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I worry this won't end well. Netflix already lets series run on too long. Shows that start out good will cater not only to the long tail that sees them through to the end, but a smaller segment who votes.
Says who ? I mean, you do realize their goal isn't and shouldn't be to make the best content possible, but to make the content that the most people would want to watch and be willing to keep their subscription active for ?
If they let their series run that long, it's because it makes sense for them.
Most people have a few thing we like where, when it turned to crap quality wise, we're still following along because we love it too much to let go. How many people have kept reading the Dune sequels when they were published despite the clear fall of quality and lack of focus compared to the original book ? It isn't different.
(not that I'm not answering with your two other phrases, with which I agree, but to that one only)
> goal isn't and shouldn't be to make the best content possible, but to make the content that the most people would want to watch and be willing to keep their subscription active for
That is dangerous due to second-order effects. Initially, this strategy will work and be quite effective at maxing revenue. But over time, consumer perception will shift to 'Netflix makes shows that run too long' just like GP post demonstrated. This reduces the perceived value of netflix content and makes consumers less likely to start watching future netflix content.
I don’t think they are assuming any more than you are, that your experience is shared to the point where it matters.
The challenge in these discussions is how subjective this stuff is. If you didn’t like the season, it “went on too long.” If you did, then it didn’t. The volume of anecdotes in HN threads show how useless that information is.
We like to think we’re all art critics, but that’s not how people watch television.
> I mean, you do realize their goal isn't and shouldn't be to make the best content possible, but to make the content that the most people would want to watch and be willing to keep their subscription active for ?
That "shouldn't" is doing a lot of work here, and I don't think the rest of the comment is supporting it. Unless your assumption is "making the most money in the short term is the greatest good," I don't see why you'd think that aiming for a broadly inoffensive mediocrity is something they should do. That sounds like creative failure to me.
Giving the keys to the show to the fans is definitely a double edged sword. I would not want some randos voting on how to end a show (it would always be a character named showy mcshowface killing everyone)
But this seems more like "we made A and B endings, and you can pick which one you watch!". If you've ever seen the movie Clue, I would imagine it's like that with all their alternate endings.
I think Maniac and Series of Unfortunate events are both a bit of a push back to that (both are excellent btw). Having a hard ending makes sense for some shows, but if the creators have something they want to make, that the consumers want, then they should keep going. I see that as a benefit over traditional ratings wars type shows.
How does this require you to rely on your own ideas? The entire show is still scripted, they’ve just written in multiple versions of ‘crazy shit’. It’s a far cry from giving you the pen and a blank piece of paper to finish the show.
Given that it's supposed to be a Black Mirror special, I fully expect that there will not only be plenty of "crazy shit" in how they twist the user choice into something entirely unexpected (while still adhering to the precise wording of the choice option), but also that the episode topic itself will be user choice and how it can go horribly wrong.
I'd see it primarily as a hype vehicle, not as a general indication of the direction Netflix will take in the future. (If I'm mistaken I fully support your argument)
As the Pontiac Aztek has shown, design by committee is not necessarily an effective approach and can lead to awful results due to the lack of a unified vision or goal. I imagine this will end similarly
"The foray into choose-your-own-adventure programming represents a big bet on a nascent form of entertainment known as interactive TV"
Err, no, it represents a big bet on the really old form of entertainment known as "interactive TV", which is older than a great deal of the HN denizens reading this and replete with a history of failure despite multiple attempts.
The question is, will this be the iPad of interactive TV, the implementation of a long-standing idea replete with failure that finally succeeds, or just another in the long line of failure? If the people involved are unaware of the history, the latter seems more likely, but I can't tell if those involved are unaware or just the person writing this article.
