Hearst partners with Playgent to bring daily games to news sites across its network

Every partner wants games

Hearst works with news organizations across the country, from newspapers to broadcasters with local stations in many cities. Many of them want the same thing from their sites: a reason for readers to come back tomorrow. Daily games are one of the best ways to give them one.

Few of them want to build games themselves. A puzzle page means new puzzles every day, games that work on every phone, hosting, updates and reporting. For one site that's a project. Across a network of partners, it's the same project again and again.

Hearst needed a partner that could take the games off every partner's hands while still letting each site look and sound like itself.

What Playgent provides through Hearst

When a Hearst partner wants games, Playgent provides them:

• A shared catalog. More than 60 games across words, numbers, logic and trivia, so each partner can pick the formats that suit its audience.
• A theme per partner. Fonts, colors and corners are set once per site, and every game picks them up. The same crossword looks native on a newspaper and on a local TV station's site.
• One snippet. A game goes onto a page with one embed that loads only when a reader reaches it, so articles stay fast.
• Daily schedules. New puzzles every day, with nobody at the partner filling a calendar.
• Reporting per partner. Plays, completions and returning players for every game on every site.

Each partner picks its own lineup. A broadcaster's sites might lead with a daily quiz and a word search, and a newspaper with a crossword and sudoku. The setup underneath stays the same.

How the partnership works

Hearst brings the relationships: it knows the partners, and the partners know Hearst. Playgent brings the games: it builds the lineup for each partner, themes it, hosts it and runs it day to day.

Partners such as Sinclair Broadcast Group get daily games on their sites without hiring a puzzle desk or an engineering team, and without another vendor to manage. Adding a partner means a theme and a snippet, not a new project, and fixes and new games reach every partner at once.

Why Hearst chose Playgent

Hearst's partners are news organizations, and their names are on every game. Playgent's puzzles are checked to be solvable and scheduled ahead of time, and an editor can review or change any puzzle before it goes live.

Playgent also runs the day to day: new puzzles on schedule, fixes, and new games as they join the catalog. No partner has to staff its own puzzle desk, and Hearst doesn't have to run one for them.

Reporting lines up as well. Every partner gets the same numbers, measured the same way, so it's easy to see which formats work where.

What's ahead for Hearst

Every new game that joins Playgent's catalog can reach every partner at once, already in each site's theme. Streaks, leaderboards and share cards can be switched on across the network. And Playgent Studio lets a partner's editors create a game by chatting with AI, so a station can build a game around a local story or a big night without waiting on a developer.

If you work with a network of news sites and want to offer them games without a project for each, talk to our team.