Jellyvision Games
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Formerly called
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Jellyvision Games, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Private | |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 1992 |
| Founder | Harry Gottlieb |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Mike Bilder (CEO) |
| Products | You Don't Know Jack |
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Number of employees
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30 (2017) |
| Website | jackboxgames |
Jackbox Games, Inc. (formerly Jellyvision Games, Inc.) is a Chicago-based video game developer, known for the You Don't Know Jack series (YDKJ) of trivia quiz-based video games. As a subsidiary of Jellyvision, the company was previously incorporated as Jellyvision Games, until the formal separation of the games development unit from the interactive video advertising division. The company was reincorporated as Jackbox Games in June 2013.
From 1995 to 1998, Jellyvision published numerous versions of YDKJ for personal computers. Around 2001, the computer game market shifted; the pricing for CD-ROMs shifted, and players moved from personal computers to home consoles of the sixth generation. The company attempted to enter the marketplace with console-based versions of YDKJ but were unsuccessful. Jellyvision had to drastically cut its staff, dropping from 75 to about 6 people by 2001. About a year later, the studio reinvented itself, creating its Jellyvision Lab to work on business software technology they called "Interactive Conversation" that would help assist customers and clients in filling forms or other processes. The company was able to grow from this, in part due to clients they obtained that had been fans of the YDKJ series before.
In 2008, as the popularity of networked consoles and mobile devices became popular, Jellyvision Labs opted to spin out a games division, naming it Jellyvision Games, LLC, headed by Mike Bilder. The new division looked to revitalize YDKJ for these new systems, subsequently releasing an iOS application and, in partnership with THQ, a console version in 2011. Near the end of 2011, the company was incorporated as Jellyvision Games, Inc. Since then, the company has developed a Facebook version of the game, allowing them to continuously provide new trivia; later the product expanded to include a standalone mobile application that allows data sharing and competition with the Facebook version. The game, now defunct, was awarded the "Social Game of the Year" at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards.
The studio was rebranded as Jackbox Games in June 2013, and announced that it would continue to focus on developing social games for current platforms including mobile devices and home entertainment devices like Roku and Ouya.
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