Ten party packs later, Jackbox Games is in no way slowing down. In 2025, they’re slated to release Jackbox Party Pack 11 and Trivia Murder Party 3. Plus, an upcoming partnership with Amazon to bring the games via a subscription service to even more devices, like Smart TVs. We got to chat with Jackbox Games CEO Mike Bilder and CTO Evan Jacover to talk about the legacy of Jackbox Games, what goes into creating a Party Pack game, and what may be next for Cookie Masterson.
No matter what age you are, you’ve probably heard of and played a Jackbox game. Jackbox Games’ titular party packs have taken over by storm as the go-to party games. Got a group of friends over, and you’ll most likely end up playing a Jackbox Party Pack. What’s really made them a stand-out is how anyone can play them. All you need is a device connected to the internet and you can play!
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If you’ve been curious about how a Jackbox Party Pack game gets made, well, they’re on an annual timeline. And the process involves everyone at the studio. Bilder went into this process, starting usually in October. “We have a regimented pitch process internally. And we have a green light process that we go through. We let everybody in the studio pitch games, so it doesn’t matter what your role is in the studio. Everybody in the studio starts ideating, paper and pencil testing, concepting, and then ultimately pitching a product.” And with such a large pitching process, what happens to games that may overlap and sound like they’ll also work?
Per Bilder, they’re put on the back burner for a future cycle. “If we green light a drawing-based game, other drawing games might have been pitched that year or yet to be pitched. We might say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a drawing game in the pack. We don’t want to load it up with more of them. So let’s put those on the back burner. As we green light, the criteria get a little tighter and the pool gets a little smaller until we have a well-rounded game pack. It’s kind of our whole philosophy around it.” And that’s stayed true for almost eleven party packs now. But that’s not to say there aren’t repeat games ever.
What goes into making the new Jackbox Party Pack 11?
Several party packs have sequels to past beloved games, and we also discussed this. Most importantly, it comes down to what the players are playing and fan feedback. Per Bilder, “We get a lot of survey data back from fans. We ask our fans what they like, what they want to see. So we look at what the popular games are, what people play the most, and we determine, ‘well, we haven’t revisited that franchise in a number of years. It’s probably a good time.” But playtime and player feedback aren’t all that’s needed to decide to bring a game back or if they even bring a game back as a true sequel.
Jacover clarified, “Sometimes we end up making games that instead of direct sequels, they’re more spiritual successors. They have some of the same concepts, but they have different brands and gameplays. That takes up the space that we might use for a sequel.”
And after eleven-plus years, both Bilder and Jacover had nothing but praise for their team and how far they’ve come. Even when ultimately, Bilder said they have to just make a fun and engaging experience for everybody, a lot of skill is involved to keep up with the production cycle and put out new and unique games each time. As Jacover said, “it’s harder sometimes to find a game that you know doesn’t feel so much like something we’ve done in the past, or will feel new and special. But every time I think it’s gonna be hard to come up with ideas, there’s always some really great ideas.”
Bilder echoed these remarks about the team’s creativity and went further into the development aspect. “I think we’re our own worst enemy for like, what’s gotten harder because we’re always trying to raise the bar. We’re always trying to polish it even more than the last version. And that’s probably evident if you look at Party Pack 1 or Party Pack 2, versus what we’re doing now with nine and ten. We raised the bar on us in every way, audio, amount of content, animation, all of it, like we kind of just push ourselves to always outdo ourselves.”
A new Amazon partnership will bring Jackbox Games to smart TVs.
Looking to the future beyond Party Pack 11 and Trivia Murder Party 3, there is the Amazon partnership. While not much ahs been set in stone just yet, it overall feels like the next era of Jackbox Games. Bringing the games to more casual, non-gamer platforms for more accessibility. Jacover gave some insight into why they’re approaching this new direction. “Pretty much everyone in their house has a smart TV, and we kind of look at those, you’re like, man, it would be great if you could just use your remote and launch our games.”
“But most of those aren’t powerful enough to run our games natively on the device. So we started looking into what would be involved in streaming games”. Surprisingly, it all started when their games got added to Luna. Jacover added, “And it turns out, at the time, they were starting to build out a service, a game streaming service, which is not public. And so we’ve been working with them for about a year to get our game streaming. A lot of the work is getting the cost of streaming down for us so that we can, you know, make it a feasible product.”
As for when you can expect this streaming service, and what form it’ll take, Jacover confirmed that they’re aiming for the middle of the year for a closed beta. “Now we’re at the point where we feel like we have something that could work well. We’re hoping to have it available in some kind of closed beta in the middle of the year. We’re planning to start with an ad-supported version. But even with that, it only has a couple of games to work out all the kinks of everything. Then, eventually, move to a subscription service that will give you access to that.”
Bilder said that their overall business model is not changing for now. “I expect that this will live and coexist alongside the existing model of selling previous games on all these platforms. We’re trying to go after that more casual user who doesn’t have a PlayStation and doesn’t consider themselves a hardcore gamer. And there’s a heck of a lot of smart TVs out there. So it’s an accessibility and audience reach play for us.”
As for the future of Jackbox, the model may change with the streaming service’s release. As Bilder said, “What might change in the future is how we produce and launch our games. We may decide to individually start launching games into the streaming platform, so there’s always something fresh and new for subscribers. But we still intend to stick with a Party Pack format where we bundle together multiple games and sell them on all the platforms we sell them on”.
For the future of Jackbox, the approach of streaming as a service feels very smart for more than the reasons listed above. It’ll be a nice way to save money, ensure that you can access the games anywhere, and pull them up at any time when you don’t have a device with your Party Packs readily available. And for how much fun each release has given me, knowing there’s no end to the team’s creativity is a nice reminder of why these games are so highly thought of as a modern staple.
Jackbox Party Pack 11 and Trivia Murder Party 3 are available later this year.
