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Netflix Launches New 'Interactive Shows' That Let Viewers Dictate the Story (thenextweb.com)
Netflix announced that it's launching an all-new interactive format that turns viewers in storytellers, letting them dictate each choice and direction the story takes. "In each interactive title, you can make choices for the characters, shaping the story as you go," according to Netflix. "Each choice leads to a different adventure, so you can watch again and again, and see a new story each time." The Next Web reports: The first two interactive shows that will be available on Netflix are Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile. Puss in Book launches globally today, with Buddy Thunderstruck slated to make its debut a month from now on July 14. The new experience will be available on most television setups and iOS devices. "Content creators have a desire to tell non-linear stories like these, and Netflix provides the freedom to roam, try new things and do their best work," Product Innovation director Carla Fisher said. "The intertwining of our engineers in Silicon Valley and the creative minds in Hollywood has opened up this new world of storytelling possibilities." Fisher further added that, for the time being, the streaming service will be mainly focusing its efforts on producing interactive content for children -- especially since their research has shown that they already tend to be prone to interacting with the screen.
It was available two days ago. Kids found Puss in Boots on Wednesday and played around with it on the Roku.
It reminded me of Dragon's Lair but with a lot fewer decisions and a lot more time to make them. For all you young'uns, yeah we had this in the 1980s, contemporaneous with the Choose Your Own Adventure books. The video of the storyline with alternate decisions and endings were stored on a laserdisc (which unlike a videotape allowed random access). And inputs you made with a joystick and buttons at certain times determined your progress through the story and which video was played. (The approx 1 sec blackout while the LD player seeked to the correct video has been edited out of that YouTube video. So it as a lot more annoying to play than the video makes it seem. RAM was way too expensive to pre-cache multiple possibilities like we can today.)