"Interactive TV" as an idea isn't quite an instance of what I call the BOAC fallacy [1], but it's a related idea. The short version of that idea is that you can take a new technology and computerize it, and that it will be just exactly like the old technology with all the same affordances and capabilities and business structures, "But On A Computer!", instead of realizing that the act of transferring the technology to a computer will cause profound, sweeping changes. Interactive TV is like the stupidest, simplest idea of what adding computers to video can produce; the same video system, the same production mechanisms, the same delivery mechanisms, the same amount of control over the audience, But Now It's Interactive! In the shallowest possible way. Literally; in information theory terms audiences will be given single-digit bits worth of control over the result, and ultimately I would expect the experiences to be at least semi-optimized for the viewer still watching everything in the end, which reduces the choices down to an ordering choice rather than a "real" choice.
Instead, the technology that permitted interactive television permitted video games, mobile apps that take interaction to a much higher level there as well, YouTube and all accompanying experiences, Twitch and all accompanying experiences, and so on, a rich ecosystem of options and opportunities that aren't just "it's video, hooked up to some quick time events! Wow!" Dragon's Lair is already a super-slick version of the "interactive TV" idea, and we consider it an interesting historical curiosity of an ultimately failed development line, not something content producers all strive to emulate.
Given the nature of Black Mirror, it's a decent guess they'll at least exploit some artistic possibilities out of it, but in the end I doubt this will take off. Not because it's necessarily a "bad" idea, but because the space is already saturated with better ideas that are already multiple generations into their development cycle that will crowd it out, just as the newspaper web experience is now fundamentally different than the paper experience.
(So much so that it's easy for young people today to not realize that the original promise of "newspapers on the web" was very often painted not as a modern hyperlinked site with comment sections, etc., but basically as downloading a PDF (in modern terms) of a newspaper, formatted identically to the modern newspaper, with people talking about how nice the experience would be of clicking "continued on Page 8" to go to page 8 instead of having to fuss with the pages. Particularly forward-thinking prognosticators might consider the possibility of a Letters to the Editor page being updated on a better-than-daily schedule, but still, nothing much like what we actually got. I'm speaking of the general press here; the very technical people made better predictions, but this idea was very much in general circulation.)
Focus group endings are a thing TV and movie producers have been doing for decades. It's not surprising these new media companies are coming up with some version of that which makes sense in the digital era. I'm only surprised that it took so long.
It doesn't even require focus groups. If you buy into Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or the more modern idea of tropes, then telling the stories people want and expect is so ingrained in our storytelling that it's hard to not do it.
That's what amazed me most about Breaking Bad... how effectively it undermined our storytelling expectations.
Studio bosses frequently have endings changed after audience tests, for example Army of Darkness, Titanic, Goodfellas ect. the writer(s) don't get to choose so I guess this Netflix scheme is more transparent but a possibly worse solution.
Would you rather be able to choose between the original and bad ending, or do you prefer the current system that forces the bad one as the only option?
I think multiple endings make a lot of sense for a show like Black Mirror, where the existence of multiple endings could help drive home the point the writer is trying to make.
It probably also makes for more engaging children's programming, where story is less important than keeping the audience active and engaged.
Indeed, I think they would be entirely appropriate for the specific case of Black Mirror -- and even more appropriate if they sort of suck, since Black Mirror is all about the unintended and depressing consequences of the abuse of technology.
For the general case of TV shows, I'm against multiple choice endings.
I'm against this in general too, but the current plan sounds good. I don't think this is likely to expand beyond occasional specials, as it costs more and makes binge and background watching more difficult.
There might be one 'main' ending, and many 'alternative' endings by the same writer. That is quite normal in video games and visual novels. Nowadays the TV and films are going closer to video games, so adopting that would be only logical step.
Having been on the receiving end of angry Star Wars fandom (I wrote a play that was basically creative fanfic about Obi-Wan Kenobi, but really was a deep dive into the motivations of various characters)... yeah, don't let fans anywhere near how a show actually works.
Heck, I experienced this last night. I finished the last few episodes of the new season of Bojack Horseman and was actually yelling at the screen in confusion and mild anger at a very meta season. Thankfully, I wasn't involved in the writing process, so they were able to take it in interesting directions I would never have gone.
