Jackbox Games

Jackbox Games, Inc. is an American video game developer headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. They rose to fame through the You Don't Know Jack series, and pioneered the phontroller paradigm through the Jackbox Party Packs.

History

The company was founded by Harry Gottlieb as Learn Television in 1989, released the original You Don't Know Jack in September 1995 with Berkeley Systems, renamed itself to Jellyvision, Inc. in 1996, and went out of business in 2003 as they began to focus on interactive business software.

Jellyvision relaunched in 2008 as a subsidiary of The Jellyvision Lab, Inc., which develops interactive and fully-voiced business software, most prominently ALEX, their 2009 software that allows employees to choose insurance benefits interactively and conversationally. Jellyvision Games once again became independent in 2011, then rebranded itself as Jackbox Games in 2013.

Claim to fame

Jackbox Games is best known as the pioneer of the "phones as controllers" paradigm. Their phontroller webpage is jackbox.tv, which has gained many features over time, such as sharing content from past games on social media, and approval of user-submitted answers by moderators.