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beepsparks · 12 days ago

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Long as hell rant about the Jackbox Direct (spoilers: I kinda hate it)

Uhhhh idk. I watched the Jackbox Direct today and the nicest thing I could say about it was it wasn’t good, but hey I feel like typing up my feelings about it. Sorry if my opinions offend you or whatever idk I have way different preferences on things. Also this rant is really pessimistic sorry I just. Idk I have feelings after Pack 10 and the Naughty Pack and probably some non-official Jackbox related shit that I will not dive into

Full rant under the cut, spoilers ofc also no fandom related tags because I feel like someone’s gonna get mad at me for this

Firstly, that duration… 4 minutes is NOT a direct. In my opinion, something is considered a direct when it’s about 15 minutes in length. That was not a direct, that was a glorified trailer they could’ve just uploaded to their YouTube on any normal day. It’s even worse because they had been hyping up the “first ever Jackbox Direct!” For MONTHS beforehand only to drop a 4 minute video. That’s really scummy imo. Don’t ever get me excited for something like that only to give me a 4 minute video in which like half of it is just an elongated trailer for one of the games.

We already knew we’d be getting a pack 11, especially after the admittedly disaster that was the Naughty Pack, but speaking of which, I don’t think pack 11 is gonna do well. Full honesty. From what I’ve seen for awhile, one of the only things that might get a person to get a party pack is just for the sequel game.

Little analysis here, it kinda goes like this: Person gets party pack only for the sequel game -> plays it AND other games out of curiosity -> discovers they LIKE the new games and asks for sequels of those games -> Jackbox POSSIBLY makes sequels of those games if enough people ask -> repeat?

It��s kinda like a fair trade. Forgive me to saying this but especially considering the bad rap Jackbox has been getting since PACK 8 to be honest because of how bad most of their new games are, is anyone REALLY going to trust a pack ONLY with brand new games? It’s a bad business decision in my opinion. You want more proof? In the time the direct happened, there has been almost ZERO excitement for Pack 11, only for Trivia Murder Party 3. Sorry guys, Pack 11 is likely going to be dead on arrival.

Also just… why was there so little time spent on. ANYTHING? I’m not joking when the direct happened and I watched it live and everything happened so fast that I barely processed anything about the new games. Anyway

Getting into the games as well, although forgive my nitpicking because I am aware these games are still in their VERY early development stages:

Battle Trivia Game: I actually like this concept, although they barely described it. (Same with everything else in the trailer) Sounds interesting enough, no bad feelings towards it, probably will wait for later news on it. Seems neat, nothing more.

Social Deduction Game: Isn’t this like… just Weapons Drawn but with a slightly different method of finding eachother out? Jackbox has been a little too obsessed with social deduction games recently in my opinion as well. Also after Hypnotorious I hope this game isn’t as confusing as it (I mean I understand Hypnotorious but most STILL don’t understand how the hell to play it) again, wait for more info but right now this literally just feels like a Weapons Drawn clone. Hoping the host is good though.

Joke Writing Game: Barely an opinion to be honest. Simple concept, but not gonna lie this just feels like an excuse to cater to the little 13 year olds that like “dark humor” that’s just offensive or not funny sex jokes. One of the things I hated about Let Me Finish is that you genuinely cannot make any other joke than “haha sex and cum”. Please don’t do it again Jackbox.

Sound Effects Game: Here’s the obligatory highly experimental game! Where do I begin. Dead on arrival. Immediately on release day. I’m sorry I just feel like this game is going to have FixyText level bugs. Bugs that hinder the experience so bad the game isn’t even fun. I’m sorry but Jackbox just CANNOT seem to be able to fix their buggy games, again key example FixyText.

On another note, who is this even for?? I was talking with someone else and they brought up a very good point, if everyone is playing in the same room, and IF you’re supposed to record sounds at the same time, that’s just gonna cause overlap in noise. If you’re in a call and playing on the same device, you might have to mute your microphone which just causes inconvenience. Although keyword this is IF everyone has to record at the same time, you likely will record individually.

Adding on, I CANNOT see Twitch streamers playing this game, it’s way too risky. If Jackbox doesn’t implement an INSANE amount of moderation tools into this game, genuinely what is stopping someone from just hopping into the game and yelling slurs, or making “sound effects” that are so loud they kill everyone’s ears and completely drown out all other noise in the final round. (As they said, all sounds will come together in the final round)

I dunno. TLDR on sound effects game, I feel like it’s going to be way too buggy to even play enjoyably, and the way it works itself might be an issue. Pack 10 on release day was insanely buggy and considering I think Jackbox has been RUSHING their products, I think this will be buggy too, and to the point it will never work properly, like FixyText.

