Joseph Rueter: [00:00:00] So how did you transition into teaching?
Jeff Petriello: I am so grateful to be a teacher. It is one of the things.
Nate Kadlac: Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast, where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day.
Aaron Kardell: So we just got done interviewing, Jeff Petriello. He's currently at the New York Times as a game producer there, but we talked a lot about just his journey towards that as well.
Aaron Kardell: Joseph, what were some of your key takeaways from this interview?
Joseph Rueter: Outside of burning 24 extra minutes of his next meeting, I was delighted to see the energy, hear the energy that he has for games and their ability to connect to people from his early stories. Family time, all the way to the work he does day to day.
Joseph Rueter: Now that connection [00:01:00] component. Is captivating and super fun to listen to. How about yourself?
Aaron Kardell: Yeah. I mean, there, there were a lot of interesting insights on, you know, what the New York times is up to specifically around games. So I encourage you to listen into the full pod for that. But I think, you know, some of his personal journey on just, how he got to be there and how he.
Aaron Kardell: In retrospect, had a lot of intentionality to his path there to be a game producer. There was a pretty inspiring, so check it out and onto the pod.
Joseph Rueter: I'm Joseph Reuter and I'm here today with my co host, Aaron Cardell. Today we're excited to speak with Jeff Petriello, the founder of Half Cintar, games producer at the New York Times, game design educator at the New York University Game Center, and we're so glad you're here. Jeff has a diverse background when it comes to [00:02:00] game design and content creation.
Joseph Rueter: He's worked on major projects with HBO. He's got a recent game out, Immortality, in the last year that has its own track. And Jeff has worked in film and media production with companies like Mashable, NowThis, Bleacher Report, SoulCycle, which I'm curious about how you could get me to sweat more with games and some other production companies.
Joseph Rueter: Currently, Jeff is at the New York Times as a producer of gameplay. He teaches game design at the New York NYU Game Center, which I may have already said. And you earned a Master of Fine Arts there, which is lovely. I
Jeff Petriello: did, yeah, back in 2019.
Joseph Rueter: So, what is your favorite game to play right now?
Jeff Petriello: Okay, I have two answers for this.
Jeff Petriello: One is like, what is my favorite game to play? Which is definitely Backgammon. I play Backgammon dozens of times a day on my phone. Backgammon. [00:03:00] Any chance I get, and I've been doing that for years. So backgammon is definitely my favorite game to play generally by myself. I guess I should caveat that. And then my favorite game right now, can I give a tabletop and a digital answer?
Joseph Rueter: Oh, yes, absolutely. This is how we know that, you're dealing with serious gamers. Isn't they sub They slice up the market. Yeah,
Laughing: absolutely.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, my tabletop right now, I've been playing Frosthaven for months since it came out. And despite some of the haters, I have been having a really great time because it really does enable me to yell at my friends, which is my favorite part of tabletop games.
Jeff Petriello: And my favorite digital game Right now I'm judging the innovation of award for the big festival. It's called it's a European game festival, and I'm getting to play a ton of interesting games and [00:04:00] one that I really was into. Although I haven't finished playing all of them, so this is not an indication of my bias.
Jeff Petriello: But, was Crip Master. I'm not sure if any of you have heard of Crip Master yet. It's a really, really cool game. I had a ton of good times playing it. It's basically like a dungeon crawler, but it's blended really with like a word game, like a typing game, essentially. And the voice acting is incredible, the art is so beautiful, and grayscale, it's incredible.
Jeff Petriello: The story is really mysterious and interesting, it's funny, it's scary, it's hard. Yeah, that game has been really cool to play.
Joseph Rueter: Crip Master. Just seems like you should play it maybe before you go to Paris next time. On Paris and get down into the, you're like out of combs, you're like, this is your pre work, right?
Joseph Rueter: [00:05:00] Yeah, absolutely.
Aaron Kardell: Very interesting. And do you, we saw somewhere, do you still play a lot of Gloomhaven? Well yeah, Frosthaven is the sequel to Gloomhaven. Frosthaven's the sequel, yeah. Got
Jeff Petriello: it. The answer is yes. Frosthaven is like a little bit, they added like a town building system, they added, they like did some great edits on the rules, there's a new navigation for the narrative that's interesting.
Jeff Petriello: You know, it's still got some of its pitfalls as like a massively complicated and investment heavy tabletop game, but I've definitely been enjoying it with my besties, for sure.
Joseph Rueter: That's fantastic. So wind it back before you got a degree in gaming, before you got a job in gaming. How did games enter your, your awareness?
Joseph Rueter: How'd you become curious about [00:06:00] games enough? Enough to go study them.
Jeff Petriello: yeah, that is an incredibly good question. Games have always been a part of my life. I was very lucky to be always encouraged to play by my family. I think they saw play as a way to connect with other people, both my age groups and intergenerationally.
Jeff Petriello: And so we always had board games out at my house, whether it was like Scrabble or Monopoly. My parents by no means were hobbyists, not like we were, you know, even playing something as like, diplomacy at home or anything like that. We were playing the basics, but it was always a center of a lot of social interactions, and that was always really exciting to me.
Jeff Petriello: Because as a queer man, Growing up, you're constantly sort of like dealing with figuring out how you're different and how you relate to other people. And when I would [00:07:00] play a game with other people, we sort of all opted in to this set of rules, this set of limits and expectations for each other that we agreed upon, and that in hindsight was an incredibly comforting and enabling experience to go through all the time.
Jeff Petriello: So like I kid, but like Dungeons and Dragons in like fourth grade was one of the few ways that I could really truly relate and build relationships with like other straight guys in my class. I'm still best friends with my best friend from first grade who I've been playing Dungeons Dragons with since 1994.
Jeff Petriello: So these were not only for me were they fun, interesting, and I have sort of like an intellectual temperament I think that attunes me to sort of like getting excited about games and logic and how these things [00:08:00] work out, systemic thinking, all of that. But ultimately at the end of the day as Frank Lantz wrote.
