Philly Games

As AI summaries have started replacing traditional browsing and search habits, news outlets have seen a significant decline in incoming traffic. Our goal is to use product and design thinking to help solve our client, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s, current challenges around reaching new audiences.

How might we bring new users to news outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, given the current decline in traffic from search and social media?

We partnered with the Inquirer's product team to explore how games might help solve this problem. After a competitive analysis of the games market, expert interviews with practitioners at the intersection of journalism and games, and generative play sessions across digital and physical formats, we identified a clear gap: no existing news game combines habit formation, editorial depth, and local identity in a single product.

Our response was Philly Games, a suite of six original digital puzzle games designed for Philadelphia locals, built on classic game formats, and grounded in Inquirer content and Philadelphia culture. Each game targets a different player motivation, from social bluffing to food-themed logic puzzles to word deduction. We built all six as high-fidelity playable prototypes using AI-assisted development tools, and tested three with Philadelphia locals through recorded think-aloud sessions and surveys.