Introducing The Spectator’s New Games Department

Over the summer, The Spectator announced the addition of the Games Department. From crosswords and Sudoku to many more puzzles to come, the Games Department will expand the interactive content students can enjoy in each issue. The editors of the Games Department include senior Matthew Chen, senior Rona Wassercug, senior Deon Woon, and junior Timothy Leung.

Before the Games Department, a page of The Spectator was titled the Fun Column. Worked on by a small group of seniors, it consisted of a small variety of games for readers of The Spectator to play. According to Chen, the column struggled with consistency and technical aspects of puzzle creation, and after those seniors graduated, the column was inactive. The idea of making The Fun Column its own department was first brought up by Wassercug, who felt that it was not receiving the attention or resources it deserved within Humor. However, the column remained relatively small. 

Other Humor Department members also voiced support for the creation of the Games Department, as creating puzzles may be difficult to balance with Humor’s deadlines. “Our goal is to try and have people who are interested in just the Games Department to be able to make their own puzzles [and] make their own sort of fun things for the Spectator without having to do articles for the Humor Department,” Woon said.

Chen later became one of the primary people working to turn the idea of an independent Games Department into a reality. He worked with the Editorial Board of The Spectator, which included seniors Noa Adam, Stella Krajka, and Evelyn Lifton. However, turning the Fun Column into an independent department took months of persistence. Chen initially reached out to the Editors-in-Chief for contacts and sent cold emails to members of the Editorial Board, but many of the responses he received did not lead to further discussion. 

During the transition between Editorial Boards, Chen found more opportunities to raise the idea. “They hired an extra Humor editor to be semi-dedicated to the Fun Column, which gave me the chance to start talking about the Fun Column more and bring it up in discussions,” Chen said.

However, Chen worried that the change in Editorial Boards could also jeopardize the progress he had made. “During the shift of the EICs, it kind of felt like there was a chance of losing all progress because we would have to repitch everything,” Chen said. After further discussion, the proposal was brought to The Spectator’s faculty advisor, Kerry Garfinkel, and the Games Department was approved on April 13. 

The editors of the Games Department expressed excitement for the upcoming types of games The Spectator will include. “What we’re hoping to do is to have one nice crossword every issue and then some other stuff,” Wassercug said. “That could look like Minis, that could look like larger puzzles, that could look like original games.” While most of the games would be similar to those in the Fun Column, Wassercug explained that new Games writers could also expand the selection with new ideas they would want to create. 

Other editors also mentioned a potential collaboration with the Web Department to expand their audience. “We’ve been trying to work with some other department where we’re actually gonna have games that we can put on the actual Spectator website, similar to the New York Times,” Woon said. For instance, a weekly online mini-game could give students something to return to each week and share with their friends, potentially creating a greater sense of community.

Beyond creating puzzles, the editors hope Games will give Stuyvesant students another reason to interact with The Spectator. “While readers talk about an article after it is published, [...] for games, you can talk about if the puzzle was easy or hard to solve and do puzzles together, which can help bring attention to The Spectator and to the articles as well,” Chen said. Picking up The Spectator for a game could attract audience members to read articles from other departments.

Currently, the editors are in the process of creating an application for interested members that is unique from the other departments. While it has not been finalized yet, they are considering including written questions, an opportunity for applicants to brainstorm their own games, and a section where they critique an existing puzzle. “Unlike other departments where they might have you write a draft of something that you might write for them, we’re actually gonna do ‘make anything you want for us,’” Woon said.

With all of the goals and projects in store for the Games Department, the editors look forward to recruiting as many members as possible. “I think that the biggest thing this year is going to be getting good writers for next year,” Wassercug said. “We really just want this to be a sustainable thing. So keep up what we’re doing now but make sure it keeps going.” 

Leung believes this department is a great opportunity for new people to join the Spectator community. “First of all, you can join a very nice community of people who also like gamemaking, and you can have fun with it! I mean we weren’t called the Fun Column for no reason,” Leung said. “It’s a lot more relaxed than writing articles in other departments.” 

In the long-term, Chen and the other editors hope Games will become a department recognized throughout Stuyvesant, its puzzles becoming a regular part of students’ experience with The Spectator. Woon saw it as a way to distract from the everyday stress of Stuyvesant. “I think that the Games department is really just something fun for everyone for Stuyvesant to do, even if they don’t read the Spectator and solve [puzzles], or even if they don’t know that much about Spectator,” Woon said.