Jeff Petriello: In the inscription to my copy of the beauty of games, the beauty of games is people. And I think that's always been something that I've known and has literally affected my life since I was a little kid. So understanding that and building those experiences for others. You know, that matters to me. So pursuing that was kind of a no brainer.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah, that sounds fascinating. It's a different take of when I see my son trying to optimize on Fortnite. Yeah, absolutely. But all of his buddy are they're all opting in on the same set of rules. Save the fact that he's trying to. Get mice that react more quickly, and keyboards with, and wants to like, route, he's routing ethernet cables through the house.
Joseph Rueter: He's
Jeff Petriello: min maxing. Yeah,
Joseph Rueter: he's trying to, he's trying to, I gotta reduce my [00:09:00] ping, dad, how do you think I can reduce my ping?
Jeff Petriello: Oh, it's so funny. I grew up in, before online multiplayer was easily accessible, for sure. There's actually this great photo book that just came out by Merrick Kay, a NYU Game Center adjacent.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah. person who created this beautiful photo book about the LAN party. And it is all of these ridiculous photos from like the late 90s, early 2000s of like teenage boys, mostly sitting around and getting their humongous PCs next to each other and like eating like mount like Taco Bell and drinking Mountain Dew.
Jeff Petriello: That was my life. in high school for sure. So I can relate in my own way.
Joseph Rueter: It's incredible. It's how I can reduce latency on network, but it was about being together and well, I'd love him outside finding a way to sweat more. He's still learning all of the engaged pieces of [00:10:00] community and connection and collaboration, teamwork, communication, right?
Joseph Rueter: I think you said that real well when you're talking about a shared set of rules. Like, hey, we're going to agree on this and then participate together, which There's something poetic there.
Jeff Petriello: Absolutely.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah, we had the pleasure of having a conversation with Frank, who you mentioned earlier, where he is communicating about games as an expression, an artistic expression of human intellectual capacity.
Joseph Rueter: In the similar way that painting is for color and music is for audio waves, so also games are for cognition. And tell us how you went from around the house, board games, up through, like, take, we had our own challenges with taking games serious enough to work on them aggressively, but it was [00:11:00] after we didn't pick games for our degree in school.
Joseph Rueter: Walk us through that process.
Jeff Petriello: So when I went to undergrad, you really couldn't study games in school unless you went to like a trade school for like video game art or something like that was not an option. So I didn't have to think about it, which was cool. I studied philosophy as an undergrad. Which, if you follow the Franklance aesthetic theory of games, actually makes a lot of sense.
Jeff Petriello: But, yeah, that wasn't really something I even thought about. I remember when I was graduating from undergrad, I, I remember talking about how I dreamed of writing video games. I definitely remember having that ambition in my late teens, early 20s of thinking like, There's something really powerful about the stories I've experienced playing games, and I think there's a lot to explore and do, and I want to be a part of that.
Jeff Petriello: But I didn't pursue it, really, in any, like, practical [00:12:00] form. I went into production. That's really what happened to me. As I left, I started writing, right out of school, I started writing a screenplay. I'm talking about, like, literally the summer I graduated. And I stopped after, like, two weeks of working on it, and was like, I have no idea how people make movies.
Jeff Petriello: This seems like a bad idea to write a screenplay without having any idea how movies are made. And so I signed up to be a production assistant on like an NYU student film and that was it. Like I glowed on that set. I loved the idea of like problem solving things that needed to be problem solved like immediately.
Jeff Petriello: I loved the sort of like shared delusion of everyone working on one story so intensely and literally together for so long, such a concentrated period of time. So that really was very inspiring to me and I wound up working in [00:13:00] film for like the next three years. Again, just because of that passion for sort of like Bringing people together to figure out how we tell a story together, and so yeah, I managed to work for a very big Hollywood producer.
Jeff Petriello: His name is Scott Rudin. He's kind of infamous. He was like cancelled. a couple of years ago for being abusive to his employees. I was one of those employees. It was a really, truly unique experience, and it made me want to leave the industry. I did not want to be involved with people like that. And so I thought about what else I could do.
Jeff Petriello: And I realized, like, I had a passion. I had always had a passion for technology. I was like the kid waiting online at midnight for the Nintendo Wii. I was like. an iPod, the second it was out, like getting it from the back door of a comp USA from a staff member I like found on Reddit, like that was my [00:14:00] vibe.
Jeff Petriello: So I was like, maybe I could do something with that. And that's when I wound up meeting a guy named Ken Lear, who is a venture capitalist in this city and he wanted to start what he called the first Social media news network, and I was became the first employee of this company that would become now this news, and that's how I got into digital media production.
Jeff Petriello: I did that for about six years and now this and then at Mashable. I had an amazing experience there, but after it. I really had this desire, I had this urge to work with engineers. Mashable, I was able to work with motion graphic designers, animators, photographers, graphic designers, other producers, writers, this incredible like mini creative agency, if you will, that I got to build and manage there.
Jeff Petriello: Though there seemed to be this like really thick wall for executives [00:15:00] between Those people and engineers, which made no sense to me. Cause I was like, engineers are basically just like creative technologists. They are using logic to make things out of nothing. Like to me, that's not that different than a design, a visual designer from an aesthetic standpoint.
Jeff Petriello: So that really, really frustrated me. Like I, even though I was working with our CTOs and our product people every day, testing their products, like. Actually getting an engineer to work on my team was seemingly impossible. And so I decided that I needed to do something about that. So I went back to school at night.
Jeff Petriello: I went to a immersive coding bootcamp called full stack academy, where I learned a full stack and did that for about six months, Before deciding that I was going to like, really shift out of digital media, I used that coding experience to sort [00:16:00] of like boost my confidence to applying to grad programs that would work for me.
Jeff Petriello: incorporate engineering more directly into creation so that I could avoid the issue that I ran into at that point in my career. And so I was looking at places like the MIT Media Lab, I was looking at places like ITP at NYU, which I jokingly refer to as like the Hogwarts of technology. And I also wound up looking at the Game Center.
Jeff Petriello: And I was not intending to study games. Like when I was like, I'm going to go back to school. I wasn't thinking, I'm gonna go back to school for games. It was a really a, an intro talk by Frank Lance that completely convinced me that that is where I should be. And that was what I wanted to do. So yeah, Frank Lance, you know, changed my life very, very directly.
