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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.
The BBC produced about 20 of this type of show between 2001 and 2008, using two broadcast video streams, within their 'Red Button' interactive TV service on Freeview and Sky. It stopped eventually because of the cost of producing vs the low viewership. Here's a blog from 2008 about it http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pressred/2008/07/under-the-bonnet-the-two-stream-quiz.shtml
But without the required PS4 processing power.
Do we have a reload option if we find a choice accidentally kills an important character?
Will it come with a 3DO emulator? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Pretty much what any modern RPG offers, just without the game interrupting the cutscenes?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Apparently the Choose Your Own Adventure books were just too damn difficult for some people, so we're remaking them as movies.
Twitch writes House of Cards!
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.)
This was all the rage in narrative story-telling about the time HyperCard became widely available. Hell, I even made a couple of 'choose your own turn of events' stacks. But they lose my interest quickly when I play them. I like fiction to take me in a direction I was not expecting.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Could be quite interesting with something like Doctor Who on BBC. That being said, script writing it and filming it would take WAY longer.
I for one think this is a great idea. Netflix has taken an old idea, and is incorporating it into their IP into a format that isn't easily pirated.
until pornhub launches their version...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
no android, no pc (website) - only on ios, consoles and smart tvs.
as i'm not planning on getting any one of those i wont see much interactivity with my netflix account (movies revert back to a linear version where it automatically pics the first option on every choice).
... and Seven long dongs?
They say that Snow White thought that 7-Up was a drink before she met the dwarvs.
Don't guck that girl. Don't go hang with that drug dealer. Don't split up when be followed by a killer/ghost. Don't take play with the vagina snake alien.
Do not want.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Could we get to influence the outcome, or does it work only from .ru IP ranges?
Your netflix profile must be messed up. Sure, there is lots of "roll your eyes"-bad original stuff by netflix, but on the other hand, they have some really good series. Now it seems that the shotgun approach of producing a gazillion shows and look what sticks is finished and netflix starts to weed out the suckers.
.. is stupid.
Haven't people had enough with fan-art picked up and promoted by media conglomerate to much chagrin of the consumers? This is the same thing.
It requires a great talent, imagination, creativity to produce an original story/
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That's one why to get the gaming crowd to watch more TV.
The ultimate goal will be to have the users dictate ALL the plot, getting rid of the writers. Next, CGI to replace all the human actors. Computer-generated music. The studios will be counting the money they save.
Unfortunately for them, this will go the way of all technology, becoming so cheap that people can do the same at home, without the studios. Wanna see another 10 years of M*A*S*H - but no reruns? More new Star Trek - TOS? Spaceballs 2? Or best of all, more Firefly? Boot it up or share someone else's creations.
Heck, someone may even come up with some pr0n that has a half-decent plot.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You completely missed the point of the article. The users aren't producing anything. This is a choose-your-own adventure or a Telltale game. Users watch the content and interactively make choices at certain predefined story points.
Are you familiar with the videogames from Telltale Games? They could be seen as one example for interactive stories.
Some choices you make are only an illusion and don't really alter the outcome. Between seasons a lot of stuff can happen where you don't have any influence. And still due to the increasing complexity of the story later seasons get shorter and shorter.
This is just a video game which is heavy on story and light on gameplay. It has animated characters you control through a very limited set of choices instead of having to move them around manually.
And while my comment may seem disparaging, I would like if more games like this were created. I don't have much time to play games anymore, but some games have story lines which end up making entertaining movies. For instance I have watched the cut scenes from both Injustice games without every playing them and found that quite entertaining. Add in a non-linear story line I can control at a few dozen key decisions and I would probably like it even more.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'm sure it wasn't the first, but I remember being surprised that Mass Effect 3 had an option to go through the story without the need for any of the combat. It was part of the difficulty settings. I'm not sure how it worked exactly, but I remember it specifically stating that the player didn't have to do any combat.
...there would be a compounding series of variable scenes, which could dramatically affect later story arcs.
In many children's shows and quite a few adult shows, there's a hard rule that everything resolves itself at the end leaving it in the same state as the start, no matter what happens in the middle.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Reminds me of this scene from Fahrenheit 451: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
which could dramatically affect later story arcs.
Sure if you're a poor writer and can't write your way out of the problem. But in reality how it works is that the choices end up not mattering to the primary story arc. Kill off the wrong character with your choice? You get a slightly different version that leads a different set of characters to the same place or conclusion.
Draw yourself a diagram of the plot. If it is a tree diagram rather than a swim lanes or flow chart then you probably shouldn't be writing this material.
This is their opportunity to do something drastically different. They don't need Hollywood script witers. They need video game script writers. And do some thing cool with this. Make an antagonist and protagonist that are both likable people. And let people choose to cheer on the bad guy!
The other twist is to target people age 13-25 with this. Make it sci-fi based or involving technology. Bring back Sarah Connor!
Netflix already does a whole series at once. This will be the same but instead of a linear timeline of multiple episodes you have many branches of the same plot line.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Video games have pioneered this territory already, the greatest results being "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" and "Mass Effect" which resemble "Choose your own adventure movies" Look to the studio telltales' "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" which resemble "Choose your own adventure T.V. Series" They all expose a huge limitation which is basically, "No, the user will not be 'writing' their own stories"
what ends up happening is you write about 2-3 "serious branches" that affect the main plotline, this ends up giving you about 3-5 different stories with the same basic exposition and denouement. you can generate several more branches for side plots that don't really effect the main story, but every choice you give the 'viewer' or 'player' doubles the amount of content you create. In the serial games made by telltale, they usually branch out in the beggining, but will 'funnel back' into the same starting point for season 2. So yeah, you decided to save the accountant instead of the shopkeeper, but 4 episodes later the accountant ends up dying anyway so it doesn't really effect the over arching plot
The most polished example IMHO was "Star Wars: Knights of the old republic" in that game you don't really 'chose your own story' No matter what choices you make, you will be come a jedi in the first act and defeat the evil villain in the third act. But what your choices DO affect is the tone and context. If you make mostly "light side of the force" decisions, the story is a tale of redemption. If you make mostly 'dark side' choices it ends up being a tale of revenge. They both make sense in the overall context of the plot, both have an amazing twist in the second act, both can effect you emotionally, but at the end of the day no matter what decisions you make, you experience the same story as everyone else
i'm pretty sure netflix series are going to end up doing the same thing.
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.
...(and 1985), And they want their Interactive Titles "The Case of the Missing Yolks" and "Eat or Be Eaten" back.
http://www.firesigntheatre.com...
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/20...
Interactive films were produced for the world's fairs of the sixties and seventies. The problem is that production costs grow exponentially with the number of genuinely distinct and entertaining --- branching --- storylines. Interactive films were produced for the world's fairs of the sixties and seventies. The problem is that production costs grow exponentially with the number of genuinely distinct and entertaining --- branching --- storylines. I I
This kind of thing can go incredibly well, i.e. Homestuck. It can also create such a highly specialized plot that it'll be the best story ever...for the fifty people who stick through it, i.e. Deep Rise. In any case, I most certainly approve of anything that takes us away from the chicken McNugget script by focus group world we live in.
.. For Showy McShowFace!