On a recent visit to Jackbox Games HQ here in Chicago, I got to speak with developers and studio leadership about their process, history, and place in the industry. Given, you know, everything, I'm pretty much contractually obligated to ask about AI in conversations like this. Here's what CEO Mike Bilder had to say on the topic:
"The people are what make this product. The comedy, the writing, and the art, all that is done by people, and we have no intention of changing that. I don't think we're experts on what's going on with AI in the industry and any of that. There's obviously uses for tooling and for research, and [for] all that kind of stuff [AI is] incredibly powerful.
"But from a generative asset standpoint, we don't have any intention of replacing people, or people-made editorial and art with it."
From everything we had discussed up to this point, as well as Jackbox's whole deal, I didn't think generative AI would really be in the cards for the studio. But I still appreciated Bilder's straightforward, clear answer on the subject, particularly when the standard playbook these days is fence sitting reminiscent of The Simpsons' "Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others."
Jackbox's games are relatively lightweight from a tech perspective, while the art and writing is their main draw—if anything was noticeably AI-generated, it would put the value of the whole package into question.
The company recently released the Jackbox Party Pack 12 on October 14, and the studio's production values have really progressed since the last entry I had played—Trivia Murder Party 3 makes extensive use of realtime 3D graphics, for example. Jackbox Party Pack 12 is available on pretty much everything, but this is Personal Computer Gamer, so I'll say you can grab it on Steam.