Jeff Petriello: There was a few things about the Game Center that really spoke to me. One is that They had a [00:17:00] more rigid curriculum. So your first year at the Game Center is almost entirely required courses. Like they had a track that they wanted you to go through and ITP, for instance, in contrast, even though it's in the same department of NYU at Tisch, totally Almost the opposite.
Jeff Petriello: Almost completely freeform. And I need structure as a person. I really prefer that. So that was a huge draw for me. I loved that. But then also this idea which is really core to the design philosophy of the Game Center. Which is that a game like chess or a game like Go is the same as a game like Fortnite.
Jeff Petriello: And that to me was like, yes, like that was something I felt in my bones to be true. And I loved that these people [00:18:00] were like, confident in that and exploring that. And I was like, that's what I'm interested in making. I'm interested in this through line of like, we've been doing this thing since before we were human.
Jeff Petriello: Literally playing and video games are just kind of this like gorgeous new incarnation of that thing that incorporates engineers, software engineers specifically, right? So I mean all kinds of engineers, but that was a huge shift, right? So I loved that and I'm a fan of studying the classics. I'm a fan of studying the fundamentals.
Jeff Petriello: That's why I loved studying philosophy when I was in undergrad. And so that really Convinced me that I was going to get out of that program, what I was looking for. So, yeah, I mean, that was a very long winded answer, but Oh, I loved it.
Aaron Kardell: Let's tap into the very last part of that. So what are, what do you think the biggest parallels between Go and Chess and [00:19:00] Fortnite are?
Aaron Kardell: I could make some assumptions, but curious what your take on that is. I picked
Jeff Petriello: Fortnite for
Aaron Kardell: the meme.
Jeff Petriello: I don't really play Fortnite. It's
Aaron Kardell: not the best
Jeff Petriello: example for me.
Joseph Rueter: Oh, oh, I play Fortnite now. Hell yeah. Give me the hits, cause my fingers don't move like the littles.
Jeff Petriello: The thing that is the same to me between those things is play.
Jeff Petriello: That is what it is. It's an expression of structured play. And to me, That idea of play is so much more core to being a living thing on this planet than I think people give us credit for. And so that's really interesting to me. Even if what you're playing isn't quote unquote fun or pleasant, the idea of play non consequentially manipulating something to have an experience with.
Jeff Petriello: [00:20:00] Another person, whether that person is present or abstracted as a designer to me is like fundamental to those experiences.
Aaron Kardell: Do you think some of it's the social element to, you know, it seems like a big part of your intro to games was really that connection with other individuals. Is that maybe a common thread too?
Jeff Petriello: I mean, I think that's entirely, I don't think it wouldn't matter to me at all without that. I think. Art is a form of communication, and communication is like a two way street. So, I think it's inherently social, and I think that's like, extremely. inextricable from its value.
Aaron Kardell: So you loved gaming from an early age, but there was a long period of time where it wasn't really a professional exploration for you.
Aaron Kardell: You kind of landed into it, thanks in big part to Frank, you know, a number [00:21:00] of other life circumstances. I'm curious, there's kind of this through line though, in your career trajectory of media and producing and, you know, just a lot of those kinds of things. And it just so happens that you're at the New York Times now, I'm curious, like, as you think about whether it's producing a film or producing for other media outlets, not in a gaming context, producing now for games, like, what are some of the commonalities that you see across that through line?
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, that's a very insightful question, because The similarities are many and I don't think that that is something that people really realize. I mean as a producer my particular role in Producing games is not that different than it is from Producing a film. [00:22:00] In its core, in its fundamentals, in like the skills I need, in The knowledge that I need to acquire, the experience that's helpful to me when I'm applying it.
Jeff Petriello: The particulars are always different. And I think The reason why that similarity I feel so strongly about is because the particulars are always different, even when you're working within the same medium. So like, one film is not like producing another film. Of course, the more you do, the more you learn, the better you get at it.
Jeff Petriello: But there's always unique problems. There's always different people working on it, right? And that to me was what was interesting about production, was like everything was both completely different and completely the same to something else I had done. And so at the end of the day, I'm bringing people together to create something.[00:23:00]
Jeff Petriello: It's like you have all of these disparate parts, both physical and conceptual, but most importantly, interpersonal, and you're trying to output one thing. And that is not easy. And figuring out how to do that is like, yeah, at the core of production to me and is not changing regardless of what I'm working on.
Joseph Rueter: I remember a period of time when I had to act as a producer. I also studied philosophy, but I had to act as a producer on very complicated banner ads in the environment of flash and for, for an insurance company, it was like, wait a second. No, no, you get the media buyers and the hard dollars and the, and the art of making an umbrella move.
Joseph Rueter: So now we know the insurance company. And I think that's that. Herding cats [00:24:00] metaphor that comes out of even agency life here in Minneapolis. It's Fallon, Fallon, McGillicud, Rice, right? Back in the day, I got some exposure to what production on even TV commercials are, any kind of creative act. So as you were talking, those memories are flashing in my mind and thinking like, wait a second, production is.
Joseph Rueter: For a creative act, there's a bunch of similarities of hurting the humans, and the wildness, and the just weird that comes about. So, how did you transition into teaching?
Jeff Petriello: I am so grateful to be a teacher. It is one of the things I hold most dear. While I was at the Game Center getting my MFA, I had work study, I wound up TAing.
Jeff Petriello: I TAed for Eric Zimmerman, who is at the Game Center. He leads consortia with the sub department of game design specifically. And he used to [00:25:00] teach game design, intro to game design, a bunch of those fundamental design classes. And so I TAed for him, I think two semesters. And then when I left, I couldn't find a job.
Jeff Petriello: Surprise! And Eric was kind enough to reach out to me and say, Hey, do you have availability? And I was like. Boy, do I. And he's like, well, we need someone to teach intro to game design. Would you be interested? And I've been teaching every year since. So this coming fall is actually going to be the start of my sixth year teaching at the Game Center, which is wild.
