In short, it saved the company, in conjunction with a suite of releases that satisfied seasoned video-gamers, board-game geeks, trivia junkies and the general public. But we had this idea, which we’d been knocking around for, like, a decade: using your phone as a controller.” It couldn’t have been closer to the plane crashing. Harry Gottlieb was the man behind it all, and in a 2018 feature in GQ, he described the company’s situation in 2014 like this: “We had literally run out of money. In fact, it’s the smartphone-as-controller element that saved Jackbox from ruin back in 2014, and subsequently saved all of us from having to resort to lesser games while cooped up at home.įor those over 30, the memories of Jackbox likely go back to the aforementioned CD-ROM days, when the company was called Jellyvision and You Don’t Know Jack wasn’t a downloadable, streamable, playable-anywhere game, but simply trivia you could play on your PC with a sarcastic bald guy. The most important element, however, is that every player uses their smartphone as a controller. The games range from trivia to rap and joke battles to Pictionary-esque drawing challenges, but everything has a twist. During pre-pandemic times, people would gather in living rooms to play, but while social-distancing is in place, streaming these games through platforms like Discord, Steam or even your standard video-conferencing services like Zoom has been the norm. While the company traces its origin back to 1989 (and the CD-ROM), it has become the unlikely source of entertainment in 2020 for thousands of sequestered people around the world.įor those who have been missing out, here’s how it works: Jackbox has been releasing packs of party games since 2014, which can be accessed through your computer, smart TV or video-game console of choice.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, its most popular games - like Trivia Murder Party, Fibbage or the classic You Don’t Know Jack - might. Jackbox, in the most basic sense, makes party games. What do Jeff Baena, co-writer of I Heart Huckabees Aimee Lucido, crossword-puzzle expert at The New Yorker and Jack Black, burgeoning TikTok star, have in common? During quarantine, they’ve all turned to Jackbox Games for comfort.
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