A redesign of the games section of one of the oldest Swiss newspapers
Full Name: NZZ Spiele
Made By: Blindflug Studios
Made For: Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Plattforms: iOS & Android
Roles in Project: Concept & Pitch, Game Director, Project Manager, Consultant
Idea
Background
Newspapers and daily puzzles have a long standing history. But even recently the The New York Times has proven how powerful games are in the context of modern apps. Daily challenges like Wordle can entertain, challenge yourself, build habits and create branding for newspapers. As one of the oldest newspapers in the world the Zürich NZZ wanted to completely overhaul their games section in the app to more accurately represent who they are and help to improve their churn rate.
Gameplay:
The NZZ Games suite consists of five games: Arukone, Wörtli, Wortschatz and Zeitlupe. While Wortli and Wortschatz are adaptations of well known games, Arukone is a bit of a more obscure brain puzzler and Zeitlupe is completely new game. You are presented with the main image to a historic article from the NZZ archive and are tasked to guess the Place and Time that the image is from. Upon resolving it you can also read that historic article. It’s a game custom made for the readers of NZZ and celebrates the long history of the newspaper. And all games are embedded in a prolific suite of gamification mechanics.
Design:
At Blindflug we worked in tandem with the team at NZZ to not only define and design a suite of games and gamification mechanics that match their business goals, we also supported and coached their team in building up the expertise to maintain and expand their library on their own. For us it was important to not be a deliverer of a service but to transfer our know how and empower the people that will ensure that games will be a part of their ecosystem for a long time.
Impressions