Joseph Rueter: Oh, that's so much fun. And there's been an explosion of change just in the last, what, year of the tools available for. Designing just about everything, writing and so forth. Can you catch a change in the students coming in, even over the last five years? What are some of those changes?
Jeff Petriello: I mean, last year was the first year that I sat down to like meet with a group and [00:26:00] like talk about their prototype and their coder was there listening to what we were saying.
Jeff Petriello: And then just like talking to chat GPT to try to make change it immediately, which was amazing. Like that was the first time I saw that and was like, this is with all the problems that come that are coming along with AI, which there are many, right? This is cool. This is awesome that you can just type out, Hey, make me write me a C sharp script that creates an eight by eight grid with sliding tiles and you like.
Jeff Petriello: You know, you're not going to get a hundred percent there just yet, but you're not starting from zero. And that was like, so cool. So that was a huge shift. I thought that I've noticed in the last year or two. I also think another big thing is weirdly the pandemic, like the result of the pandemic. I am not trying to diminish the like, obviously an observable negative [00:27:00] effect it has generally had on education in America.
Jeff Petriello: But for my grad students at NYU, for instance, there are some lessons that have come out of the pandemic that I think are really interesting and are different. than before. And one of those is production. Like, the idea of how do we coordinate a project? Who is doing what, when, and where? When everyone is used to now dealing with people who aren't physically there, Who might have gotten sick all of a sudden or whatever, like we're used to hey We're not just agreeing at this time that everyone should be here every week It's like there are now it's understood that variables actually do exist.
Jeff Petriello: They existed before I just think we kind of like Try to force people through them, right? Now, people are much more conscious about being like, Oh, well, that doesn't work for you. Like [00:28:00] what does work for us? And so the idea of working agreements, which is like an agile practice that I live by, that is almost, almost natural now to people in a way that it wasn't before.
Jeff Petriello: And I think that has been really, really cool and interesting and made my job easier. Trying to explain the value of that stuff is a lot more obvious than it felt like it used to be.
Joseph Rueter: That's
Aaron Kardell: so curious.
Joseph Rueter: Those constraints have become enabling. That's what I hear you saying.
Jeff Petriello: I mean, yeah, it's like the, it's classic, honestly, like, lessons that we should have learned from the disability rights movement a million years ago.
Jeff Petriello: Like, you accommodate and you produce better than trying to force all people to behave exactly the same. So, I think that's becoming a lot more instinctual.
Aaron Kardell: Yeah, I was just going to state the obvious, you know, I, I think as a parent, I think about all of the, negatives out of the, [00:29:00] pandemic and the loss of the social construct and the, the ability, whatever the age of the kid or undergrad or whatever ability to interact with their peers.
Aaron Kardell: But. But like, they're probably that much better equipped to be professional remote workers. So that's pretty interesting insight.
Jeff Petriello: And I mean, like, for example, the New York Times games team is like, has a lot of remote workers. We're like a fully hybrid endeavor. It is not expected at almost at any moment, except for very particular events that, you know, you can assume everyone's going to be there, right?
Jeff Petriello: So I think those are skills that are really important. In fact, if I look back at my teaching. This is wild to say, but I actually think one of my best classes, one of my greatest experiences teaching was the fully remote semester of 2021. Those game design students were Incredible. [00:30:00] They made such cool stuff, all working remotely together, never having met.
Jeff Petriello: They were freshmen. They were incredible. I'm still like, I mean, you know, sometimes classes are just special. Like maybe it was just those group of people, but like I was, that was
Aaron Kardell: a wild dream. So anyway, you've got such a rich history. Kind of starting out in philosophy and undergrads, a lot of different media experiences then kind of Transitioning to games over time.
Aaron Kardell: Tell us more about the journey that brought you to the New York Times specifically. The journey to the New York Times specifically is really, that's
Jeff Petriello: a wild story. It is one of my most I don't know, proof of my Scorpio birth chart, I would say. I, the journey to the times was like a six year journey. So remember I was telling you that point where I got frustrated that I couldn't have engineers.
Jeff Petriello: I couldn't get approval to [00:31:00] work with engineers. So at that time I started looking for other jobs. I was at Mashable. This was like 2016 and I applied for a job at the times and I got through like three rounds of interviews. I actually got to go to the building and I interviewed with what at the time was called the beta team.
Jeff Petriello: It was a very small team and it's what would wind up becoming the games team, which is wild. They were working on the crossword. And so I actually kind of like interviewed for this job back before I even decided to like go back to school or do any of that. So I didn't get that job because I hadn't Had direct experience with engineers on paper, which drove me crazy and was part of the reason that I went back to school.
Jeff Petriello: It was one of the inciting incidents. So after I go back to school and do all this, I applied for like three more jobs at the times I got through like two more [00:32:00] interviews, always got rejected by the end of it. And here at this time, like I had a ton of friends that worked there for my previous digital media experience.
Jeff Petriello: I was like, what is going on? Because I know you're kind of interested in me or you want to keep interviewing me. It was like very hot and cold with the times for a while. And when I actually applied for the job I have now, producer on the games team, I walked into the interview like with this story that was like, Basically, I've gone into six figures of debt because you told me I didn't have the experience I needed and I went to go get it, and I'm back, and I really want to work here.
Jeff Petriello: And it was an extremely compelling argument. I think, in fact, once I got the job, My boss, our executive producer, Zoe Bell, told me, she was like, honestly, I wasn't sure you were going to like it, but you seemed incredibly persistent. You clearly really wanted to work here. And so that made me feel better about that feeling.
Jeff Petriello: So, yeah, [00:33:00] I spent a ton of money to manifest this position for myself by going back to school and, yeah, not giving up. So when people ask me, like, what can I do? I'm like, I don't. Well,
Aaron Kardell: put in a different light, the New York times wasn't ready for you either, I think six years before you started, who knew that, gaming was going to be such a big thing at the New York times.
Aaron Kardell: Like that's a kind of an interesting journey that the company's been on too. Right.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, well, another thing with it was that I was kind of burned from my time in digital media. I loved the companies I worked for. But let me tell you, working in early 2010s, early to mid 2010s, digital media in New York, there was obviously a ton of perks to it.
