Facebook YDKJ (lost Facebook social trivia game; 2012-2015)

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You-Dont-Know-Jack-logo.jpg

The game logo.

Status: Lost

Facebook YDKJ is a Facebook game application based on the long-running series of trivia games created by Jackbox Games (formerly Jellyvision Games). It was released for public play on Facebook in May 2012 after a beta period.

You Don't Know Jack or also known as YDKJ is known for being the most widely recognized trivia games in the world and known for being "The most irreverent trivia game".

The game is presented as a fictional television show, where the host would mock you for each answer you get wrong. It was developed by Jellyvision, now known as Jackbox games, and Berkeley Systems in 1995. Since starting out on the Playstation, Macintosh and Windows the series skyrocketed and led to its successor The Jackbox Party Pack which reached over 200 million sales by the end of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.[1]

Release and Reception

It was released for public play on Facebook in May 2012 for PC after a beta period. A mobile version for iOS was released in December 2012, of that same year it won the 2012 Spike Video Game Award for Best Social Game.[2]

A couple months after that, an Android version was released in May 2013 and allowed cross-play with the Facebook application allowing you to play with each other on those devices.

It would play out the same way as the other installments but with a few unique changes that were unlike any other game Jellyvision released. They added new special question types to the game like '"Funky Trash"' and '"Cookie's Fortune Cookie Fortunes with Cookie "Fortune Cookie" Masterson"'.

Funky Trash was about Cookie Masterson (the host) searching through someone's trash and finding what they have thrown out, it's up to you, the player, to guess who threw it out. The answers would usually be about celebrities or TV show characters or political figures.

Cookie's Fortune Cookie Fortunes with Cookie "Fortune Cookie" Masterson was about Cookie Masterson opening a fortune cookie and he would then read his fortune, followed by a question based on the advice he is given.

Players that finished with a score in the negatives were given a chance to earn some money by spinning "The Loser Wheel." They had a chance to win $5,000 instantly or it had a very high probability of only giving them $1.

If the player finished an episode with a great score, the results were then saved and would be used as an analogue for when the player was offline, should one of the players Facebook friends play the same episode at some point and you could compete with the best scores. This feature extended to the iOS version. If you earned enough money from playing, you would be awarded with Facebook Currency which could then be spent in the Facebook game shop to purchase more games.

Another feature was the freeplays, you could only have a limited number of plays per day and you would have to come back tomorrow to play more.

Another change was that, instead of the regular ten questions it would be five, making it the shortest game in the series. It was also known as the first You Don't Know Jack game to include microtransactions and social features.

One of the microtransactions was an upgrade called '"You Don't Jack: Royale"' and it was basically an upgrade you could purchase for $0.99 which would award you with no ads, two free games per day, 200 tokens, an enhancer pack and an icon badge.

Despite the game being successful, many players criticized the microtransactions and the feature to only have a few plays per day, but many others praised the social features because they felt like it worked well with the game.

The Closure

Unfortunately on January 30, 2015 Jackbox games announced it's shutdown of the game due to not that many people playing anymore. Another reason for it's closure was that around that time, Facebook was requiring all apps to update to a new API and they said they didn't have enough time on how they've integrated Facebook social networking into the game and how it wouldn't flow well.[3]

On March 1st 2015, both the PC and mobile versions were taken down and are no longer available to download.

Availability

As of March 1st, 2015 the game is no longer available on iOS and Android or PC and cannot be found in any form. Quite a lot of footage exists, thanks to Youtube user, "Mr. Coddleshire" because he recorded as much footage as he could before it went down.[4] But only of the PC version and only a small amount of footage of the mobile versions are available. The game still exists in spirit, most of the questions from this game were carried over to You Don't Know Jack 2015 for the first Jackbox Party Pack with the fortune cookie question carried over as well. Due to the reception, it is unknown if the game will come back.

Gallery

Videos

Mobile version trailer of the game.

PC version trailer of the game.

Fake sponsors from the game.

Number sequences (PC Version).

Photos

iOS and Android

PC

References