Netflix’s next stab at gaming is here. Starting today you’ll be able to play a number of multiplayer party games on your TV using your phone as a controller. To start, Netflix is offering Boggle Party, Party Crasher: Fool Your Friends, Lego Party, Pictionary: Game Night, and Tetris Time Warp. A social deduction game based on the Knives Out series, Dead Man’s Party: A Knives Out Game, is also part of this new slate but will launch at a later time.

The streaming platform’s approach to gaming has been unfocused, with the company bouncing between being a boutique development studio while also being a platform for premium and exclusive mobile gaming experiences. Offering party games on your TV seems like a better fit — one that could allow Netflix to finally find its gaming footing.

TV-supported party games have been a long time coming. Netflix announced that it was working on cloud streaming technology for games back in 2022 before beta testing began in 2023. Now it’s here, rolling out with multiplayer games that the company hopes will become a new version of family board game night. And while it sounds a bit cheesy, it makes sense.

The big video game publishers have acknowledged that their competitors are not only each other but other attention-hoggers like TikTok and Instagram. Netflix, it seems, has cued in on this too. And a great way to keep people on your app — which is the whole reason Netflix began this gaming initiative — is to give people something to gather around and do.

Netflix has also shown a bit of savvy in the kind of games it’s offering. This year has seen an explosion of popularity in co-op games that have less urgency and more casual cooperation elements to them than a traditional multiplayer game; think Peak, not Fortnite. The games Netflix is offering are poised to take advantage of that rising trend. Boggle Party and Pictionary: Game Night are video game-ified versions of popular board games, while Tetris Time Warp and Lego Party are just good old-fashioned video games based on widely known properties made easily accessible, no console required.

Netflix’s gaming initiative has had a few fits and starts and was primarily focused on mobile gaming. Starting in 2021 it began acquiring video game studios, including Oxenfree developer Night School and Spry Fox, makers of the Cozy Grove game series. It also spun up its own studio — staffed with game development veterans who worked on Overwatch, Halo, and God of War — with designs of making its own AAA console game. Alongside that, Netflix was the exclusive mobile home for a number of critically acclaimed games, including Monument Valley, Poinpy, and Hades. With these offerings, Netflix seemed to signal that it wanted its gaming initiative to appeal to more than the casual set.

But then, mirroring wider trends in the gaming industry, Netflix began shutting studios down. In 2024, it closed the AAA studio before it could release or even announce the game it was working on. Earlier this year, the streamer shut down another of its subsidiaries, Boss Fight Entertainment, shortly after releasing Squid Game: Unleashed, a game Netflix frequently praised for its popularity. Most of those critically acclaimed games are gone too, with Netflix removing a number of third-party titles from its service, which seemed to catch some games’ developers by surprise.

All these events seem to indicate Netflix’s current approach to gaming wasn’t working out. The things the streamer was throwing at the wall weren’t sticking (or at least weren’t sticking enough to justify the expense). An interview with Alain Tascan, president of Netflix games, confirmed as much. “We need to find our voice,” he said to The Verge earlier this year, sharing that the strategy going forward would be to “readjust and focus on fewer areas with more intention.”

Tascan described four areas of focus: games for kids, narrative games tied to Netflix IP, games that have large, widespread appeal, and multiplayer party games. Netflix already has the first three, and with cloud multiplayer gaming, the final component has arrived. This refocus reflects similar moves over at Apple Arcade and Amazon’s game service Luna, which also started out with big-name titles and ambitions before switching to more casual offerings.

Netflix clearly wants to transform its perception from a streaming service into something more. In addition to all these traditional gaming offerings, it’s also tooling around with daily puzzle games and interactive events akin to game shows — complete with cash prizes — to keep people on the Netflix wheel beyond just watching TV. With these games, Netflix is no longer where people go to watch KPop Demon Hunters for the 57th time, but something that’s trying to be a daily fixture in its users’ lives.