Jeff Petriello: People were getting a ton of money. There was a lot of excitement and [00:34:00] investment. But you were at, which is still the case, I'm sure. You were basically being wagged around by social media platforms like every month, legitimately. There was one moment when I remember this like guy from Facebook that I had never met in my entire life, who I would never meet again, walked into my office and basically told me what my job was going to be for the next six months.
Jeff Petriello: And my bosses out there were like, Yeah. And at that moment I was like, I gotta get out of here. This is crazy. This is not the environment I want to be in. I don't want to be at the beck and call of people who do not even care if I have a job, let alone are actually thinking about what I'm doing. So I wanted to get out of digital media and I made a promise to myself that The only media company I would ever work for again was the New York Times.[00:35:00]
Jeff Petriello: Because at that time, I remember we just saw them denying all of it. They were just like, nope, we're not going to do it. We don't care. We're going to do our own thing. Over and over and over again. And I was just like, some people called it really conservative and out of touch. But having been on the other side of it, I was like, Like, no, those people are right.
Jeff Petriello: Like, that is 100 percent what we should be doing. Like, we are not going to win this war over here. So, I think I kind of manifested it when I made that promise to myself.
Aaron Kardell: Love it. If we've got the timeline correct, is it fair to say You know, obviously New York Times has been known for crosswords forever.
Aaron Kardell: Had other puzzles, at least in print, like Ken Ken.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, since 1942.
Aaron Kardell: We know that the Wordle acquisition was in early 2022. Yeah, I think January of that year, yeah. When was it that you joined the Times?
Jeff Petriello: I joined in [00:36:00] July of that year, so about six months, literally, right after. When I joined the Times, we were in the middle of finishing the process of bringing Wordle like fully into the New York Times like technology.
Aaron Kardell: Would Spelling Bee have predated your arrival or was that?
Jeff Petriello: Oh yeah. Spelling Bee debuted in May of 2018. It was really like the first big game that like the New York Times games team sort of like developed and put out. It It's my impression. I obviously wasn't there, but I know that was like a really big moment a kind of big shift Yeah,
Aaron Kardell: but you've been around then for you know, obviously some other big games of have come out recently connections Strands some other experiments that have certainly been been cool to watch Yeah, tell us more about, maybe especially on the most recent launch, Strands, what has that been like on the inside?
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, so I was, [00:37:00] I'm particularly proud of Strands because one of the two teams I work with at the New York Times is called the New Games Squad, which is a group of people, it's engineers, and a puzzle designer, and a visual designer. And we're all working together to sort of prototype what could be the next new game for the times.
Jeff Petriello: So, you know, we're constantly throwing stuff out. Some of it gets, you know, red lit, like, pretty early on. Other stuff gets green lit to keep going through this development process. And Strands was really the first game that, like, the current iteration of the team, you brought from what we would call phase two of the greenlight process at the times to the public.
Jeff Petriello: When I started on new games, it was like right when we were beginning the process of bringing connections to the public. But I joined, like, after the initial [00:38:00] development of Connection. So, like, we were still figuring out stuff about the game, but it was, like, kind of, like, a third of the way through the process already.
Jeff Petriello: And then a lot of other people joined. So, Strands is really special to me because it's this, like, the first time this team that I work with every single day was really there from the start to sort of the finish of the New Games period, which is the end of this period. So that was incredibly exciting and yeah, the process is both structured and flexible enough to really let us be creative and explore what makes this game interesting, what makes this game fun.
Jeff Petriello: And another reason I'm particularly proud of strands is that. The strands that you are playing out now is not the original pitch. And so we, you know, iterated a lot design wise to land where we are today. And that's something that I'm particularly proud of. So yeah, it was a really interesting process, but [00:39:00] anything you want to know more about, I'm happy to share in particular.
Aaron Kardell: I'm kind of curious. I think Some of the brainy puzzles that we deal with are very much of the ilk that they're algorithmically generated. And there's nothing wrong with those. Like there's, you can have a really great algorithmically generated Sudoku puzzle, but I think there's something on some of these word games where it really is kind of this blend of, you know, the tech's gotta be there.
Aaron Kardell: It's gotta be fun. It's gotta be playable, but there is the creative element of the, the, the, Puzzle creator that really has the input in it too. So I guess I'm personally most curious about like, just as kind of sitting in the middle of, you know, all these different creative types and stakeholders, like, what does that look like in bringing together like the puzzle creator, if you will, and the, the devs, the product team, all of [00:40:00] that, what does that look like?
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to thank you for pointing that out because to me. That is one of the things I am most proud of, for working at the New York Times and working with our games team, is that we actually invest. in people who create these puzzles every day. And that is the, I would say, one of the largest parallels to the Times as an organization.
Jeff Petriello: To me and why I think we actually make sense to be a part of this, which is that when you subscribe to the New York Times games, you are actually contributing to paying people to sit down and make this game for you every day. by hand, literally. And that's, you know, not dissimilar from reading news and subscribing to it because you want to pay those journalists to keep going out there and creating news themselves, right?
Jeff Petriello: It's not that disparate structurally. So [00:41:00] I, I love that. And it's something that I think really Is at the heart of the value of what we produce every single day in terms of how the puzzle editors, they're called, are related to the new game's development. It's interesting. So basically we don't involve the puzzle editors at the very beginning of the process.
Jeff Petriello: We're just kind of figuring out, we ourselves on the New Game Squad will like create sample puzzles that we think are representational of this gameplay. I'm talking a handful, right? Just to like see if this thing is working out. If. Our stakeholders, we call them the concept committee at the New York Times, which is a subsection of our leadership on the mission team.
Jeff Petriello: They vote if prototypes are going to like green light through this process. Once it gets to a certain point, we've made a few puzzles. We've tested them with potential players. They're liking it. We've got some kinks. [00:42:00] We feel like, okay, these are a good example. At that point, we'll start collaborating with editorial and say, Hey, this thing is coming up that like actually may have some legs.
