[STEAM] Why NYT Games is launching its first multiplayer game, Crossplay, with a standalone app

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New York Times Games is going multiplayer with its latest word game — and launching the new title as a dedicated app. 

Today, January 21, the New York Times published “Crossplay,” the company’s first-ever multiplayer game. Designed for social play and real-time competition, “Crossplay” requires players to place word tiles onto a board to form words and score points, with users able to play against computers or match up against other humans using a skill-based matchmaking system. Unlike the New York Times’ past new game releases, “Crossplay” is the company’s first video game to have its own mobile application, which is available for free download on all major app stores. 

“It’s not a daily puzzle; it doesn’t have an editor. You’re playing against someone else,” said New York Times executive producer of games Zoe Bell in an interview with GamesBeat. “So it feels different, and it felt like it really deserved its own app.”

Although “Crossplay” officially launched today, players in some international markets have been able to participate in a beta test of the game since last year. After an internal testing ******* in spring 2025, the New York Times opened “Crossplay” up for beta testing in New Zealand and Australia over the summer, then for ********* players in November. The company is explicitly looking to bring in new gaming audience members through the new game launch, according to Bell, although it also views “Crossplay” as an offering for pre-existing NYT Games players. 

“Not everybody wants to play a totally social game, but a lot of people do. In ‘Wordle,’ everybody’s sharing their scores; they want to play with their friends and family. Here’s a great way to do that, with a game that’s kind of purpose-built for that,” Bell said. “We think that there will be a large portion of our audience who will be very interested in this — but also, there’s going to be new people that will come in. Maybe they’ll play ‘Crossplay,’ really like it, and then say, ‘oh, I should try out the other New York Times games.’”

From a visual and gameplay perspective, “Crossplay” is similar to other word-tile games, including the tabletop OG Scrabble and digital-native relatives like “Words with Friends” and “

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“As a Scrabble player, my primary reaction to the announcement was ‘LMAO they can’t say Scrabble,’” said Jake Eakle, a word game player and member of Crosscord, the central Discord server for the online crossword community.

When asked about the similarities, New York Times lead game designer Rohit Crasta told GamesBeat that Scrabble had not been a direct source of inspiration for his team, pointing out that “Crossplay’s” board features a different distribution of bonus squares. The bonus squares in “Crossplay” are one element that connects the game to the wider world of NYT Games, with the squares borrowing their colors from the categories in the popular New York Times game “Connections.” 

“We were trying to make a crossword style of game — a multi-player word game that you could build grids together in — and so we weren’t really basing it on Scrabble in that kind of way,” Crasta said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We were actually trying to design a game that is fun to play back-and-forth, and as far as we designed the board, the bonus squares are designed very specifically to support both competitive and casual play.”

Another link between “Crossplay” and the broader New York Times brand is the game’s review system, which gives players insights into the right and wrong moves they made after every game with another human player. (Reviews for games against computer players are still in the works, per Crasta.) Designed by the New York Times’ Upshot design team — which also created the

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and the infamous NYT election tracking needle — this feature is available only to NYT Games subscribers, part of the company’s plans to monetize “Crossplay.”

“You have to register to play against other humans, but it’s free-to-play,” Bell said. “There will be ads for people who are not subscribers. If you subscribe, then the ads go away. They will be very nice, tasteful ads.”

Scrabble similarities notwithstanding, the word game community is excited for the launch of “Crossplay,” with Crosscord member Stephen Burling telling GamesBeat that he believes previous options like “Words With Friends” are either too corporate or don’t have enough players to be worth the squeeze at the moment. The introduction of a new word-tile game backed by the New York Times’ media network is exciting word gamers enthusiastic about the genre.

“I’m very excited,” Burling said in an interview with GamesBeat.”This generation needs a new online Scrabble-like that you can talk to friends, family and coworkers about.”

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