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"Laughter is a big part of what we do," Mike Bilder, CEO of Jackbox Games tells me, and I could probably stop the interview there. Anyone who has ever played Jackbox will know that laughter is what makes the game work, and that it's always funniest when it lets you tell your own jokes. Getting that balance right, Bilder says, is crucial to making each Jackbox game a success.
"We want people to be laughing, and there's a couple different ways to go about that. One is, the game itself is funny, and the material that's being presented is funny. And then the other is to tee up the player to be funny, and allow them to create some of the comedy. It's a bit of a testament to our game directors and our editorial leads, and our writers, honing that craft on how to deliver on a set-up. It's challenging. I think it's one of our secret sauces."
It's a good answer, so I'm glad I didn't stop the interview after the first sentence. But not all Jackbox games are meant to be funny. You Don't Know Jack is just trivia, whereas The Poll Mine is about understanding - or outthinking - your friendship group. Bilder says that once a new pack is launched, the whole team from every arm of the studio is encouraged to pitch new projects that are then tested out amongst the team to find the strongest ideas. But in order to get the right balance, lots of considerations go into the greenlighting process.
"Once the selection becomes a little more targeted, we always want to have some games that are easily accessible, they're easy to get into, quick to laughs, and you don't have to play them a bunch in order to figure out what the mechanics are," he says. "A game like Quiplash is very easy to get into, very easy to understand. And then we have some games in that bell curve that are more strategic, and maybe you have to play them once or twice. There's something for everybody there, like different friend groups or family groups will gravitate towards trivia games and knowledge based games, others will be performance games because they really love getting up in front of people and doing silly things.
“Others are just being more casual, easygoing, more fun. There's something for everybody. We try to kind of round out that pack. If people like two or three of the games in the pack, it's a successful pack. You know, as far as the price point value proposition is concerned, if you really enjoy playing a couple of games in the pack, you're having fun, then you're satisfied as a customer. And you might gravitate towards those other games with a different friend group. If we greenlight a game that has a drawing mechanic, we might have a number of other really good game ideas where the drawing mechanic is a core mechanic, but we're probably going to push those off to future years, because we don't want to just load up the whole pack with multiple drawing games."
Of course, not all the ideas in ಞJackbox are new. The most recent Party Pack had a fresh take on Drawful. Trivia Murder Mystery got a sequel, while Quiplash got two. How exactly does the team decide which games get to come back, anಞd which games languish in their original form forever (I still love you, Guesspionage).
"It doesn't matter what platform you're playing on, it's still talking to our cloud servers, which talk to the phones as controllers," Bilder explains. "So we have analytics, we know what people are playing, and we know what the popular games are. We tend to revisit the popular games, so there are absolutely games in the hopper that we're planning to revisit for future Party Packs. There's a pretty strong chance that you're going to have four new IPs and maybe one sequel [in new Party Packs], and that sequel is going to be something popular that hopefully the masses are looking for."
The word 'games' comes up a lot throughout the interview. According to my transcription software, it is mentioned 108 times. The next most spoken word is 'play'. But is Jackbox actually a video game, however you may define it?
"There wasn't initially a plan to do an annual release," Bilder admits. "But when we saw how well the market responded to Party Pack 1, we immediately started working on Party Pack 2. And then we moved into this cadence around Party Pack 3 - this is an annual release for us, we're going to build a process internally to make five games a year and get it out on all these different platforms. But we liken ourselves more to a board game, if you will. We refer to ourselves as like a digital Parker Brothers, or a digital Milton Bradley. The same impulse you'd have at a party where you'd go play The Game of Life, or Trivial Pursuit, or Cards Against Humanity, we want people to think about playing Quiplash. From that sense, we've kind of always been targeting that experience, that social experience."
But The Game of Life, Trivial Pursuit, and Cards Against Humanity are not video games. Trivial Pursuit has had video game versions, as have the likes of Monopoly and Cluedo. But where many digital party games come from the world of board games looking in, Jackbox comes from video games looking out, and that's a key distinction.
"We want to have a purpose for the technology," Bilder says. "Some of our games are inspired by existing game mechanics of parlour games, and if you could just sit down and open a box of cards, or open a board game, and have the same experience, then what's really different? We're forcing you to download something, or turn on a computer, or take out your phone. We always want to make sure that there is a reason for the technology to be there. In many cases, it's an MC, this host is taking you on the ride, tallying scores for you and showing you leaderboards. They're very gamey. It's just a lowercase g instead of an uppercase G in the traditional 'Video Game' sense.
"We kind of think of the analogue space as being a big competitor. There was a time when there were many more party games in the market, there were a lot of karaoke games, there were the Rock Bands, and SingStars, and all those kinds of games. But I think what we're competing for now is time and eyeballs. The same space that you would have in a party, or a holiday, or a gathering of friends or family that you might insert a board game or a card game, we want to insert Jackbox into. Are we really competing against Grand Theft Auto or the other video games? Certainly, we are a video game, and we exist on all those platforms. But it scratches a different itch."
Jackbox Party Pack 9 will be available later this year, while one game will be revealed today.
