Jackbox provides "practice friends" to rebuild your social skills

After more than a year of COVID-19 lockdown, your social skills are likely to have shrunk, and Jackbox Games thinks it can help you remember now that the pandemic is finally (hope? Maybe? Please?) is fading. Starting next week, Jackbox will give you the opportunity to hire free "practice friends" to remind you of how you interact with others. You must register and compete for a limited number of time periods, but after entering you will have 30 minutes of "no judgement" Jackbox Party Pack game time, and team members will help you review the art of conversation.

Of course, this is partly a pitch for Jackbox's software. Get in some quality time with those practice friends and you'll also get a code for a copy of Jackbox Party Pack 7, ostensibly to share your restored social graces with others.

We've asked Jackbox for more details on how this works, including who you'll meet and just how long the initiative will last.

Is this a marketing strategy? Absolutely. But it was also a symbolic moment—it marked the end of a long and long period of having to socialize with most people via video chat. If all goes well, this will be a promotion you will never see again.