"If you want Calculon to race to the laser gun battle in his hover-Ferarri, press 1. If you want Calculon to double-check his paperwork, press 2. Enter now."
I believe when Charlie Brooker first got on board with Netflix to produce the third season of Black Mirror, he made a suggestion to introduce some kind of interactive element to the show but Netflix decided it wasn't technically possible to do what he wanted at the time. I can't remember where I read or heard this but it got me thinking about what kind of innovation you could bring to a traditional TV series when it is distributed via the internet.
For example you could show slightly different versions of the show to different viewers, of you could subtly alter the show when viewed on second or third viewing. Or the show could change depending on the time of year that you watch it. This kind of breaking of the fourth wall and breaking of fiction from reality could fit extremely well into a Black Mirror type of story. I'd love to hear what others suggest.
As far as interactivity, and 'choose-your-own-adventure' style of story telling I think that will probably get boring pretty quick. We already have this kind of story telling with games such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and while many people view those games as innovative forms of cinematic games, I would say they are pretty tedious and non-immersive forms of cinema.
Not to mention, the recently gone bankrupt Telltale, which suffered from decisions that claimed to make a difference to the story, but which really did nothing to the overarching plot (e.g. you choose to save character A instead of B, A is soon killed anyway).
I've been playing their game The Walking Dead Season 1 and yes, it's mostly the illusion of choice, not real choice. But it's also surprisingly convincing during your first play (characters remember choices you made; they are either friendly or hostile depending on how you treated them; some show up later and some don't; etc). It's only after you replay the game that you see underneath and realize it's all mostly cosmetic, and that you cannot make really meaningful choices.
Illusion of choice can definitely work -- some of my most memorable choices in games are where I _know_ it's the choice between a bad end or continuing-it works because _I_ had to actively make that choice -- but my problem with Telltale is that it dresses it in a way that makes it _seem_ like they are going to be far more impactful, and they rarely are, and there's often a second event to "correct" the choice (e.g. you saved Person A, here's where they die anyway). It breaks the illusion of choice.
You don't need big branching paths for choice to matter, it mattering in the moment is enough, but Telltale's way of making a big deal of choices makes you realise that _nothing_ ever _actually_ matters. It undermines that in the moment nature; they'd be better off just not making you expect it to come up again.
Regardless, I remember two instances from Season 1 -- currently replaying episode 2, I think I finished it last time and I know the "plot twist" of the dairy farm -- where you choose to save one character and the other dies, and your choices seem to stick (so far, the other character is alive and even remembers you chose her/him over the other option). The problem for me is that it doesn't really matter who you chose, because these are cardboard characters and whoever survives is going to fill the same role. And of course, the same situations play out with minor differences no matter what. I suppose it'd be too expensive to actually have the game vary wildly depending on who you save or where you go.
If you mean the person you saved eventually dies anyway, isn't this also a flaw of the source material. I stopped watching TV show because of this: it ends up becoming a monotonous series of main character deaths.
Indeed, and this is in a video game, where swapping in a different character model and audio into an identical scenario is reasonably cheap, and thus can be done for many decision. Trying to do the same thing with real actors and re-filming scenes based on choices feels... harder.
On the other hand, I loved the decision making in Skyrim.
Major plot points turn out completely differently on every playthrough. I played as a nord - storm cloak (nationalists) in my first run based on the tradtitional mold of the warrior hero freeing their country from the Invaders.
Mid way through the game their facist side became more apparent, and I helped a genuine asshole of a person become king.
This made my 2nd playthrough as the empire (colonists/settlers) just that much more fun, as I tried to seek revenge on the asshole that I didn't like from a previous life.
It has been 8 years since it came out, and no game captured me quite like it. (Borderlands and Witcher came close)
> show slightly different versions of the show to different viewers
The 1985 movie Clue was released with three different endings[1]. And if you really wanted to see them all, you had to go to the movie at least three times in different theaters.
First, go watch it before the rumored Ryan Reynolds remake. It's a fun movie and holds up fairly well.
