Jellyvision briefly in the 90s (somewhere in the Bezerk network heyday) had a full book of “The Jack Principles”, the topic of that old GDC presentation, for free download, and I still regret that I lost my copy and also that it’s not still free so that I can point others to it easily. (Especially because of that return to chatbots. So many companies needed to read that book to avoid obvious pitfalls Jellyvision figured out in the 90s.)

But alas when that Jellyvision pivoted out of games and into expensive consulting that book became their secret sauce and the cost raised to an arm and a leg. There is a weird surreality when you bump into that Jellyvision’s products today. I’ve used ALEX once. It does a great job of explaining confusing details about corporate benefits options (healthcare plans, etc). It’s weird that such a tool is necessary at all and everything is just that confusing. It’s weirder still that it is a “Jack style” app, not because that isn’t a great solution to the problem, but that it is still so associated with trivia games in my mind (and nobody else is doing it).

I’m also glad that Jackbox spun out of expensive corporate consultant version of Jellyvision. It’s nice to see that style of game back in games and not just weird corporate explainers for over-complicated enterprise stuff.