Jeff Petriello: We should talk about what it would look like at scale. What does it mean? Would it mean you'd be able? Is this something that you would be able to handle with your current team? Are we talking about, you know, committing to need? needing additional support on editorial to be able to support this at scale.
Jeff Petriello: Is there something on here that as a puzzle editor you see as being like not actually that editorial that we're doing by hand and we should look into automatizing it or engineering a solution? And, you know, through those conversations we'll sort of like hunker down on like what makes sense. And then one of the biggest things that happens to a game once it's out of this like sort of beta period is that we will invest a lot of resources to developing like an internal [00:43:00] editorial tool for that specific puzzle to make puzzle editors jobs more straightforward and reliable.
Jeff Petriello: And. We have a lot of cool tools to like help them check for things like unintentional slurs or double solutions and things like that. So I'll call or supposed to like fun tools that help make their job easier. But at the end of the day, you know, depending on the puzzle, it's gonna be different. The relationship between that process and the, and the editorial team.
Aaron Kardell: I imagine there's some beta site, if you will, internally, or staging site, where at least a small group of people can play ahead on, on future puzzles and.
Jeff Petriello: Oh yeah. We, a hundred percent.
Aaron Kardell: Is that open to a pretty big group or, or do you, do you tighten that up quite a bit?
Jeff Petriello: Well, we have this, we call it shorts mode after real shorts, which is like.
Jeff Petriello: You know, if you have certain permissions, you can access things like debug modes and all sorts of [00:44:00] ways to zip through puzzles and things like that. So that's one fun tool we have, and that's accessible to anyone at the times who like wants it pretty much. I think everyone on the games team at least has it.
Jeff Petriello: And then, yeah, in terms of the prototypes, we will solicit feedback from all sorts of people. Not just the games team, but, or sorry, the new games team and our stakeholders, but the games team as a, as a larger team. We will go out to the entire organization, for play tests. And we also have like a really incredible audience insight group that runs external testing for us throughout this process.
Jeff Petriello: So we have to be constantly creating. places for that, those play tests to happen. So yeah, there's a lot of that.
Aaron Kardell: Well, I'm, I'm sure there's a lot that you can't share in terms of just size and scope and daily playership and things like that. But are there any interesting insights you can provide in terms of just, yeah.
Aaron Kardell: Yeah.
Jeff Petriello: I would love to give some highlights for [00:45:00] sure. Like. We have tens of millions of people playing our puzzles every day, which is incredibly exciting. I mean, it's one of the main reasons. I get up in the morning knowing that, you know, everyone and their mom quite literally is in America, at least aware of our games, which is really cool.
Jeff Petriello: You know, we also had a huge change in the last year and a half of user behavior from the web to our apps. So like the New York times games app was downloaded like 10 million times last year, which was. Huge. If you asked me when I started, if I thought we were going to be like number two on the Apple app store chart for free word games, like, no, I did not think that was going to happen.
Jeff Petriello: So that was really cool. And then just like the sheer volume of puzzles played is pretty wild to think about, I mean, Our puzzles were played more than [00:46:00] 8 billion times last year in 2023, which is like almost once per every human on the planet. So, that's wild. Wordle alone was played 4. 8 billion times, so that thing just keeps getting better.
Jeff Petriello: It's on Truckin It's wild. And Connections, which I was like super happy to produce the beta launch of, it's not even a year old. It's already, we have 2. 3 billion plays on that thing. So it's really exciting to work on these puzzles that like, not only proud of in and of itself, but have a real cultural impact in this moment.
Jeff Petriello: It's really cool.
Aaron Kardell: Guessing you can't telegraph too much of a strategy here, but obviously you and the broader collective team there, Brought a lot of great net new games to market, whether it's spelling B or connections or strands. But you also had that big [00:47:00] time acquisition that really put the whole thing on the map, not that you weren't already in games, but how do you think the organization thinks about sort of buy versus build on a, on a go forward basis?
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, that's great. I mean, the times. First and foremost, it's trying to develop its own games internally. We have a number of systems, the New Game Squad just being one of them, that are in place to sort of generate our ideas within the team and the organization at large. So like, that is 100 percent where our focus and the vast majority of our effort goes to.
Jeff Petriello: You know, I wasn't there for the wordle. I think it was an incredibly smart move, obviously. But from what I understand, the way I've heard folks talk about it, it was like a lightning in the bottle moment. Like here was a game that almost like was already [00:48:00] a sort of time z in game. It fit this pattern of like this daily thing that you do that you could do with your cup of coffee in the morning while you read your paper.
Jeff Petriello: It was a word game, so it like fit into what we already were doing with Spelling Bee and the Crossword, and it had this like mass appeal to like a large audience, which is also, you know, what we're trying to do with all of our content. So it really just was sort of like, I mean, how often is like the most viral game of the year going to have those things?
Jeff Petriello: Like, not very often. So I think it just was like an extremely lucky experience. And I, working at The Times now, You know, I definitely, and going to things like GDC and whatever, I meet tons of people who are working on incredibly cool, interesting, daily puzzles. You know, hitting me up, do you think there's any way, like, that I should be interested in this?
Jeff Petriello: And I get that, because you look at Wordle and you're like, yeah, I could, I could do something like that. But like, [00:49:00] truly the value of Wordle is not just the gameplay, which is intuitive and amazing. You and clearly appealing to people. It was also what it was doing in the world that was its value, right?
Jeff Petriello: The experience it was creating between people, how it was bringing people together through media, like, that was also a part of it. So I try to remind people, I'm like, it wasn't just the gameplay, right, that we were interested in. It was also The, what it brought along with it, which was this passion, this sort of mass passion for word games and all of these people who are interested in that.
Jeff Petriello: So I think it was a, it was a pretty unique experience. I do know that there are folks on the leadership team at the times who are always talking about external opportunities, looking for the next thing that could be great for us to, to [00:50:00] go into, but. Yeah, the, generally speaking, 90 percent of our effort is developing internally.
Aaron Kardell: So game creators, if you really do have the next wordle, absolutely do give the New York Times a call. Otherwise, don't be super offended if Jeff isn't super responsive.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, if you, if you have the next game that every single person on X is tweeting about, Please. Yeah. And it's a word game or a daily puzzle.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah. Please.
