Jackbox Games and Human Bonding

In the modern world, with the development of the Internet, people start to worry that digital media, especially games, are killing social and bond between human individuals. People are afraid that virtual worlds in games will completely replace real life social ones one day. I’m not going to judge whether this is true, but it is certain that Jackbox games, which are party games, didn’t kill human bonding, but even enhanced relationships between people.

Johan Huizinga said this in Homo Ludens, “The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment.” Although in Huizinga’s age, video games have not yet been invented, Huizinga’s ideas that humans play for competition and competition is a social impulse are still suitable for modern video games. Since play is so important to society and even the emergence of new cultures, why do people still think video games have a negative impact on human bonding? I think the problem is still about the virtual world.

Social is “3D” instead of “2D”. Indeed, people can know others through online games, but this “know” is limited. I’m talking to a person, but this person is half fake and half real. The fake part is imagined by myself. This is a kind of 2D social. Just like 2D games. 2D games can create a 3D feeling, but it totally depends on hallucination created by the human’s vision system. I can only really know a real person when I sit in front of a real person. Real and virtual combination is what Jackbox games do well.

I like the mode of watching a single TV with friends while making choices and during actions on my own mobile phone. For example, in Drawful 2, players draw on their own phone, and finally their drawing will be presented on the big screen. The first time I saw this mode was on a platform called Kahoot! I was pretty wondering why don’t Kahoot just show the questions on each person’s phone? Because this seems to be much easier to set up (no big screen needed), and people don’t need to switch their view between TV and phone. After thinking, I found that this greatly enhanced each person’s sense of participating. People know they are sharing the same information because it comes from the big screen. Isn’t this like the traditional non-digital games? Non-digital games can’t sync each player’s game board using the network. This is similar to opening a Zoom in the same classroom where each student watches their own computer compared to opening the PowerPoint on the TV. They are different.

Also, the marking criteria in Drawful 2 doesn’t depend on algorithms but depends on people’s criteria in their mind, which means that players are communicating through the marking process. Some people present their mind (the painting), some people present their comments (thoughts) to others. Although language may be absent, this does help players to know each other better and build social connection.

So Jackbox games are not trying to use video game’s digital property to put players online and reduce the real life connection, which other games like to do. Instead, the digital property is used to make the playing more colorful. Screens can show brighter colors, fluent animations and sounds. Digital in Jackbox games is used as a tool for creating better playing experience instead of blocking social connection.