A party video game is a genre of video game that stems from in-person

party games Party games are games that are played at social gatherings to facilitate interaction and provide entertainment and recreation. Categories include (explicit) icebreaker, parlour (indoor), picnic (outdoor), and large group games.Frankel, Lillia ...

, involving player-to-player interaction as the central gameplay element. These games are often defined by simple controls which can be easily picked up and understood by players of any skill level. Party video games generally consist of short-term experiences which may be played in succession, and are sometimes characterized in the form of

minigames A minigame (also spelled mini game and mini-game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short game often contained within another video game. A minigame contains different gameplay elements and is often smaller or more simplistic than th ...

. These experiences may be played singularly or in a group, and usually feature several players competing simultaneously.

History

The first party video game is thought to be ''

Olympic Decathlon ''Olympic Decathlon'' is a sports video game written by Timothy W. Smith for the TRS-80 and published in 1980 by Microsoft. In the game, the player competes in ten track and field events. The gold medalist for decathlon in the Montreal 1976 Summ ...

'', releasing in 1980. In 1983, '' Party Mix'' was released for the Atari, and consisted of an anthology of five multiplayer games, which began the format of party video games releasing as a series of individually-selectable minigames. In 1995, '' You Don't Know Jack'' was released, the first of the ''You Don't Know Jack'' franchise and the precursor to the '' Jackbox Party Pack'' collection in 2014. In 1998, ''

Mario Party is a series of party video games created by Hudson Soft and owned by Nintendo. It features List of Mario franchise characters, characters from the Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or Artificial inte ...

'' was released on the

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo E ...

. Its launch eventually brought about the rest of the ''Mario Party'' franchise, in wake of the game's success across markets. '' Mario Party 2'' was released in 1999, and '' Mario Party 3'' was released in 2000. The launch of the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

in 2006 led to the creation of '' Wii Play'', a minigame collection that was bundled with certain copies of the Wii console.

References

{{Video game genre Video game genres

History

See also

References