Digital media firm Buzzfeed, as soon as a bastion for each hard-hitting journalism and “Which Lannister are you?” Recreation of Thrones quizzes, is pivoting to video games. AI-generated video games, to be particular. Its first one is known as Conjure and it launched on Friday. It was apparently impressed by Nintendo.
The video games pivot is convey run out of a brand new spin-off group referred to as Department Workplace, led by Invoice Shouldis, as Buzzfeed tries to flee its present money crunch. The corporate misplaced thousands and thousands final 12 months and debt is piling up. It’s betting its future on issues like Conjure, a cellular sport app that makes use of AI to ask you for each day images of stuff in the true world, chooses whether or not to just accept them or not, after which begins increase bizarre creepypasta lore across the submissions.
“The guiding philosophy comes from an unlikely place: Nintendo,” the corporate wrote in its announcement earlier this week. “The gaming large’s precept of ‘lateral considering with withered expertise,’ taking most creativity out of what already exists, is Department Workplace’s north star. We don’t must construct our personal foundational fashions or compete with Massive Tech. We simply ask one query: what’s already right here, and the way can we make it genuinely enjoyable?”
Thus far at the very least although, not one of the Buzzfeed AI video games truly do sound genuinely enjoyable. Experiences from Conjure‘s debut at SXSW earlier this month had been removed from glowing. “We don’t get it, and clearly the viewers didn’t both. After the demo, a lone cough might be heard among the many silence, adopted by uncomfortable laughter,” reads a Tech Crunch dispatch from the occasion. “Shouldis then famous that AI is concerned in Conjure, too, because the app has an ‘AI spirit for a CEO.’ (Once more, what?)”
The sport is anticipated to vary and evolve over time, nonetheless, with new options probably getting added utilizing Claude Code and different AI brokers. “In a manner, software program is the brand new content material,” Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti reportedly mentioned.
Yup, positively feels like one thing Shigeru Miyamoto would say.
Correction; 3/20/2026, 2:07 p.m. ET: Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti’s first identify has been fastened. We remorse the error.