Second, when released for home they rolled all three endings into the storyline so you get to see all three.
Three, watch it again after the viewing the endings to see how all three actually do work in the story. May require more than one additional viewing to get it all, but worth it in my opinion.
Four, relatively safe for children and my kids love it.
Ten years before that, Monty Python put out a record[1] with two concentric grooves - this meant that depending on where the needle landed you’d hear two entirely different albums.
Eh, 'choose-your-own-adventure' is a pretty tried and true genre. The Mass Effect Series and Dragon-Age Series are both critically acclaimed, not to mention in Japan there is literally a genre of games/stories that follow this format.
Though maybe not has innovative as you would like, probably logically the next step as for a majority of viewers this would still be "fresh".
I haven't played Heavy Rain but I really enjoyed Farenheit / Indigo Prophecy. Your choices had a limited effect on the structure of the movie, but the game was making constant nods to what you did, often in clever ways.
Heres an example. In the very first scene you have to flee a crime scene. You could leave the murder weapon where it is, or try to hide it. If you hide it, the game doesn't show you where you hid it. Later on, you play as the cops investigating the crime scene. If you didn't hid the weapon, it's in the same spot, but if you hid it, you'll have to look for it now. Most changes to the movie follow this structure. Demonstrating a higher level of play results in a movie with more and longer scenes, and all those extra scenes make it very clear that your actions caused them to exist in the movie.
Interactive endings have already been done on UK terrestrial TV as some sort of gimmick for specials made for Comic Relief. It's pointless and crap, and what professional screen writers are supposed to be for. I imagine if Charlie asked, C4 said "no".
To be honest, if true, it provides yet more indication how much Channel 4 contributed unseen to Black Mirror, as it's got significantly worse since moving to Netflix. Despite the bigger budget.
> I believe when Charlie Brooker first got on board with Netflix to produce the third season of Black Mirror, he made a suggestion to introduce some kind of interactive element to the show
I really hope you’re wrong. I mean, watching Metalhead put me off watching Black Mirror for a couple of months because that episode was just so extremely fucking dark. But I really don’t want to be able to choose a different ending to that story.
In my opinion, we shouldn’t be able to water down Black Mirror with happy endings, and extend our denial about what tech can potentially do to our lives.
I agree choosing your own ending would be a big mistake for most shows including Black Mirror. Like I said, I can't remember where I heard this but I was hoping the kind of 'interaction' that Charlie Brooker would introduce would be less explicit (i.e. you choose an option on the screen) and more implicit (e.g. you watch the show for a second time). If it was done in the right way, I think it could enhance the experience.
USA Network used to have some pretty good stuff. Some of it turned very repetitive (Burn Notice, Suits, ...) because they don't know when to end series, but they did produce some really high quality series, especially if you're willing to look past the repetitiveness.
I don't know where their quality is at, nowadays. HBO is just leagues ahead of everything else.
I love Netflix because a lot of their shows are translated in multiple languages. It's a lot more palatable for me to allow the kids 20m more if it's "en français".
2nd language learners greatly benefit from translated content. Sometimes we even discuss how the content was translated a bit differently from the original...
but the translations on those cases are always weird.
for example, even for their own content they have dumb rules such as having french subtitled and french dubbing, but unless you're in France you won't have the option of french closed caption (I.e getting the french text for what is actually being spoken in the french dubbing)
(And just to clarify I actually like Fuller House but I can see someone watching just that - and without of context of Full House - and getting that reaction)
> It releases the same 25-minute sitcoms, hourlong documentaries and two-hour movies as other TV networks.
I actually don't think this is true. If you actually look at their original programming they aren't constrained by the same things as traditional TV. They aren't bound to specific episode lengths, or writing around commercial breaks, or refreshing the viewer on what happened last week, etc. Those might not seem like a big deal, but IMO they are more meaningful than a choose-your-own-adventure gimmick, which will certainly not become mainstream.
