Jackbox Games, Inc. (formerly Jellyvision Games, Inc.) is an American video game developer based in Chicago, Illinois, best known for the You Don't Know Jack series of quiz-based party video games and The Jackbox Party Pack series. Founded by Harry Gottlieb, the company operated as Jellyvision Games from 1995 until its closure in 2001. After seven years of dormancy, Jellyvision Games was revived in 2008, and the company rebranded as Jackbox Games in 2013.
History[]
Jellyvision (1989–2003)[]
Jackbox Games was founded in 1989 by Harry Gottlieb as an educational entertainment company called Learn Television.
Prior to developing You Don't Know Jack, the company created a children's trivia game called That's a Fact, Jack!. In 1995, the company rebranded as Jellyvision and developed the first edition of You Don't Know Jack. Jellyvision would turn You Don't Know Jack into a franchise of more than 15 titles up until 2003. However, Jellyvision Games would eventually be forced to close after the direction of gaming as a whole changed.
Relaunch (2008-2013)[]
In 2008, as networked consoles and mobile devices became popular, Jellyvision Games was relaunched as a subsidiary of Jellyvision Lab, hiring Mike Bilder to lead the studio. The company released You Don't Know Jack on iOS and, in partnership with THQ to create You Don't Know Jack 2011. Near the end of 2011, Jellyvision Games was spun off into a separate company. The studio later developed a Facebook version of the game, allowing them to continuously provide new trivia; later, the game expanded to include a standalone mobile application that allows data sharing and competition with the Facebook version.
Rebrand (2013-present)[]
In 2013, Jellyvision Games would branch off into their own company and rebrand themselves one more time. Now known as Jackbox Games release a few more standalone titles, such as Lie Swatter, Clone Booth and Word Putzz. Then in 2014, they released the first Jackbox Party Pack.
COVID-19 pandemic[]
During the pandemic, Jackbox Games had a sharp increase in the number of players, as a result of which the range of party games from 100 million total users in 2019 to 110 million between the months of March and June 2020 alone. Daily traffic surged, rivaling their busiest days of the year, like Christmas and New Year's, when users tend to play Jackbox games during family gatherings.
Jackbox Games didn't expect that the increased traffic would be at such a daily level. With this huge wave of popularity came new hurdles. During the pandemic, these titles such as Party Pack bundle, Quiplash, Drawful, etc. drew massive numbers of people playing remotely through video conferencing and messaging applications like Zoom and Discord. Since that wasn’t the intended experience of the game makers, Jackbox had to pivot quickly to accommodate this new type of audience.
Multiple server outages stressed their multiplayer games, as well as their official website. At one point, Jackbox had to seek a new hosting service for its site because it was crashing from the increase in visitors.
“We had people hack our store, we ran out of Steam code inventory, we had to rewrite all of our store copy to better speak to a new audience,” marketing director Brooke Hofer said. “It was an intense experience, to say the least.”. Bilder says the team spent “many days and weeks” fixing bugs and stabilizing infrastructure across their games. “Thankfully, we were able to minimize downtime,” he said. “But it was a bit of a trying time for everybody.”
Jackbox Games also encountered audiences they didn’t originally account for, at least not in such large numbers. Streamers, families, international users and remote players appeared in droves. This led Jackbox to put together a guide on their website about how to play remotely, as well as quickly develop new features for streamers like extended timers for quiz-based games to help solve lag issues. It also prompted the release of “Quiplash 2 InterLASHional” on Steam, which introduced French, Italian, German and Spanish versions of the game.
A sudden shift to working from home was another unexpected challenge. This plan was put in place in the span of a few days, Hofer said, around March as quarantine began for much of the United States. Starting on May 1, 2020, Jackbox ran ten special Celebrity Jackbox live streams to support COVID-19 charities, with the celebrities playing various Jackbox Party Pack games alongside audience viewers.
Games[]
| Release Date | Game | Developed |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | That's a Fact, Jack! | Learn Television |
| 1995-2003 | You Don't Know Jack franchise | Jellyvision/Jellyvision Games |
| March, 2007-2008 | You Don't Know Jack Flash Web 2007-2008 | |
| February 8, 2011 | You Don't Know Jack 2011 | Jellyvision Games |
| May 26, 2012 | You Don't Know Jack Facebook | |
| 2012 | You Don’t Know Jack (iOS) | |
| 2013 | Clone Booth | Jackbox Games |
| March 28, 2013 | Lie Swatter | |
| February 12, 2014 | Word Puttz | |
| November 19, 2014 | The Jackbox Party Pack | |
| October 13, 2015 | The Jackbox Party Pack 2 | |
| October 18, 2016 | The Jackbox Party Pack 3 | |
| October 17, 2017 | The Jackbox Party Pack 4 | |
| October 17, 2018 | The Jackbox Party Pack 5 | |
| October 17, 2019 | The Jackbox Party Pack 6 | |
| October 15, 2020 | The Jackbox Party Pack 7 | |
| October 14, 2021 | The Jackbox Party Pack 8 | |
| June 30, 2022 | The Jackbox Party Starter | |
| October 20, 2022 | The Jackbox Party Pack 9 | |
| October 19, 2023 | The Jackbox Party Pack 10 |
Trivia[]
- Jackbox released a Twitch extension for streamers in December 2020 which allows viewers of their channel to directly participate in Jackbox games from the Twitch interface.
- TheGamer spoke with Jackbox Games CEO Mike Builder about NFT subsequent games, and his answer on NFTs was as clear as it was succinct. "We have zero interest or plans to do that. Don't expect any NFT stuff out of Jackbox.".
- The Jackbox Party Pack 9 also seems to have many quips mocking NFTs spread throughout its five games, including but not limited to:
- Nonsensory: The lyric of the credits song- "Nonsensory! This chimp's not an NFT!"
- Junktopia: A quip by Nikolas Knackalus- "...in this economy, laughs are more valuable than NFTs."
- Quixort: The word block "non-fungible token" as a (likely fake) prompt answer.
- The Jackbox Party Pack 9 also seems to have many quips mocking NFTs spread throughout its five games, including but not limited to: