Scientific American Launches Games: A Conversation with Sarah Lewin Frasier

Scientific American recently launched SciAm Games, their brand new games offering with a variety of puzzles, including crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, Spellments, and more. Sarah Lewin Frasier is the Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. We spoke with her about SciAm’s motivation behind launching games, long-term plans, and much more. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of our conversation:

Could you shed some light on the journey of games on Scientific American online, how it started, and how it came about?

Scientific American actually has a long history with games. For example, the mathematical games column by Martin Gardner was started in the fifties and ran all the way into the eighties. Other than that we’ve had other relatively short-lived puzzle sections like Mind Games in our former magazine, SciAm MIND, that included brain teasers by Mensa members. And we’ve also had crosswords in print before, and a science-themed version of Sudoku online.

Today, casual gaming is a way that a lot of people connect with news sites. So it seems like a really interesting time to try games again. For my part, our editor-in-chief, Laura Helmuth, asked me whether I’d like to pull together a games section and she was open to everything in regards to implementation. So through my discussions with her and with our president Kim Lau, we settled on a strategy that tries many different kinds of games because we don’t know exactly what our audience is going to be most interested in. But the key idea is that every game one way or another will tie back to our news coverage.

So people who are there to play the fun games would find out about interesting science news and people who are there for the science news might try games because they get to learn new interesting things. That was what we started with. And then our current game lineup is what came out of that set of discussions. And also with that, what Amuse Labs was able to offer and use.

Could you tell me a bit about how you decided the game lineup? Quiz, for example, is a game that lends itself very easily to a Scientific American audience. But what about the others? I’m interested in knowing what went behind those choices and how you adapted these games to the Scientific American brand.

When we originally discussed introducing games, the main thing we knew was that we were going to use quizzes. But we don’t have the staff to devote to a daily quiz. Therefore we decided that we would do weekly quizzes and find other things that could fill in the rest of the week so people would continue to come back. Our version of the word flower, which we’re calling Spellements, was a way to do that. The way Spellements is played is you form a bunch of words out of a set of letters provided each day, and you get extra points for a pangram, which is a word that uses all the letters. My idea was that the pangram could be a word tied to one of our science stories.

Originally, the idea was when you find that word, there would be a pop-up that would show you the story. We haven’t been able to do that yet, but it’s a work in progress. Nonetheless, we have found other ways to make that connection clear. We provide a hint that has a link to the Scientific American article that the story is from.

The thought of using that particular game came from just thinking that it is a really fun game. It’s a little bit less well known, although people are familiar with the New York Times one but there aren’t many different clones of it. So we thought it might be something people thought was fun from day to day and the news part would be sort of like a little bonus. We also have weekly math puzzles which are mostly drawn from our partner site in Germany.

Jigsaw puzzles actually were Amuse Labs’ suggestion. It never occurred to me that people would want to do online jigsaws. But apparently, they do. And you know what? When I tried one, I was like, oh! this is actually really fun. I built a really big one and I was working on it through a couple of meetings at one point. As science is very visual and great images are coming through every day, incorporating jigsaw puzzles was a natural fit.

“With our first crossword, we received great reader feedback—they really liked the embedded links to our news articles.”

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but we’ve done one crossword, and we’re actually planning to make it a monthly feature that ties into our issues, also through Amuse Labs. With our first crossword, we received great reader feedback—they really liked the embedded links to our news articles. So if you’re not already familiar with a topic or just curious to learn more, it’s really easy to click through and read about it. I saw positive comments about that.

Our first crossword wasn’t tied to any particular issue; it was more of a test. But we’re hoping that having a focused crossword each month will create a nice loop of people reading the issue and trying the crossword. These are some of the ways we’ve tried to figure things out.

Great. Do you have a personal favorite among all the games that Scientific American has launched?

You know, I didn’t expect it, but I really do like the jigsaw puzzle much more than I thought I would. We keep them relatively small for people playing on mobile, but I made a 100-piece puzzle of this beautiful nebula just to test it out, and it was so fun to put together. It’s very meditative. I think we’ll stick with the smaller ones that work on mobile for now, but maybe every once in a while, we can add a larger one for people to enjoy.

“The multiplayer feature is really cool and something you don’t see in a lot of other places.”

There is another thing I wanted to mention. I haven’t fully tested out the multiplayer feature yet, but I think it’s really cool and something you don’t see in a lot of other places. We’re planning to do some social videos, maybe on TikTok, showing people collaborating on these games because I think many people don’t realize that’s an option. And I think it could be a lot of fun.