It will be a fun interesting mess. Imagine watchers getting completely opposing messages from the show and not being able to discuss it coherently unless they specify which version they watched. And who will watch all the versions will be as bemused as the ones who never watched it. Open endedness is a far easier solution imo.
Sorcery books are especially good. The mobile adaptation by Inkle available on Android and iPhone is also high quality. I never thought text game would consume so much of my time! :)
Yep, me too. But the game format is I think more suited to this kind of adventure. The rewind feature is almost like cheating but actually allows exploring broader decision trees. I've finished all parts multiple times with different paths and this was definitely one of most engaging experiences I've had on mobile (in sick of casual games plague).
Didn't SyFy, or someone do something like this a few years ago with a show that was message board driven? This also reminds me of the Quantum Break on Xbox.
So a TV version of RPGs? If it proves to be a success, I wonder if they'll make the beginning and middle interactive as well? Then why watch TV when RPGs are so much better?
lol. I clicked through hoping this would be a way to disable autoplay and just end a show with the credits then dump back to the menus. The current "here's what's next" feels like force-feeding and I always dive for the remote to disable the post-show stuff.
Users all separately picking endings to their shows, so that they never venture beyond what they want to see? Sounds a bit like a Black Mirror episode.
As long as they do it sparingly, it may be ok. But going from the experience of the between-seasons episode of Stretch Armstrong that one of the grandkids likes to watch, I'd be really annoyed if they did that treatment to any of my favorite shows.
First, when I sit down on the couch to watch TV, I want to relax and have the entertainment fed to me. If I want to play a video game, I'd fire up the Atari system. Really don't want to be jumping for the remote and make a decision several times in the show, and keep track of all the plot lines so I can see everything.
Now if you can set it to not prompt you, but randomize each pivot point, and / or give each permutation a number that you can select at the beginning, then it may be interesting to watch the episode multiple times to catch each variation.
This sounds awful. This is a problem I have with a lot of Netflix's content. It's nobody's baby. There's no singular vision behind it where a person came up with a story they want to tell. Instead it's algorithmically generated like "Here's some things that popular things have in common, write a story around these elements". That can get something passable sometimes, but mostly not.
Most great art is the product of one mind at the most basic level. Of course with something like a TV show or movie there are thousands of people involved, but there has to a captain to the ship, so to speak. Otherwise it just floats around aimlessly because multiple people can be pulling it in different directions.
It's riskier, because if that person is bad, the whole thing is going to turn out bad, but it's the only way to get something truly good.
That's not how Netflix content is written. There are sometimes algorithm-driven decisions on which projects to acquire and finance, but once they buy something, the creators have full control to execute their vision -- much moreso than with a conventional network or studio.
None of the content that makes it to mass media -- film, tv, whatever -- is the unique vision of a sole creator. People are foisting their fears about this onto Netflix, and find evidence of "writing-by-data" in its content, because they are looking for it. No one wants to pull down the curtain and look this closely at the rest of the media we consume because it would ruin the illusion that it's worth watching. Like most other media, video has lost most of its cult value.
He says, "My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision."
In fact, the article even notes "two of the projects are adaptations of video games!" Maybe one reason why in my view there aren't a lot of great movies based on video games is because there's something missing in the form that Netflix can improve upon. Hacker News shouldn't be a place where innovation is always so immediately viewed so skeptically. Most new ideas will fail, but shouldn't it be encouraged anyway?
Taking a step back, and more to the substance of your point, I don't think participatory art is any less one person's vision. You look at something like Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Rooms and you come away with a very clear vision from her. In the same way, what Black Mirror is trying to do with this experiment by incorporating audience participation seems to be very much a part of the story that they are trying to tell.
On the children shows, I think you are actually outside of this debate because the question is more what's better from an educational standpoint than from an artistic standpoint.
If it's choosing an ending, I agree, that does sound awful (I want to be surprised by how something ends), but if it's making a choice and then the show has to deal with the consequences of that, that could be interesting (especially as it's Black Mirror, which is likely to actively subvert the choice).
