Digital media company Buzzfeed, once a bastion for both hard-hitting journalism and “Which Lannister are you?” Game of Thrones quizzes, is pivoting to games. AI-generated games, to be specific. Its first one is called Conjure and it launched on Friday. It was apparently inspired by Nintendo.
The games pivot is bring run out of a new spin-off organization called Branch Office, led by Bill Shouldis, as Buzzfeed tries to escape its current cash crunch. The company lost millions last year and debt is piling up. It’s betting its future on things like Conjure, a mobile game app that uses AI to ask you for daily photographs of stuff in the real world, chooses whether to accept them or not, and then starts building up weird creepypasta lore around the submissions.
“The guiding philosophy comes from an unlikely place: Nintendo,” the company wrote in its announcement earlier this week. “The gaming giant’s principle of ‘lateral thinking with withered technology,’ taking maximum creativity out of what already exists, is Branch Office’s north star. We don’t need to build our own foundational models or compete with Big Tech. We just ask one question: what’s already here, and how do we make it genuinely fun?”
So far at least though, none of the Buzzfeed AI games actually do sound genuinely fun. Reports from Conjure‘s debut at SXSW earlier this month were far from glowing. “We don’t get it, and clearly the audience didn’t either. After the demo, a lone cough could be heard among the silence, followed by uncomfortable laughter,” reads a Tech Crunch dispatch from the event. “Shouldis then noted that AI is involved in Conjure, too, as the app has an ‘AI spirit for a CEO.’ (Again, what?)”
The game is expected to change and evolve over time, however, with new features potentially getting added using Claude Code and other AI agents. “In a way, software is the new content,” Buzzfeed CEO Alex Peretti reportedly said.
Yup, definitely sounds like something Shigeru Miyamoto would say.