Design Talk - NYT Games with Rohit Crasta

Join hosts Dirk Knemeyer and David Heron as they welcome Rohit Crasta, a longtime game designer and former lead designer of Wordscapes who now serves as a lead designer for the New York Times. This episode dives into the design philosophy behind the New York Times' latest social word game, Crossplay, and how it seeks to fill a gap in the market by offering a "pure," high-quality experience free from heavy microtransactions. The discussion covers the transition from casual mobile games to the NYT's unique "daily ritual" ecosystem, the technical hurdles of native app development over using game engines like Unity, and how social sharing tools like Wordle's grid revolutionized player engagement.

You can listen to Design Talk - NYT Games with Rohit Crasta online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Design Talk - NYT Games with Rohit Crasta is an episode from The Game Design Round Table by Dirk Knemeyer, David V. Heron.

This episode is 01:08:34 long.

This episode was published on Mar 24, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Game Design Round Table when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.