It's certainly possible to have a singular vision but multiple endings.
I fail to see how one show trying out an unconventional approach to storytelling for one episode is an example of churning out a bunch of algorithmically generated garbage. If anything, it is the exact opposite. The show is trying out something new and risky, not just mimicking what came before.
I remember seeing a audience decided show at the BSA Jamboree in 1997. I don't remember anything about the content... I can't even recall if it was a video or a live action play, I just remember voting and being willing to think there was a chance the voting was rigged because one of the decisions went a different way than I voted.
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Says who ? I mean, you do realize their goal isn't and shouldn't be to make the best content possible, but to make the content that the most people would want to watch and be willing to keep their subscription active for ?
If they let their series run that long, it's because it makes sense for them.
Most people have a few thing we like where, when it turned to crap quality wise, we're still following along because we love it too much to let go. How many people have kept reading the Dune sequels when they were published despite the clear fall of quality and lack of focus compared to the original book ? It isn't different.
(not that I'm not answering with your two other phrases, with which I agree, but to that one only)
That is dangerous due to second-order effects. Initially, this strategy will work and be quite effective at maxing revenue. But over time, consumer perception will shift to 'Netflix makes shows that run too long' just like GP post demonstrated. This reduces the perceived value of netflix content and makes consumers less likely to start watching future netflix content.
For example, my perception of House of Cards has been diminished by the subpar later seasons.
The challenge in these discussions is how subjective this stuff is. If you didn’t like the season, it “went on too long.” If you did, then it didn’t. The volume of anecdotes in HN threads show how useless that information is.
We like to think we’re all art critics, but that’s not how people watch television.
That "shouldn't" is doing a lot of work here, and I don't think the rest of the comment is supporting it. Unless your assumption is "making the most money in the short term is the greatest good," I don't see why you'd think that aiming for a broadly inoffensive mediocrity is something they should do. That sounds like creative failure to me.
But this seems more like "we made A and B endings, and you can pick which one you watch!". If you've ever seen the movie Clue, I would imagine it's like that with all their alternate endings.
Edit: just my understanding, this is not a part of N that I have particular knowledge of..
I think Maniac and Series of Unfortunate events are both a bit of a push back to that (both are excellent btw). Having a hard ending makes sense for some shows, but if the creators have something they want to make, that the consumers want, then they should keep going. I see that as a benefit over traditional ratings wars type shows.
I'd see it primarily as a hype vehicle, not as a general indication of the direction Netflix will take in the future. (If I'm mistaken I fully support your argument)
Err, no, it represents a big bet on the really old form of entertainment known as "interactive TV", which is older than a great deal of the HN denizens reading this and replete with a history of failure despite multiple attempts.
The question is, will this be the iPad of interactive TV, the implementation of a long-standing idea replete with failure that finally succeeds, or just another in the long line of failure? If the people involved are unaware of the history, the latter seems more likely, but I can't tell if those involved are unaware or just the person writing this article.
"Interactive TV" as an idea isn't quite an instance of what I call the BOAC fallacy [1], but it's a related idea. The short version of that idea is that you can take a new technology and computerize it, and that it will be just exactly like the old technology with all the same affordances and capabilities and business structures, "But On A Computer!", instead of realizing that the act of transferring the technology to a computer will cause profound, sweeping changes. Interactive TV is like the stupidest, simplest idea of what adding computers to video can produce; the same video system, the same production mechanisms, the same delivery mechanisms, the same amount of control over the audience, But Now It's Interactive! In the shallowest possible way. Literally; in information theory terms audiences will be given single-digit bits worth of control over the result, and ultimately I would expect the experiences to be at least semi-optimized for the viewer still watching everything in the end, which reduces the choices down to an ordering choice rather than a "real" choice.
Instead, the technology that permitted interactive television permitted video games, mobile apps that take interaction to a much higher level there as well, YouTube and all accompanying experiences, Twitch and all accompanying experiences, and so on, a rich ecosystem of options and opportunities that aren't just "it's video, hooked up to some quick time events! Wow!" Dragon's Lair is already a super-slick version of the "interactive TV" idea, and we consider it an interesting historical curiosity of an ultimately failed development line, not something content producers all strive to emulate.
