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Boggle has become a spectator sport in my household. Everyone crowds around the TV while one of us plays, and the crowd either helps shout out words or waits patiently for their turn. There’s a lot of yelling. But it’s a game that my family can hop into easily, and once someone starts playing, it seems everyone slowly drifts into the room to join in. The surprising part is that the experience is happening entirely through Netflix.
The streaming giant has been trying to crack gaming for half a decade now, and outside of a few rare hits like Grand Theft Auto and Squid Game: Unleashed, it hasn’t made much of a dent. But with its relatively new TV games, which launched last year and include the likes of Boggle as well as party games based on everything from Lego to Knives Out, Netflix may have finally figured out gaming that makes sense for the service. You don’t even need controllers: Each player just uses their own smartphone.
As Netflix continues to expand beyond traditional TV and movie offerings, getting into everything from live sports to talent competitions with audience interaction, these kinds of games could eventually become a pillar of the service. And it all starts with Boggle.
It’s been a rough road to this point. Netflix first started rolling out games in 2021, and initially, it seemed like a great deal. Games are included as part of a regular subscription, and at first the service offered a nicely curated selection of mobile games. There were ports of beloved indie titles like the sci-fi strategy game Into the Breach, as well as exclusive titles like the exhilarating adventure Laya’s Horizon. These sat alongside games based on Netflix shows like The Queen’s Gambit and Love Is Blind. If you were looking for high-quality games for your phone, Netflix was a surprisingly great platform.
Gaming is not an easy space to compete in. Other wealthy companies like Amazon have largely struggled to make headway, and even massively popular games like Fortnite are struggling. The issue with Netflix, though, is that its gaming efforts always felt separate from everything else it was doing. Hades on my phone is cool, but it’s also something I had to actively know about and search for. It’s not something I can stumble on while browsing Netflix, and it’s not something that will keep me in the main Netflix app, which is what the company wants.
But the new TV games solve that issue. Before, Netflix’s games were separate apps you downloaded on your phone. Now they’re found in the same place as everything else on Netflix — there’s a tab at the top of the app alongside movies and television — making them seamlessly feel like part of the service. My family can watch Wake Up Dead Man and then immediately play a Knives Out–themed mystery game afterwards. Games are no longer a separate service Netflix operates, they’re just part of Netflix.
The games also need to be more widely available. Right now Netflix’s TV games are in something of a beta, as they’re available on some platforms — mostly smart TVs and streaming boxes — but not all. For instance, I can play games through Netflix on my Roku stick, but not my Apple TV. Making them a ubiquitous part of the platform, no matter what device you’re on, will be key.
Most importantly, Netflix needs to stick with it. This won’t work if the company decides to change up its strategy yet again in a few months. It needs to give its subscribers time to realize that, hey, I can play games here too. The early years of Netflix games have been plagued with disorder, inconsistency, and a whole lot of throwing things against the wall to see if they’d stick. Something has finally stuck — now Netflix needs to build on it.
- And then there’s Microsoft and its Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which has also been going through changes, including a recent price cut (yes, a cut!) and the loss of some high-profile games.
- While we don’t know how popular the TV games are, Stephen Totillo of Game File noted in April that Netflix’s controller app was topping the iOS charts.
- Last year’s launch of TV games was such a big deal that The New York Times wrote a splashy feature, in which Tascan said this about the service’s future: “if we are able to bring this more innovative, more approachable, frictionless experience, we will start having new partners.”
- For a little more insight into how Netflix operates, here’s an interview I did with David Edery, cofounder of Spirit Crossing developer Spry Fox.
- Keza MacDonald, games editor at The Guardian (and author of an excellent book about Nintendo), wrote a great ode to Netflix’s previous iteration of games, calling them the service’s “best-kept secret.”
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