The Jackbox Naughty Pack Creative Director discusses giving classic games an M-rated twist

For the last decade, this has been the time of year that Jackbox Games would begin the push toward its next Party Pack compilation in earnest. However, something is different this year. The Jackbox team is now experimenting with a compilation that's aimed at a more mature audience. The Jackbox Naughty Pack is the team's first M-rated collection and it's aiming to be both refreshingly familiar and also something that breaks the typical Jackbox mold.

Among the games being presented in this three game collection are Dirty Drawful and Fakin' It All Night Long, updated incarnations of two Jackbox favorites. To learn more about taking things to a more mature level, Shacknews recently spoke with Creative Director and Product Manager Brooke Breit.

Shacknews: You had your pick of the litter of existing games to build on for the Jackbox Naughty Pack. What made you decide on Drawful and Fakin' It?

Brooke Breit, Creative Director and Product Manager: Fakin' It was something that we hadn't revisited in a while thinking it is a very popular game, internally and with our fanbase. So we were excited to revisit it with a mature lens, knowing that the content itself already in the original Fakin' It leaned a little spicy anyways. It felt like it was a wonderful game, a great vessel to kind of see that fun gameplay where you're accusing each other of things, you're admitting to things, and it felt like it kind of already had that adult sense to it that we could explore and push a little further, as well as explore new categories. We have emojis now in Fakin' It, as well as thumbs, and Remote Play, which was a big add for us. The game still plays in the room, like original Fakin' It and that is an option for players to pick in the menu. Or if you're playing online, we have a remote version where everything that basically you would be doing in the room is now presented on the game screen for more ease of gameplay online remotely with your friends.

Drawful is a fan favorite and a favorite internall. It felt like such a great game to dive into what mature content would look like in that context. We were laughing, playing it, and just trying to push those boundaries of what we were asking ourselves to draw, let alone what people were naming the drawings, because those two parts of the game meshed together so well with player input, as well as what the game is putting out there. So it felt like a really good vessel to explore what a naughty, mature, R-rated version of a Jackbox game would be. They felt like easy, easy picks for us.

Shacknews: You mentioned that you're already toeing the line with getting into spicy territory with a game like Fakin' It. So what is the process involved in taking games like these that were originally meant for families and building them for adults? For example, how does the process for writing Drawful prompts change?

Breit: Knowing that all of our games are rated T for Teen with the option usually to make them family-friendly, inherently, the games are geared towards a slightly older audience, not quite that mature audience, but a little bit older. So we went into this project knowing, "Okay, well, we're not going to have that. We're going to kind of be very clear in the rating that it is a Mature-rated game," and then push the boundaries and see what that looks like for us. So it was a bit of an exploration internally as well.

Our editorial team dove in, explored all facets of what we would find fun and entertaining in that context, as well as keeping in mind the Jackbox brand. We did a lot of internal checks, sensitivity reviews, and conversations. We have been using sensitivity consultants for our games for a while now anyways, just to make sure that we're never trying to punch down or have anything that is intentionally mean-spirited and that remained true with this journey as well. We were exploring spicier content, what I like to call "funcomfortable," kind of diving into that "Can we all have fun with this, but we're all kind of in on the joke?" and that there's a little bit of that ownership there.

For Drawful, I feel like the content for Drawful has evolved over the years anyways. Drawful Animate felt like it was exploring and pushing [boundaries]. There's a little bit of an unhinged nature sometimes to the way things are phrased. So we really embraced that and we pushed it further, had different categories that we would consider adult, whether it be like a little bit more spicy, if it's kind of leaning more towards that scary "cartoon violence" type thing. We're just kind of exploring all those different angles, but also making sure that everything still feels Jackbox. Even if we're pushing those boundaries or being a bit mature, we wanted it to also feel like something that would come from our company.

Shacknews: Design-wise, what has changed with these games? You mentioned that you added some new features to Drawful, and you added a remote play feature to Faking It.

Breit: Fakin' It now has Remote Play, which is the big thing that we were super excited about. Also, not only the content, but the art, the sound design, everything also has like a little bit of a naughty twist to it, so it feels more adult. Dirty Drawful does as well.

The big headline news is that we have added "Undo" to Dirty Drawful. And it was a hotly talked-about, discussed thing internally, and it felt like the right avenue to try that, knowing that people have been asking for that for a while. Internally, some people have been like, "Please let us have it." So we thought, "Why not?" For Dirty Drawful, we have an Undo button. We also have emoting added to Dirty Drawful. Part of that was because, for some of the pictures that were being drawn, you just need to react in the moment to that. So we wanted to give players the opportunity to use some emotes on their controller to truly respond to what is being presented in the moment.

Shacknews: We've become familiar with the Drawful art style over the years. But now, talk about how the Drawful artists have had to tweak their technique a little bit to make it a little bit more dirty.

Breit: We're going to see our owl in Dirty Drawful with some different looks. She's sassy! So I think that there's definitely some fun interpretations of what's going on there. Hector Padilla, our lead artist for the game, had a lot of fun. It is a very simple game in its core and we want to support that gameplay without making it too busy or too many different things going on, so it really feels like a nice palette that you can do your work and your work is going to shine, but we're going to have some fun little bells and whistles to support that. So you'll see the owl in some in some different ways that you haven't seen them before

In addition to that, the emotes are a lot of fun and bring a lot of personality to the game as well. So yeah, every time, we have our lead artists really take a lot of ownership and love in the work that they do and bring these games to life. That is definitely present in all three games that we have in the Naughty Pack.

Shacknews: It's great to hear Tom Gottlieb as Cookie Masterson again for Fakin' It All Night Long. What has it meant to him to have this opportunity to really cut loose with some more adult humor?

Breit: We were just so glad that he was so game to do it, because Tom is iconic. Cookie Masterson is iconic. And so, just knowing that he could really let loose and have fun in the booth with the things that the writers were giving him, in addition to... I'm sure he's added some of his own [lines], being a part of the editorial staff. I think people are going to be as delighted as we were hearing some of the [dialogue], because you feel like sometimes Cookie's already on the edge. He's been pushed in some of the games before to a place where you're like, "Is he going to snap?" And I think it's just him letting loose here, which is really nice.

Also, [returning to] Drawful is our host, Katie Rich, who's been doing it for a while and just brings such wonderful character. And, again, hearing her say the things that we have her say, it's such a delight and such a joy.

Shacknews: This looks like a fun first edition of the Jackbox Natty Pack. Were there other classic Jackbox games that were originally considered for part of this pack that ultimately didn't make the cut? And, I have to ask because I got asked by management to ask this, was one of them You Don't Know Jack?

Breit: Those are great questions. We had a traditional pitch process, like we would for our Party Packs, where we sort of pitched games. These two rose pretty quickly to the top of the ranks that we were ready to move on them. So there isn't anything that was cut out or said, "We can't do this in the future." Anything's on the table in the future, but there wasn't anything where we said, "We absolutely can't do this right now." These two just immediately jumped forward as being the games that we were most excited about exploring for this particular Naughty Pack.

The Jackbox Naughty Pack will come to PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, as well as Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV on Thursday, September 12. For Steam users, the Naughty Pack offerings will be compatible with the new Jackbox Megapicker.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?