I have a secret pleasure, and it's not that I've just watched Glee in its entirety (yes, even the terrible last few seasons) or that I've read an unimaginable amount of Harry Potter fan fiction in my time.

My secret pleasure is playing LinkedIn games. To answer obvious questions: Wait, do you have a game in Linkedin? yes. In May, LinkedIn released three puzzles via LinkedIn News as fake versions of the New York Times game: Queens Logic Puzzle (my favorite), Cross Crime Word Game (pretty good), and Pinpoint Word Association Game (not a good game, but still). While it may seem odd to play a game on a professional networking platform, LinkedIn is employing a classic tech strategy of seeing what works for another business and then trying to replicate that success, but it’s no wonder that NYT Games sparked this inspiration. In a sense, the New York Times is a game company, spending more time than news applications in the NYT game appendix since December 2023.

Linkedin is not alone. Everyone has a game now. Apple News. Netflix. YouTube. There are so many games we can afford to play. And yet, once I finish solving the various puzzles in The New York Times, I always want more. I didn't want to play CrossClimb Linkedin for the connection, but the game is enough to give a dopamine sweet rush.

I usually play Linkedin games during the employment day (I'm sorry for my boss). Sometimes it happens when I go to LinkedIn to fact-check or research a source, but then I remember that I could spend a few minutes playing a little game. Other times, my mind gets foggy after staring at the same draft of an article for too long, and taking a break to solve a colorful Queens puzzle makes it easier to go back and check the Google Doc again. But it turns out there's science behind why we love these quick, once-a-day puzzles. 

I recently spoke with Ryan Douglas, co-founder of DeepWell DTx, a company founded on the idea that playing video games (in moderation) can have mental health benefits. In some cases, a little distraction with a game can help pull you out of a negative mindset or allow you to approach a problem from a new perspective. "For example, if you're playing Tetris, you're not going to have this big conversation in your head about how terrible you are, how terrible you are, what's going to happen next week, etc," Douglas told.

On a neurobiological level, Douglas explained that playing games activates the brain's limbic system, which is responsible for managing stress. But even when these stressors are simulated, we train our brains to deal with that stress in different ways.

"You start learning at a subconscious level, you create new neural pathways at an accelerated rate, and you choose that at a subconscious level as your preferred way of solving these problems in the future," he says. "When I handle [Stress] in this particular environment, I received an agency. You are controlling.

This does not mean that all of us have to go to Pokéon to all the tools of video game developers created by Deadwell. Maybe that’s why we’ve all become so enamored with games like Wordle, as well as other games from The New York Times (and LinkedIn), which have a finite ending. You do your one puzzle per day and then you move on. Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, spoke  about his viral success, back before his game was acquired by The New York Times.

“I’m kind of suspicious of apps and games that want your endless attention  like, I worked in Silicon Valley. I know why they do this, ”said Wardle. "I think people have an appetite for things that don't want anything in a transparent way."

Wardle is right, although  of course, my favorite games in LinkedIn are mine: my attention.  LinkedIn has also noticed strong interest among users starting conversations after playing games. Once you finish the game, you can see which of your contacts have played it too, so I imagine some people might use this as a #networking opportunity. I don't do that, but then again, most of my conversations on LinkedIn are just texting friends because for some reason that's fun. So, go on LinkedIn, have some fun and then, about four minutes later, you're back in the harsh everyday life of global capitalism.