The Failure of Jacksfilms' Be Funny Now: A Retrospective

Be Funny Now was a dramatic failure. Despite being the brainchild of popular YouTuber Jacksfilms, it failed due to many flaws in the gameplay that led to public matchmaking being terrible. I explained it better in the video itself, but things such as the voting system, the playerbase, and the over-promotion led to an inactive playerbase. Despite a game-changing update in November of 2022, the game still gets 0 daily active players to this day. In this video, I explained in great detail what went wrong.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:19 How It Happened
1:16 First Impressions
2:13 How The Game Works
3:58 The Community
4:50 Complicated Prompts
6:48 Voting System
8:08 2.0 Update
8:51 Inactive Playerbase
10:33 Overshadowed By Competitors
12:07 What It Did Right
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Hello! I'm just your normal ex-fetus making youtube content. I try my best to make content that I would want to watch myself. Giving a good ol' subscribe is always appreciated!

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This video is a video essay on Be Funny Now, a failed game by Jacksfilms.

#jacksfilms #videoessay #gaming #script #scripted #videogamessay

[Ryychii]

You'll be hearing from my lawyers, bud.

(But in all seriousness, I enjoyed this video a lot! Good job!)

[YourPalKindred]

I will never fault Jack for trying. Dude is ambitious and for how long he's been around, deserves more subs.

[fernandosilveira]

For me the biggest problem is the community. Not that Jack's fanbase is bad, but every joke is really recycled from older YIAY's or just memes from the channel, which makes the game super unapproachable for anyone that is not a fan. And even the biggest fan would get tired after the 7 round where an Among Us sussy joke won. I think the game had potential, but it shot itself in the foot with the most important mechanic (the voting system) being broken. It's fixed now, but no one knows because... Well, no one plays it anymore. I love Jack's videos, but yeah, I distanced myself from his channel when there was a non-stop promotion of the game (Which I completely understand the motive). Overall, I think that was good try, but the curse of youtuber games caught him too.

BTW love the video, really well made!!

[afoolseyes]

Completely forgor to comment here 💀but yeah, thank you so much for commissioning me for the sprites! I’m glad you like them! :D

[JellyJim-I-guess]

Great avatar, it adds a lot of personality to your videos, keep up the good work!

[thefreelancequeen]

I was part of the closed beta test in the later time, and honestly when it was just a few hundred people consistently playing, it felt nice and did actually work with the original scoring system

[repacharge]

Wow man this editing is absolutely incredible, great vid

[SpeedPants]

Never played this game (or had any idea Jacksfilms made it until very recently lol), I downloaded it a couple years ago to play with my bf once but never did. Looking at it now it just seems like Jack should've known better than to bank on the game working on it's own as all things considered it's a gimmicky party game that has a nice concept, but just doesn't do enough on it's own to warrant being a game you'd wanna constantly replay with random people (or even friends considering like you said: Jackbox and Gartic Phone do it better).

You said that one of the main problems was that the early lobbies were dominated by Jacksfilms fans and inside-jokes making it near-impossible for newcomers to join in and have fun, and I'm quite honestly surprised that they didn't think about that and foresee it as an obvious problem from the start. Part of what makes stuff like the Jackbox games and Gartic Phone work so well (and provide so many iconic moments and memories) is the fact that you usually get your friends together, go in a server with people you know, or join a stream from someone you like and play the games, that way you know the inside-jokes, what the people will probably find funny, and what the overall tone and everything else will be like in the game. Since the game had a public matchmaking feature but was made and heavily promoted by Jacksfilms it's pretty obvious that from the very beginning there was bound to be a clash between the waves of people who were in on the jokes and were coming over to meme with fellow fans, and the people who had no clue about any of the jokes and just wanted a free party game to play. I can only imagine how many people picked up the game on the day of release and got hit with jokes they didn't understand every single round before giving up and never coming back right then and there lol.

And yeah that early voting system was completely flawed, the public lobbies (ironically) don't bank on you "Being Funny Now" and instead bank on you finding a lobby with decent people who will give genuine votes and not pay to boo you off the stage or rig it for other people, giving people a way to do either of those is a terrible idea and I have no clue whose idea it was to let people pay to do that considering it was bound to be exploited from day 1. Jackbox already figured out the fix to letting people spam emotes and such by making it not effect the person's score and performance while also adopting a voting system at the end so you could get (mostly) genuine results with their game "Civic Doodle", and also in other games like the fan reaction meter in "Mad Verse City". So the fact that the concept was already taken is probably what led them to try and make the emote spam into the voting system as a way to stand-out and be different, the main issue being that they didn't realize the myriad of problems that would come with that.

And quite honestly the fact that The Jackbox Party Packs already had better versions of "Be Funny Now" in them was the final nail in the coffin. We already know that Jackbox's team could've worked out the kinks a lot better and made it a fun addition to a party pack because stuff like "Quiplash" and "Joke Boat" (amongst countless other games) already fill the spot that "Be Funny Now" was trying to fill and usually have far less flaws. The only advantages "Be Funny Now" had over any one of the various Party Packs were the facts that it was free and had more character customization, but considering you can get (from my experience with playing many of the packs) 3 amazingly fun and iconic games on average to play with friends in any one of the Party Packs (and the fact that the customization really isn't a focal point at all), it makes far more sense to just wait for one of them to go on sale and have yourself or a friend fork out a bit of money and host lobbies where all your buddies can join in for free and have a blast with far more variety anyways.

