STUDIO PROFILE
JACKBOX GAMES
Inside the house that Jack built
BY ALEX SPENCER
Founded 1989
Employees 46
Key staff Harry Gottlieb (founder), Mike Bilder (CEO), Allard Laban (CCO), Evan Jacover (CTO)
URL jackboxgames.com
Selected softography
You
Don’t
Know
Jack,
Who
Wants
to
be
a
Millionaire,
The
Jackbox
Party
Pack
1-7
Current projects
The
Jackbox
Party
Pack
8
From the outside, the regularity of Jackbox Games’ schedule might look like carefully calculated clockwork. After all, a new Party Pack – its compilation of five party games – has arrived every October or November since 2014. But the truth, spanning more than three decades and as many name changes, is far messier. The fact the Chicago studio still exists can’t be taken for granted.
When Harry Gottlieb founded the company in 1989, it was as Learn Television, an educational multimedia company. Initially producing films, its first real hit was 1993’s That’s A Fact, Jack!, one of many CD-ROMs of the era that attempted to make learning fun – in this case, by turning reading comprehension tests into an interactive game show, with a host who’s equal parts endearing and annoying. It’s a format that has served the studio well over the years.
As Evan Jacover, who joined in 1998 as an intern and is now CTO, tells it: “Someone said to Harry Gottlieb, ‘You should make a game like this for adults’.” This suggestion led to You Don’t Know Jack. Its mix of general knowledge and pop culture and weird sense of humour found an audience, resulting in the firm – rebranded as Jellyvision – taking what chief creative officer Allard Laban calls “a detour into making games”. It was one hell of a detour. Jellyvision produced five main instalments of You Don’t Know Jack in as many years.
This path was reinforced in 1999, when Jellyvision was chosen to develop an interactive version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. What followed was “the shortest turnaround of development I’ve ever seen,” Laban recalls. “It was like six to eight weeks, to get it on the shelf in time for Christmas.” None of which proved an impediment to its success. The game shipped a million copies in its first four weeks, making it the fastest-selling CD-ROM of all time – at least, until The Sims came along.