Given the nature of Black Mirror, it's a decent guess they'll at least exploit some artistic possibilities out of it, but in the end I doubt this will take off. Not because it's necessarily a "bad" idea, but because the space is already saturated with better ideas that are already multiple generations into their development cycle that will crowd it out, just as the newspaper web experience is now fundamentally different than the paper experience.
(So much so that it's easy for young people today to not realize that the original promise of "newspapers on the web" was very often painted not as a modern hyperlinked site with comment sections, etc., but basically as downloading a PDF (in modern terms) of a newspaper, formatted identically to the modern newspaper, with people talking about how nice the experience would be of clicking "continued on Page 8" to go to page 8 instead of having to fuss with the pages. Particularly forward-thinking prognosticators might consider the possibility of a Letters to the Editor page being updated on a better-than-daily schedule, but still, nothing much like what we actually got. I'm speaking of the general press here; the very technical people made better predictions, but this idea was very much in general circulation.)
[1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916
That's what amazed me most about Breaking Bad... how effectively it undermined our storytelling expectations.
It probably also makes for more engaging children's programming, where story is less important than keeping the audience active and engaged.
For the general case of TV shows, I'm against multiple choice endings.
Heck, I experienced this last night. I finished the last few episodes of the new season of Bojack Horseman and was actually yelling at the screen in confusion and mild anger at a very meta season. Thankfully, I wasn't involved in the writing process, so they were able to take it in interesting directions I would never have gone.
[1]: Violent Lasergun Battle
[2]: Tedious Paperwork
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1F4OduqrtQ
For example you could show slightly different versions of the show to different viewers, of you could subtly alter the show when viewed on second or third viewing. Or the show could change depending on the time of year that you watch it. This kind of breaking of the fourth wall and breaking of fiction from reality could fit extremely well into a Black Mirror type of story. I'd love to hear what others suggest.
As far as interactivity, and 'choose-your-own-adventure' style of story telling I think that will probably get boring pretty quick. We already have this kind of story telling with games such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and while many people view those games as innovative forms of cinematic games, I would say they are pretty tedious and non-immersive forms of cinema.
You don't need big branching paths for choice to matter, it mattering in the moment is enough, but Telltale's way of making a big deal of choices makes you realise that _nothing_ ever _actually_ matters. It undermines that in the moment nature; they'd be better off just not making you expect it to come up again.
Regardless, I remember two instances from Season 1 -- currently replaying episode 2, I think I finished it last time and I know the "plot twist" of the dairy farm -- where you choose to save one character and the other dies, and your choices seem to stick (so far, the other character is alive and even remembers you chose her/him over the other option). The problem for me is that it doesn't really matter who you chose, because these are cardboard characters and whoever survives is going to fill the same role. And of course, the same situations play out with minor differences no matter what. I suppose it'd be too expensive to actually have the game vary wildly depending on who you save or where you go.
If you mean the person you saved eventually dies anyway, isn't this also a flaw of the source material. I stopped watching TV show because of this: it ends up becoming a monotonous series of main character deaths.
Major plot points turn out completely differently on every playthrough. I played as a nord - storm cloak (nationalists) in my first run based on the tradtitional mold of the warrior hero freeing their country from the Invaders.
Mid way through the game their facist side became more apparent, and I helped a genuine asshole of a person become king.
This made my 2nd playthrough as the empire (colonists/settlers) just that much more fun, as I tried to seek revenge on the asshole that I didn't like from a previous life.
It has been 8 years since it came out, and no game captured me quite like it. (Borderlands and Witcher came close)
The 1985 movie Clue was released with three different endings[1]. And if you really wanted to see them all, you had to go to the movie at least three times in different theaters.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clue_(film)
First, go watch it before the rumored Ryan Reynolds remake. It's a fun movie and holds up fairly well.
