Puzzmo co-creator Zach Gage on building newspaper games that can last forever

gamedeveloper.com:

Award-winning game designer Zach Gage wants to reboot the newspaper games page with Puzzmo. But as much as the new platform, which invites players to kick back and peruse a selection of daily puzzles like Really Bad Chess, TypeShift, Flipart, and Cross|word, is a place for games—Gage tells us it's also a place for people.

The veteran developer, who began crafting Puzzmo with the aid of lead engineer Orta Therox (although the team has since expanded significantly), explains he first began thinking about how one might reinvent newspaper games for a modern audience a decade ago after he was invited to meet with The New York Times. Those talks eventually broke down, but Gage continued to fixate on how he'd make a crossword more approachable in a digital era dominated by blockbuster video games and algorithmic social media platforms like Twitter (now X), Facebook, and TikTok.

The answer is Puzzmo. During a wide-ranging interview earlier this month, Gage explains the platform "grew out of some frustrations in having to work within other people's frameworks." He notes the rapid monopolization, decay, and fragmentation of platforms like Twitter, which so many creatives with a online presence have come to rely on, persuaded him to pull the trigger on Puzzmo and create a bespoke space that allows him to champion his own creations while enabling puzzle aficionados to put down roots. 

"It felt like, alright, maybe if we can just build our own place to do our own work then I won't have to [rebuild my online presence on other platforms]. I can get out while I still have reach," he explains. "For years, people older than me have been saving 'oh, you've gotta own your audience.' That's a gross way to say it, but what they're saying is