Cozy Drawing Game: They barely described this. I think it’s supposed to be that you get a bizarre request and you must make a cute drawing out of it? I like that concept, actually. And it actually seems like an opposite to the writing game they talked about, so I’m hoping in lore the hosts of that and this game are related in some way. To be honest this MIGHT be the game out of Pack 11 I’m most interested in, probably more than the trivia battle game. I dunno, nothing bad to say about this, sounds neat. I’m not TOO worried either as most of Jackbox’s drawing games are really good as well, so I wouldn’t worry about this one.

So that’s pretty much all I can think of for the WAYYYY too short descriptions of all the Pack 11 games. No seriously, couldn’t they have gone at LEAST a little more in-depth about these?? I know Jackbox releases stuff yearly but it wouldn’t have killed them to do something like “here’s some concept art and prompts you might see in the game”.

And now, we get to the final announcement of the Direct… yeah fuck it, I don’t like this. At all. Crash out warning!!!

Trivia Murder Party 3! …A YEAR AFTER TMP2 GOT A CONTENT UPDATE TO GIVE IT MORE QUESTIONS AND ON THE SAME YEAR AS YOU DON’T KNOW JACK’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY (and nitpicking, also the same year as Quiplash’s 10 year anniversary!)? stupid. So. Goddamn. Stupid.

First off, I feel like I should note that I am HEAVILY biased as full honesty, I don’t like Trivia Murder Party. I haven’t cared for it in months, it’s overrated (in my opinion), it SOMEHOW feels more repetitive than YDKJ to me, and Jackbox just kinda… I feel like Jackbox rides the TMP hype wave way too hard to the point it neglects their other series ESPECIALLY more obscure games that in my opinion are hidden gems.

PREDICTABLE location. I think EVERYONE in the fandom knew that a TMP3 would take place in a campground, glad to see Jackbox isn’t creative enough to throw us a curveball! I hoped TMP3 would take place on a cruise or something for multiple reasons. A campground is just kinda… lame?? I get Trivia Murder Party is supposed to parody those really campy horror movies but also just. I dunno. Boring.

Also nitpick but why does Redacted sound like that. What I’m HOPING is that they autotuned his voice to sing the song so it just sounds weird but I dunno. The voice feels off to me even in the ending and I don’t like it. This might just be like, Jackbox getting some dude to put on the filter because they couldn’t get Spencer Ham to voice the teaser but it threw me off as personally I’m too used to host voices (to the point that I can almost tell who’s who even with voice filters) and I don’t like it when I can tell by even the smallest detail that that MIGHT not be the same voice actor with the SAME host character. I’m hoping what actually happened is that they just used a different voice filter, I dunno, nitpick, ignore this tbh.

They didn’t do anything else aside from just announcing that they’re making a standalone game thats TMP3 (which again in my opinion is really stupid because now seemingly NO ONE wants Pack 11 as there’s no TMP3 being IN IT to excuse buying it, so this alone might kill Pack 11)

What I’m mainly upset about is just… the timing. This was a HORRIBLE time to do a new TMP3. I do not care how much people were begging for it, what I’m asking is that please understand that this feels like a stab in the heart to most YDKJ fans or even just fans of other games. This tells that Jackbox might be prioritizing what will generate the most money and attention (which I can POSSIBLY excuse the money part as they probably took a dip of sorts in profits with the amount of people I saw refunding the Naughty Pack) over deeply rooted fans.

This year is You Don’t Know Jack’s 30th anniversary, the game series that got Jackbox to where they are today. And they didn’t even breathe a mention of it. Not a single cameo, not a single reference, not even a breath of attention. That hurts. That really fucking hurts me. I don’t know about anyone else but this hurts. It’s like they shoved the people that honestly from what I’ve seen are MOST dedicated to Jackbox itself away just to ride the money wave. They’re probably going to drop like 20 sets of new TMP3 merch while all YDKJ fans get is the classic pack going on sale for 5 dollars (as if it isn’t almost always on sale for 8 dollars). And again nitpicking, Quiplash 1 specifically will probably get thrown on sale for its 10 year anniversary. Nothing more.

Again, it feels particularly sucky as well because TMP2 got an update that added what, like 100 questions last year? They couldn’t have saved those questions for the new game?? That’s just greedy!! Greedy and unnecessary!

Jackbox Games doesn’t feel indie to me anymore, it feels like a shitty corporation that would rather make rushed products that generate the most money rather than actual quality games. Maybe the YouTubers were right! Jackbox fell off after Pack 8.

What the fuck are they doing man. Don’t even get me started on Jackbox’s shitty smart TV streaming service they wanna do. Anyway I will be getting excited for Mario Kart World, Tomodachi Life Living The Dream, and the new Kirby content despite those RIDICULOUS prices. I feel like I’ve lost all hope in Jackbox.

Don’t let me be a blight on your excitement for TMP3 of course, be happy all you want, my opinions shouldn’t affect you or your enjoyment, this is all just personal opinion.

#vent #(??)#rant

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