Joseph Rueter: If we haven't found you already. So if you go back, it's the forties, I just want to tie this back. Like crossword is daily and it's about words and it's right. And it drives subscription. Right. Have you heard? I was going to go and search for this. We were messing around this week about something else.
Joseph Rueter: And I was like, wait, I wonder what the research is about whether or not you have a crossword [00:51:00] puzzle or not in a printed publication and if subscribership goes down, Have you run into anything like that? I'm sure it's different in the digital world.
Jeff Petriello: Wait, I don't, Oh, you mean like for the paper itself, like subscriptions to the paper.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah. So like this started back in the forties, we put a little game in the paper and it drives, it drives subscription or it maintains subscription, right? It's not new that a news org would have games. And so there's some kind of calculation or maybe the academics have done some research on. What the value of the game is to the subscription revenue over time.
Joseph Rueter: And I'm wondering how that's changed from the paper environment to the digital.
Jeff Petriello: Well, one thing that's very different is that you don't have to read the paper if you're playing online, right? Whereas like, if you want to get the crossword in the paper, you're buying the whole paper. [00:52:00] And you know, we hope that you do that.
Jeff Petriello: At the times, I think you're not only getting the paper anymore. You also get. Cooking and the athletic and wire cutter and all of these amazing products, you know, so we've changed that as well. But there is also the option of just getting a game subscription, right? And like, not really worrying about the rest of it's not, you know, for you.
Jeff Petriello: so that's one big change. Though, I will say, you go back and look at like any thrift store, you will find a New York Times crossword anthology on the bookshelf. For a dollar or two, they were printing it in other ways, for sure. But, yeah, I mean, I definitely think that Providing value for your audience in a number of diversified ways is definitely one tried and true method of increasing retention and creating value.
Jeff Petriello: Like, to me, [00:53:00] growing up, for instance, Every single morning I would be like, Mom, can I please have the comic book page? Like, please. Do I know if that like really kept her subscribed to the paper? No, but I would assume that, you know, seeing that interaction that I had, definitely didn't keep her subscribed.
Jeff Petriello: Encourage her to think about dropping it wasn't sitting there doing nothing every day,
Joseph Rueter: right? Well, we wonder in alternate universes How big the last acquisition would have been if it would have been a different org like how much of the value is connected? To the distribution that was in place the quality of the team the stewardship and the brand to drive what wordle has become
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, there is an Excellent talk by my boss, Zoe Bell in the GDC vault from GDC 2023 about this very thing.
Jeff Petriello: And I encourage folks to check it out if you're interested in more. We basically have this philosophy of like, do no harm. [00:54:00] And I definitely think that in the hands of another organization, like who knows what would have happened. So I think a lot of the value that WURL has retained is definitely due to the you know, strategic decisions that my leadership has made.
Jeff Petriello: And I'm really proud of that for sure.
Aaron Kardell: So it sounds like there's two things there, right? So, and I'm so lucky I have access to that GDC vault. So I'm going to go check that out. But I think there's two things. One is undoubtedly like Wordle was a huge phenomenon. Like, it was already, already stood on its own, but I think there is a truism that the New York, even as large as it was, the New York Times still brought a larger audience to it.
Aaron Kardell: But the other thing you just said there is like, do no harm. It's cool that you guys just, it sounds like in the last week, rolled out Wordle Archive to the masses. I think in another steward's hands, like that archive would have been opened up like a [00:55:00] year and a half ago. And that's like, Knocking you guys at all, but I think there is a purity of the game that it's daily.
Aaron Kardell: I go there once I've got one, one game to play, and that's probably just retaining some of that magic has been pretty key. It sounds like you agree with that.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I'm really proud of that. And the ways that we have decided to, you know, develop WURTLE. So much of it is just on the back end, first of all, just like ensuring that we are creating a quality product that knows your streaks and your stats and all that, integrating that in with the rest of the time suite.
Jeff Petriello: That was a lot of work. I can't underemphasize that. But also, yeah, like you said, the World Archive, which dropped this week. This is one of the reasons I'm most proud to produce for the Gameplay Squad, is that we're just constantly working on stuff that, like, adds value to your subscription. So like, it makes me feel good.
Jeff Petriello: [00:56:00] You know, if I was working for another, you know, Mobile game studio. A lot of times I'd be working on, you know, features that are designed to like extract more money from you all the time. And it feels really nice to be developing something that's like, no, we're going to release this thing. And if you're subscribed, your subscription price isn't changing, but you just got access to a thousand more puzzles.
Jeff Petriello: Like I love that stuff. And I'm proud to like, always be. working towards that to bring value to our players. Like, that is very exciting. And I think World Archive is a great example of that. It's like, if you never look at it, which I hope is not the case, you know, you still have that Wyrtle experience that you've always had since before we acquired it.
Jeff Petriello: But if you want more, we have it there for you. And hopefully it's beautiful and quality and, and, a reason for you to stick around Cool.
Joseph Rueter: Well if you were Starting over today. Is there anything you'd [00:57:00] do more rapidly? We're thinking back to those students thinking about building their careers.
Jeff Petriello: I think I wasted a lot of time in my career chasing a quote unquote dream job.
Jeff Petriello: And I got several. jobs, and most of them are the worst jobs I've ever had. And I don't think that that's a lesson I could have learned any other way than doing it. But what I will say is don't be distracted by that. Your heroes are your heroes in part because you do not know them. Like, and learning more about them is maybe not necessarily going to be the greatest thing.
Jeff Petriello: So like, if you want to work at this place and you just feel like Until I do that, I haven't made it. Like, I [00:58:00] encourage you, figure out literally the work you like to do. Find people that you actually enjoy working with and can survive working with, because that is so much more important to your own well being, to you being able to actually produce something of value, to generate, honestly, good karma and good relationships, Follow what is actually working, not some thought in your head of what's cool or who you want to be like.
Jeff Petriello: To me, those experiences have wound up being really disillusioning and discouraging, if anything. I wish I had more confidence earlier on in my career to follow what create my own path and not try to like, chase the things that I admired or loved so much. I think it's a weird piece of advice, maybe, but.
