LinkedIn is Experimenting With Casual Games

LinkedIn is looking at casual games to increase the time users spend on the platform. The professional social network, which is now owned by Microsoft – now one of the biggest gaming companies in the world – confirmed a report from TechCrunch detailing the upcoming games experience on LinkedIn.

“We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations. Stay tuned for more,” a LinkedIn spokesperson said in a message shared with TechCrunch. The company’s representative didn’t specify if Microsoft was involved in the project.

The original report from TechCrunch revealed that “Queens”, “Inference” and “Crossclimb” are the names of three casual games that LinkedIn has been testing. Nima Owji, and independent app researcher cited in the report also claimed that “companies will be ranked in the games based on the scores of their employees.”

BREAKING: #LinkedIn is working on IN-APP GAMES!

There are going to be a few different games and companies will be ranked in the games based on the scores of their employees!

Pretty cool and fun, in my opinion! pic.twitter.com/hLITqc8aqw

— Nima Owji (@nima_owji) March 16, 2024

While it’s easy to dismiss LinkedIn as the “boring” social network, the platform currently has over 1 billion members, with an estimated 310 million monthly active users. This makes it one of the biggest social platforms worldwide, and probably not all of its members obess about growing their network or sharing unexpected life hacks.

It will be interesting to see if a professional social network like LinkedIn can successfully engage with the more than 3 billion gamers in world, with most of them playing casual mobile games. The gamification system mentioned by Owji is also a bit reminiscent of the gamerscore leaderboard on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles, and this could probably appeal to people with a competitive personality.