Kliuless? Gaming Industry ICYMI #17
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Bandersnatch: A Black Mirror on the Fourth Wall
Netflix Takes Interactive Storytelling to the Next Level With ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’
Related: How the Surprise Interactive 'Black Mirror' Came Together
"The Stanley Parable... but on Netflix" would be the best way I would describe "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch," Netflix’s first-ever interactive movie for adults
Though not the first entrant into interactive media (with Eko or HBO's Mosaic, for example, preceding), Bandersnatch was definitively the best experience I watched (or played?)
Without revealing any significant spoilers, Bandersnatch succeeds where others have failed largely due to several reasons:
User experience
Bandersnatch's plot is centered around a choose-your-own-adventure novel and game of the same title, and the creators brilliantly designed the experience to easily nudge users to want to explore the other branching narratives
Whenever a user reaches the end of a specific branch, Netflix rewinds back to the most recent user-given choice that could fork into an alternative ending
This process repeats, going further upstream the user's decision tree each time, until the user exhausts all significant endings
However, unlike Eko or Mosaic, Netflix never reveals "the man behind the curtain," wisely choosing to keep the skeleton structure of the actual decision tree and the choices made hidden throughout the whole experience to avoid overwhelming the user
Easter eggs
What Bandersnatch does instead to refresh users' memories when returning to a fork is quickly playback a recap sequence of key scenes and decisions that have led up to that fork
However, the biggest problem to a solution like this is that over time these recaps can easily feel repetitive and boring
The Stanley Parable developers faced this same problem, and mitigated some of their early game triteness by injecting randomly generated events to occasionally delight players
In a similar vein, the Bandersnatch creators have cleverly sprinkled Easter eggs and other surprises not just in the recaps, but throughout the entire experience, motivating users to continue exploring other branches
Incentivizing greater "completion" of the narrative is important because anything that goes unseen in the other branches results in lower efficiency from a return on investment perspective (note that Netflix likely incorporates user engagement into its definition of "return")
What fourth wall?
All of Bandersnatch's novel two-way interactions demand from Netflix's otherwise "lean back" audience that they must instead "lean in" for this experience
In requiring continuous interactivity with its audience, the applications of this new-form entertainment are inherently more limited in fiction due to the incessant breaking of the fourth wall
The Bandersnatch writers understood this well, and opted to not just dent, but wholly obliterate the fourth wall in multiple ways throughout the various branching scenarios
Though it may be a bit gimmicky at times, it works well for Bandersnatch, partially because of its unique self-referencing plot and partially just because it is Netflix's first. Time will tell how successful subsequent offerings can be with or without the fourth wall
More interesting to me are interactive media's potential future applications in the nonfiction space or, said differently, entertainment experiences that are naturally already "lean in"
Live streaming, esports, and even HQ Trivia are all early examples of this that have just barely scratched the surface
Physical sports, an intensely "lean in" viewing experience, has yet to see any significant breakthroughs here, but there are a number of interesting opportunities. For example, imagine a world in which, while watching a baseball game on TV, using your phone you could change the camera to see the next play from the pitcher's mound, home plate, or short stop
Such interactivity would also not necessitate a meaningful change in already existing user behavior with technology during viewership
