Jackbox Games Sets ‘Party Pack 12,’ ‘Trivia Murder Party 3’ Releases as CEO Teases New Streaming Service (EXCLUSIVE)

Jackbox Games has unveiled the release dates and trailers for its upcoming “Trivia Murder Party 3″ and “Party Pack 12.” “Party Pack 12″ (unveiled in the trailer above) will be available Oct. 15. “Trivia Murder Party 3″ (featured in the announcement video below) will launch Sept. 17. The launches come as Jackbox is experiencing a major moment of validation, with streaming giants including Netflix and Amazon shifting their gaming strategies to focus on casual games — the kind Jackbox has been regularly making since its annual “Party Pack” released in 2014. “We consider that somewhat validating of what we do,” Jackbox Games CEO Mike Bilder tells Variety. “We’ve been making these casual, social party games annually since 2014, with an annual release of the ‘Jackbox Party Pack.’” Jackbox has partnered with both Netflix (which currently offers a three-game pack called “Jackbox Party Essentials”) and Amazon (which previously had a Jackbox Games subscription channel available on its Luna gaming platform), and Bilder says Jackbox continues to see those platforms and what they are looking to offer as “quite interesting.” “We consider real casual gamers to be our audience. We don’t necessarily consider AAA games to be competition for us,” Bilder says. “Of course, they absorb the dollars spent from people, from gamers, and they also absorb time. But our competition isn’t ‘Fortnite’ or ‘GTA,’ our competition is the game of Life or Clue, or Charades, or ‘Rock Band,’ or something that somebody’s going to play at a party where there’s a couple hours to hang out with friends or family. So we do think getting to very casual audiences is a great strategy for us. So being available on smart TVs and on hardware that people have in their homes that maybe those people don’t consider themselves gamers — they don’t own an Xbox or PlayStation, but they have a smart TV and they know how to download a Netflix or Hulu app.” Bilder says Jackbox is currently working on its own proprietary “streaming solution” that will launch later this year, “but allows Jackbox games to play on those platforms as well.” “We really think that’s an interesting opportunity of expansion and focus,” Bilder says. “And again, I think competition is always interesting. It somewhat validates what you’re doing, but I also think it’s kind of lifting all boats for us, too. And hopefully, there’s more eyeballs and opportunity for folks to find out about Jackbox Games and have a device in their home that they can play about.” In addition to playing in a less competitive genre, Jackbox is offering lower-spec games than its AAA competition. But that isn’t how Jackbox thinks about it. “I’d like to replace low spec with accessible because low spec can kind of sound like you’re talking about what a game lacks, and accessibility is really about how many barriers we’ve removed, and I think Jackbox does a lot of things to remove those barriers,” Andy Kniaz, Jackbox’s VP of business development says. “I was reading about this recently, and I know New Zoo, as an example, just came up with this fascinating statistic that I think two-thirds of PC games played last year were played specifically on machines that didn’t require a hardware upgrade. So the games that they were choosing were geared toward the stuff they already had because the cost of upgrading was too cost prohibitive to basically take that on, and I think that that’s pretty amazing. It’s a pretty amazing move to see people understand that value isn’t necessarily just based on how many polygons you’re moving on a screen.” Currently, Jackbox is available across 13 platforms, and as Bilder said, is developing a streaming service for smart TVs. Under Kniaz’s team, Jackbox is also exploring publishing third-party games and has announced its first title in that space, “My Arms Are Longer Now.” But the party-game publisher’s main focus is still its own IP, like “Trivia Murder Party,” which began as an offering in a “Party Pack” and has since spun out into its own franchise due to popularity. “It’s really promising to start to see our IP become valuable,” Kniaz says. “When you have Netflix and you can do a business deal and put your IP on Netflix next to all of those named products, I think that really proves where the Jackbox IP is these days. And as Mike is saying, we’re always open to partnership. It just has to line up, and it has to make sense for the games, and it has to make sense for our player.” The upcoming “Party Pack 12″ includes the below games: • We Forgot a Card (Design, Joke-Writing): A game where you craft ridiculous greeting cards for weird occasions with the option to purchase them IRL. You’re running late to your big event and you stumble upon a shop with limited options. Time to get creative.• MegaPals (Speed, Guessing): A mind-melding game that celebrates friends both old and new. See how connected you are with your pals through impulsive wordsmithing and explosive match-ups. How well do you know how your fellow players think?• Debate and Switch (Presentation, Head-to-Head): A game of dispute and discussion where lighthearted topics meet lively debate. Persuade your fellow players to side with your silly and strongly held opinions in this town hall talk-’em-up tourney.• Idol Factions (Teamwork, Trivia): An action-packed battle of facts where two teams race to sort answers into the right categories. You’ll need to think fast and yell loudly to sort the answers that just keep coming.• Hyperface (Head-to-Head, Photoediting): A game where you take selfies or use stock photos and warp them in wild ways in order to respond to bizarre prompts like “your face when you’ve just seen a bear.” Smudge, yank, squash and draw on photos to create one-of-a-kind masterpieces meant to be shared.The Jackbox Party Pack 12 will be arriving later this year on PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, Apple TV, iPad and the Mac App Store.