The New York Times puzzles are wildly popular with millions of players every day. But developing new games and maintaining existing ones was a huge undertaking given the complexity of web, mobile, and desktop platforms. Very Good Ventures collaborated with the Times and Google to explore Flutter on the Web as a viable alternative — creating the first commercial Flutter Web prototype that debuted at Google IO 2019.
Flutter is well-known as the best solution for mobile apps, but Flutter on the Web is a game-changer. The KENKEN app designed and developed by VGV debuted in the technical keynote of Google I/O 2019 demonstrating the power of Flutter for Web.
Using responsive design patterns and device specific customizations, VGV successfully demonstrated how a single codebase can create beautiful high performance apps for iOS, Android, mac, Windows, and the Web!
VGV implemented continuous integration that published app updates to a Firebase hosting project, which drastically sped up design review and client feedback. Rather than building apps and running mobile app betas, the team could iterate in near real-time thanks to Flutter on the Web.
First commercial Flutter Web demo
A single codebase produced apps for iOS, Android, mac, Windows, Web, and mobile Web
Digital app subscribers
In mid-2020 the NY Times added Flutter to their primary games app after successfully piloting Flutter.
Using Firebase Hosting and Google Sign-in, we were able to drastically reduce the cycle time of app builds and QA reviews.
The New York Times is one of the most influential media companies on the planet and the 3rd largest publication in the US. Its online and mobile puzzle games are enjoyed by millions of daily users and are one of the company’s top revenue sources. With Flutter on the Web, app development became an astonishingly good technology solution. Google and the New York Times turned to VGV to show the world what is possible.
