Interview: Chicago's Jellyvision Speaks With GameSmith About New "You Don't Know Jack" Game

-Mike Bilder - Initially, "You Don't Know Jack" started back in 1995. It was a huge success, and we had a number of itenerations through the early 2000's. The game sold over 5 million units. Somewhat ahead of it's time with it's presentation style and trivia format. And then the company got out of gaming - they primarily played in the PC space, the console format was still up and coming. We weren't quite ready to make the transition to controllers. The gameplay required keyboard input. 

The company reinvented itself in a new direction under the name of the Jellyvision Labs doing advertising and marketing and B-to-B conversations. Fast forward to 2007-2008 and the current generation of consoles like Xbox 360 and Wii, and PS3 - suddenly there's this sort of emergent family and social play and online connectivity adding a whole new element allowing you to play with your friends over great distances.

 So, the founder of the company Harry Gottlieb decided now might be the right time to bring Jack back to the market so, a number of the people involved in the original game were still with the company and I joined the company around the time and that started the process of looking for a publisher and looking for a publisher who was as big a fan of the series as we were. 

So we started production on the title in Feb. 2010, so almost a year to the day. 

Steve Heinrich-- That was one of the big challenges at the beginning, how much different were we going to make it like the old game, how many more features were we going to add. So, we wanted to keep the spirit of the original game because people loved it, but we wanted to update it and give it something new. With trivia, you automatically get the update to new content, because now we're asking questions about Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha and Tiger Woods...

Steve Heinrich -Yeah, I know, but that's why we ask questions about that, we like to make fun of stuff like that. But anyway, back in the 90's we were asking about "Mad About You" and "Friends" and "Seinfeld." So we said we'd keep some of the same question types - "Disordat" which is a popular one and the "Jack Attack." But there are some new features, one of which is the "Wrong Answer of the Game" which is, there's a fake sponsor for each game and if you find the sponsored wrong answer you win a prize, which can be anything from gerbil grease to banana toasters. So there's new things but a lot of the same question types.

Steve Heinrich-Definitely, Harry Gottlieb, the founder of the company, he was the voice of the first game and original creators. But after one time all of the rigors of recording, I believe Harry said he didn't want to do it again. <Laugh>

Harry Gottlieb: Yeah, there are some people who like being in a cramped little sound booth for 100 or 200 hours and there are those who don't. And I fall into that latter category. So, my brother Tom became the next major host and he's the host of this new one. And really, he's more talented than I am. He actually was in New York recording the entire voice track for the game literally in a converted closet. I don't mean a walk-in closet, I mean in a not-walk in closet. He actually recorded half of the questions in his underwear, and I think it actually makes him funnier. 

Allard Laban- Yep, you can play against three other people online and all the same rules apply. Buzz in, you can screw them. So you can screw people online and I think that's the only way you can screw people physically online is through our games because of the rumble controllers. You can actually feel it through the rumble controllers through a frequency we found ourselves. Anyway, it's like a party online and we support microphones and you can chat while playing. And there's even achievements for playing online.

Allard: Achievements are like a feature built for Jellyvision. We took full advantage of designing every bizarre achievement you can think of.