Jeff Petriello: That's what I would [00:59:00] say.
Joseph Rueter: Not necessarily, seems very honest. Thanks for sharing that. And as you look forward, I know this year I've made a goal to get really good at delegation which has put me down some interesting paths of different books and whatnot to think about thinking differently because I think it'll set me up different.
Joseph Rueter: in the next five years as I'm, as I'm charting the next path. Do you have anything you're working on as a producer that you're taking some specific interest in building some of your, your next skills?
Jeff Petriello: Yeah, I, so about two years ago I launched a Kickstarter for a tarot deck called the pasta tarot and it wound up being pretty successful.
Jeff Petriello: It was published by Division of Penguin Random House in 2022. I was very proud of it. And so I am working on. Thinking about what I can do next with that, maybe making a pasta. So I am learning about making pasta and I'm [01:00:00] learning about what it might mean to like create a business that's like much more consumer focused than anything I've ever done.
Jeff Petriello: So that's a project I'm working on right now. That's teasing like a new part of my brain and it's pretty cool. I will say one thing I love about it. is like finding a job that you care about and love and can handle but respects your work life balance, which I am so grateful at the times we have a great culture of.
Jeff Petriello: There's like no crunch at the New York Times, basically. And so that enables you to have sort of like side hustles. If you are that type of person who's interested in doing Other things that allows you to explore new skills, like without pressure. That's my favorite part about a side hustle is that I don't have a deadline.
Jeff Petriello: No one's yelling at me to like, do it a certain way by a certain time. Like you can take like the pasta tarot took me like two and a half [01:01:00] years. to design that thing and get it out. And I just kept telling myself the whole time like, this is a privilege. Just enjoy doing things exactly how you like them and don't really worry about how long it's going to take you.
Jeff Petriello: That's one of my favorite parts of, the stability of, like, working a full time day job, for sure.
Joseph Rueter: That's so fun. Well, Aaron and I both know our side hustles. Ha! We've had them. And, I thought your pasta taro one was just so that you could go out on the boat. Lay around. Yeah, absolutely. Get on a photo shoot, man.
Joseph Rueter: Ah, when I hit that page, I was like, oh, this is awesome.
Jeff Petriello: Let me draw a card for you. Are you ready? Yeah, tell me, tell me when to stop shuffling. Okay. You're good? All right, let's look. Ooh, a good one for you. The Pope. [01:02:00] So, the Pope is a major Arcana card. It's usually called the Hierophant in a modern deck, but it was originally called the Pope because the, the tarot is an Italian artifact.
Jeff Petriello: And this is a card about In my opinion, the responsibility of power, if you think of the Pope, right, this is someone that everyone in the world that's Catholic is trying to impress, and it really, to me, when it comes up, reminds me, like, Where do I hold power? This is a card that, to me as a teacher, has come to mean a lot to me.
Jeff Petriello: And it also can have to do with, you know, just like institutions generally. Places where you need to sign up to their values and their dogma to be a part of it. Schools, clubs, that kind of stuff. So yeah, for you, thinking about your relationships to those institutions. Do you like them? Do you want to lean into them?
Jeff Petriello: Pull away from them? What do you Are you the leader of any of those things? And how are people relating to you? Is it healthy? Can you guide them back on their own path? [01:03:00] These are the questions I think of when the Pope comes up. What about one of you, Aaron? You want one? Why not? All right, tell me when, tell me when to start shuffling.
Jeff Petriello: All right. You're good? Okay. All right, the Ace of Lunga, also known as the Spaghetti Card. So, in the Paso Taro, the Suit of Lunga is our analog for the traditional suit of swords. This is the suit that governs your intellect, your mental capacity, your reason, your logic, and the ways you communicate, your writing, and your speaking.
Jeff Petriello: So it's ruled by the element of air and the ace of lunga represents, an ace represents the start of something. You can think of it as like a little seed. It may grow onto like a big tree or it may go nowhere, right? Depends how you tend towards it. So these generally are like new ideas, new sparks of inspiration.
Jeff Petriello: So if you have any new ideas today, they're good. There's a lot of potential in them. [01:04:00] So listen to your intellect, listen to your reason and anything that gets you excited to talk about. These are things to explore a little bit more for sure. And everybody likes spaghetti.
Joseph Rueter: That card's for me, for the new idea I gave you before this.
Joseph Rueter: Oh yeah, it's
Aaron Kardell: telling me we should lean in on that.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah, you're hedging, like, I don't think we should do that. Let's wait until we have more resources. I was like, whatever.
Laughing: He said
Aaron Kardell: it
Laughing: had to be my idea, Joseph. Yeah, no, he didn't.
Aaron Kardell: We're
Laughing: going
Jeff Petriello: to strike
Laughing: that.
Joseph Rueter: This
Jeff Petriello: hand of God. It's just
Laughing: you, yeah. Ah, dang
Joseph Rueter: it!
Joseph Rueter: This has been wonderful, Jeff. Thanks for joining us. When folks try to find you online, I'm gonna suggest they find the game that you made for getting to know you. And, Oh
Jeff Petriello: my god, yes!
Joseph Rueter: Yeah, it's so good. Where would you like them to find you online? To be honest? Nowhere. [01:05:00] I
Jeff Petriello: am over being found on the internet.
Jeff Petriello: but if you would like to connect with me, I definitely am a fan of linked in, especially for anything in the games industry, because I'll frequently repost like job opportunities I see or things like that. So if you're approaching me around game stuff, find me on LinkedIn, Jeff Patriot, I'm always happy to connect.
Jeff Petriello: Yeah. But other than that, I mean. I'm a gay man in New York so my Instagram is kind of just thirst traps. I apologize.
Joseph Rueter: It is what it is. Thanks for being here with us. You've got more than just those two places, so we'll route you to the LinkedIn when it's relevant to games. I appreciate it. Yeah, certainly. Fantastic. Thanks for being here, Jeff. Catch you later. All
Aaron Kardell: right,
Joseph Rueter: bye.
Aaron Kardell: Thanks so much, [01:06:00] Jeff.
