Jackbox Party Game Night at Your College or University

Summer break has come to an end and bright young minds all around are heading back to class. Many schools are continuing to observe social distancing, and we’re here to help! Whether you’re planning a virtual homecoming event, or getting to know your new dorm mates, you’ve found the ultimate guide to using Jackbox for your campus event!

If you’re coordinating activities for an upcoming event, Jackbox can help bring new students out of their shells, or bring old friends closer together. When planning your event, you’ll first need to consider the size of your crowd. If this icebreaker event takes place during a college orientation, your group size might be in the hundreds. Although our games are typically designed to accommodate 3-8 players on average, many of our titles also offer audience support. By toggling on the audience participation in the settings menu, you can expand participation to as many as 10,000. Learn more about which of our games offer audience support here.

Members of the audience are able to influence the outcome of the game in a variety of different ways, depending on the title. For a game such as Quiplash, the audience gets to vote for which responses they liked best. And in Trivia Murder Party, the audience can beat out the players to win the game. Players can also attempt to court the audience in Monster Seeking Monster. 

For a more focused and engaging experience, we recommend the following setup:

• For every 8 players there is one player who acts as The Host
• The Host has a copy of a Jackbox title in their Steam library on their Windows or Mac computer
• The Host will share their game screen with the members of the group
• Members of the group follow along by watching the game on the shared screen
• Participants will navigate to jackbox.tv on a web browser through their mobile devices to respond to the prompts

With this setup, if you have a group of 400, we recommend purchasing 50 titles and having 50 groups playing over a video conferencing service such as Zoom, Discord, Google Meet, or the video conferencing service of your choice. Steam will only allow your account to upload and launch one title at a time, so each group's host will be responsible for launching the game and sharing their screen while the game is running. Once a Steam code has been redeemed by a Steam account, it will be locked to that account and can be replayed at any time. 

Another option is to create incentives for students by purchasing a bulk amount of game codes for PC/Mac and storing them in a secure spreadsheet for easy distribution. Providing clubs, sororities, or fraternities with these game codes can help foster growth within their organization. 

Regardless of how you structure your event, you’ll need to have the right tools at your disposal. 

Learn how to set up remote play over Zoom, Google Hangouts, or other video conferencing services. And when it comes to finding the right titles for your online student game night, we offer a wide variety that can appeal to a diverse crowd. Check out our catalogue of games here. Some good games to break the ice include Quiplash and Fibbage. If you’re located in the United States, you can purchase games directly from our website. Upon purchase, you will be emailed a Steam code, or multiple Steam codes if you purchased a few titles. Keep in mind, many of our titles cannot be sold individually and come bundled in our Party Packs. Each Party Pack contains five unique games to play. Feel free to reach out to us if you're unsure of which titles are best for your event!

And there you have it. You're ready to run your online student event. Find our games over at www.jackboxgames.com/games and be sure to send us photos of your virtual event on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!

If you have any additional questions, or are encountering issues setting up your game, reach out to us at help.jackboxgames.com!