third game, Crossclimb, is a "combination of a crossword and a word ladder", where user has to build a word ladder based on a letter from the previous word.

"It's all about helping you stretch and exercise your mind, but more importantly how this helps you really connect," said Laura Lorenzetti, executive editor for LinkedIn News, CNN Reports.

"Any games that we add to the suite will make sure that they fit into that ethos and hopefully in a year people are still playing these games and talking to each other," she assured.

The latest decision comes as many digital companies are introducing games on their platforms in an attempt to capture new audience and generate additional revenue.

Earlier, New York Times had introduced subscription packages to its readers to avail games in addition to other informative content.

Jonathan Knight, New York Times's head of games, confirmed that, "If you're a subscriber, and on any given week, you engage with both news and games, the likelihood that you're going to retain over a long period of time is much higher."

Similarly, entertainment giant Netflix (NFLX) has also created a separate gaming section, and has recently added popular games like Hades and Sonic Mania Plus on its platform.