What do you think about monetization and the business side of this internally? Do you and SciAm have a vision for how you’ll monetize this offering? Is there a paywall coming? Could you give me a sense of how you’re approaching it?

Yeah, so right now, we’re focused on gaining players and seeing how it goes. Eventually, we will consider putting it behind a metered paywall. So it might be a situation where you can access the games with a free sign-up, but then we have your information and can better track your activity. Or, the games might eventually go behind our regular metered paywall, meaning you can play a few times before you’re prompted to log in. We’re not exactly sure when that will happen—it really depends on the uptake and how many people are playing these games. It might not apply to all the games.

I wanted to delve into how you understand the Scientific American audience compared to, say, a general New York Times audience. The game space is pretty crowded now, with the Times and others jumping in. How does Scientific American plan to stand out or carve its own niche in that market?

Yeah, so I think our audience is naturally curious about science and the world. Of course, some people who read The New York Times share that interest too, but our focus is more specific. We write for a general audience but with a particular emphasis on those interested in science and learning about the world. Ideally, playing our games helps people do just that.

If you play a standard word game from another outlet, you might finish it and think, ‘That was fun,’ and move on. But with our games, we hope that by playing, you’ll encounter something really cool or interesting that deepens your understanding of the world.

“If you play a standard word game from another outlet, you might finish it and think, ‘That was fun,’ and move on. But with our games, we hope that by playing, you’ll encounter something really cool or interesting that deepens your understanding of the world.”

We also attract a lot of educators and students. For example, one of our most perennially popular articles is about making elephant toothpaste, a classroom experiment. So we’re always thinking about how to reach those audiences and offer fun, engaging, and educational science content.

Our current lineup of games doesn’t have that element yet, but it’s something we’re considering. We want our readers to take science seriously but also enjoy having fun with it. For instance, we recently had a story about how elephants name each other and call those names across the savanna—just one of those weird and interesting science facts that people get excited about and like to share. I’m not a specialist in audience data, but from what I’ve seen, these quirky and intriguing science facts really resonate with our readers.

Can you tell me a bit about the content and editorial side of things? Who designs the games? Are they created in-house or do you work with external constructors? What’s the structure?

Sure. For our crosswords, we hired an external constructor because crosswords are quite challenging to design. We’re working with a really talented constructor who has worked with The New York Times and various other publications. She’s been excited to dive into the science theme.

The news quizzes are written by one of our editors, Allison Parshall. Currently, I handle the rest of the content, but we’ll see how long that continues. For Spellements, the workflow has recently changed. Initially, the Amuse Labs team would send me a list of options, and I would select words that matched our news coverage. This week, however, I sent them a large list of potential words, and they are checking which ones would make great puzzles.

For each word, I write a clue and a solution version. For example, ‘These members of the periodic table do x, y, and z, as described in this article,’ with the pangram being ‘Atoms’.

For jigsaw puzzles, I collaborate with our art team to find images with the appropriate rights. That’s often the main hurdle. I also write a little blurb explaining what you’re looking at.

For math puzzles, that aren’t from Amuse Labs, I’m adapting them from our partner sites or sometimes just using an old puzzle I remembered from middle school.

Even though our audience isn’t huge yet, it is an engaged audience. It reminds me of our newsletter audience. For instance, we call out people who find interesting science words in Spellements that aren’t in the dictionary. Our newsletter is a lot like the games. It is a smaller subset of the audience but it is very responsive. Our newsletter editor, Andrea Gawrylewski often gets questions or suggestions, and we even used her survey to help choose the name ‘Spellements’.

So, I’m optimistic. It’s early days, and not many people know about our games yet, but those who do seem to really enjoy them. There’s definitely room for growth.

Finally, how have you found working with the team at Amuse Labs? Would you recommend us? Anything that stood out to you?

It’s been good so far. I think the product support team has been really helpful in fixing issues and finding ways to meet our goals, like integrating the games with news content. While we’re working with games that aren’t yet designed for that purpose, the product team has been great at figuring out how to make it work.

They’re also very responsive to user experience suggestions. I’ve sent in a few tweaks, and while none have been implemented yet, I appreciate that they pass the feedback along. Overall, the workflow and communication have been good.

“Most people are looking for fun, interesting games based on familiar archetypes, like jigsaws or word flowers, and Amuse Labs excels in providing those.”

If the games that Amuse Labs offers fit what you’re looking for, they’re a great option. However, if you’re after a game that’s never been seen or heard before, you might want to consider developing it yourself. Most people are looking for fun, interesting games based on familiar archetypes, like jigsaws or word flowers, and Amuse Labs excels in providing those.