Second, when released for home they rolled all three endings into the storyline so you get to see all three.
Three, watch it again after the viewing the endings to see how all three actually do work in the story. May require more than one additional viewing to get it all, but worth it in my opinion.
Four, relatively safe for children and my kids love it.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monty_Python_Matching_Ti...
Though maybe not has innovative as you would like, probably logically the next step as for a majority of viewers this would still be "fresh".
Heres an example. In the very first scene you have to flee a crime scene. You could leave the murder weapon where it is, or try to hide it. If you hide it, the game doesn't show you where you hid it. Later on, you play as the cops investigating the crime scene. If you didn't hid the weapon, it's in the same spot, but if you hid it, you'll have to look for it now. Most changes to the movie follow this structure. Demonstrating a higher level of play results in a movie with more and longer scenes, and all those extra scenes make it very clear that your actions caused them to exist in the movie.
To be honest, if true, it provides yet more indication how much Channel 4 contributed unseen to Black Mirror, as it's got significantly worse since moving to Netflix. Despite the bigger budget.
I really hope you’re wrong. I mean, watching Metalhead put me off watching Black Mirror for a couple of months because that episode was just so extremely fucking dark. But I really don’t want to be able to choose a different ending to that story.
In my opinion, we shouldn’t be able to water down Black Mirror with happy endings, and extend our denial about what tech can potentially do to our lives.
I don't know where their quality is at, nowadays. HBO is just leagues ahead of everything else.
2nd language learners greatly benefit from translated content. Sometimes we even discuss how the content was translated a bit differently from the original...
for example, even for their own content they have dumb rules such as having french subtitled and french dubbing, but unless you're in France you won't have the option of french closed caption (I.e getting the french text for what is actually being spoken in the french dubbing)
Try Ozark, Atypical, Stranger Things.
I can't call those daytime cable tv quality.
(And just to clarify I actually like Fuller House but I can see someone watching just that - and without of context of Full House - and getting that reaction)
I’m not doing your job for you for free, Netflix. >:|
I actually don't think this is true. If you actually look at their original programming they aren't constrained by the same things as traditional TV. They aren't bound to specific episode lengths, or writing around commercial breaks, or refreshing the viewer on what happened last week, etc. Those might not seem like a big deal, but IMO they are more meaningful than a choose-your-own-adventure gimmick, which will certainly not become mainstream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure
They were all the rage
First, when I sit down on the couch to watch TV, I want to relax and have the entertainment fed to me. If I want to play a video game, I'd fire up the Atari system. Really don't want to be jumping for the remote and make a decision several times in the show, and keep track of all the plot lines so I can see everything.
Now if you can set it to not prompt you, but randomize each pivot point, and / or give each permutation a number that you can select at the beginning, then it may be interesting to watch the episode multiple times to catch each variation.
Most great art is the product of one mind at the most basic level. Of course with something like a TV show or movie there are thousands of people involved, but there has to a captain to the ship, so to speak. Otherwise it just floats around aimlessly because multiple people can be pulling it in different directions.
It's riskier, because if that person is bad, the whole thing is going to turn out bad, but it's the only way to get something truly good.
He says, "My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision."
In fact, the article even notes "two of the projects are adaptations of video games!" Maybe one reason why in my view there aren't a lot of great movies based on video games is because there's something missing in the form that Netflix can improve upon. Hacker News shouldn't be a place where innovation is always so immediately viewed so skeptically. Most new ideas will fail, but shouldn't it be encouraged anyway?
Taking a step back, and more to the substance of your point, I don't think participatory art is any less one person's vision. You look at something like Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Rooms and you come away with a very clear vision from her. In the same way, what Black Mirror is trying to do with this experiment by incorporating audience participation seems to be very much a part of the story that they are trying to tell.
On the children shows, I think you are actually outside of this debate because the question is more what's better from an educational standpoint than from an artistic standpoint.
It's certainly possible to have a singular vision but multiple endings.