Regardless of the issues I listed here (and the fact that the 2.0 update came too late), I give props to Jack for trying to make something fun and taking the failure of it on the chin in the episode about it's death he posted about a week ago, maybe in the future he'll figure out a way to make a game that'll stick around for longer than a few months at best and fill it's specific niche well, but only time will tell.

[alexicon]

Good video. I respect Jack a lot for doing this and I think its better that bfn exists than it doesnt. Because this helped him and the community grow even more. Honestly tho after Pithee and BFN Jack's channel and community has really matured beyond what I had expected. And Im literally a part of it. The videos feel more genuine, theres more versatility in comedy if you ask me, tho it is subtle I'll admit. I feel more at home when I see the newer videos, frankly the recent melvin inside joke was one of the funniest moments in all of my years of watching yt.

[inthefurnace]

very well done retrospective! and funny enough, here in 2024 Jack just launched Pithee, a web-based platform where you submit funny statements and vote on your favorites…. essentially exactly what you described, yet honestly lower quality. we’ll see what happens!

[UnfinishedCombStudios]

This is a really good video, there isn't really all that much Be Funny Now content out there that isn't on Jack's channel.
And as someone who has managed to play the new version of the game when it came out and people were playing it, I don't really like 2.0.
I thought the old reaction voting system was great and helped this game stand out, but now you can only use it at the end of a round, alongside the emotes.
Also it does run into the problem where when an answer shows up again, it isn't funny anymore because you've already seen it.
Also, the Audience Meter didn't show how well the person currently shown is doing, instead it showed how how negative reactions you were giving compared to positive reactions. Then at the end of the game, the more positive reactions you gave, the bigger a bonus you would get.
I don't like this, because now if everyone writes unfunny answers, you can't boo them all or else you get punished. You have to give positive reactions regardless of how good the answer is. Also the fact that you didn't know what it did is fair, because the game barely explains it to you.


So in conclusion, Be Funny Now 2 when

[francomasiniofficial]

I disagree with your point that the game’s avatars and detailed environments were good features. I think they introduced unnecessary noise and an air of cheapness to the whole experience. Hindsight is 20/20, but I distinctly remember seeing the art style in promo videos and just knowing the game would fail; “why would I play this mobile-ass game when I could just play Jackbox?”

Good video, by the way.

[orhun]

I thought this was a channel with 200k’ish subscribers. Turns out it’s a small channel but the editing and the animation is really good for a small channel like this! Looking forward to your other videos, subscribed!

[bandit]

First few weeks of the game was such a vibe tho, I was so sad when ppl stopped playing

[thecompanioncube]

fun factor of a game should come from its toolset that the game provides to the players and not player creating their own fun. If they could they wouldn’t need a game. In Jackbox games as well, there are certain games that require way more creative players to make it fun than others, but jackbox has multiple other games which can be enjoyed by not so sober enough to make a rhyme crowd. And the Freeform answer fields just invites trolls more than creatives and fun players.

[magmamaze]

This was a very fair look into the game and very good editing that went along with it. I think the reason I would never be able to get into Be Funny Now is (like you and others have said) the community isn't it's own thing. Rather it's just an extension to his channel. Which in one hand I guess that's good for your fans but on the other hand your trying to make a universal experience. So answers should have a wider audience.

Also not trying to be mean but Jacksfilms audience stopped being funny at a certain point. They were funny before but they kinda just repeat the same jokes or just slightly tweak them. It's the same reason I'm not a particular fan of Yiay's. They all just blended in together. I like seeing Jack make something he is proud of rather than laughing at other's jokes all the time.I feel like with Yiay my favorite videos were one's that Jack and the community worked together. Like the fixing your art. Those are the most enjoyable to me.

To touch back up on the game, I think it was a fine enough concept, but certain elements really did make it feel like a mobile game. Mind you one of the better mobile games but still a mobile game. Not a big fan of the art style myself personally. It just reminds me too much of Gacha. It's fine to have a simple art style and it's not a problem with the game just not really my style. Nor do I think it suits the chaos of Jack'sfilms community.

Overall I can see the appeal but it makes sense why it died. And to be honest Pithee might have a similar fate. I mean it has less problems but it also just seems boring. Something about the site feels lifeless.

[lamibonxd]

such a good video! absolutely agreed with all the points

[YetAnotherOddity]

I have never heard of "Be funny now" yet you explained the game and why it failed in a comprehensive manner and the editing in this is really good. I would have excepted this video to have like around at least 20k views, but no! Let's hope the algorithm stops being so mean to you lmao

[citroenboter]

I tried playing this because I loved the premise of it, but I didn't like 90% of the answers that other people gave. I think this would've been a lot of fun with friends locally, but I couldn't really find anyone who'd be down. I really like the more creative jackbox games generally, like T-KO or Joke Boat. And drawing prompts are some of my faves, but I really didn't like them in BFN. Also agree that the prompts weren't great and a lot of the time there wasn't enough time. People were also downvoting for no apparent reason and upvoting things that were absolutely not funny.

[manyregrets]

here's hoping pithee doesn't also die immediately