If you haven’t played it yet, go do so. I’ll wait. Or not—I’ll limit spoilers, as what I want to examine here is the structural aspects of the experience, but note that reading this article beforehand may frame your experience of it.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Bandersnatch and the challenges of choice
If you haven’t played it yet, go do so. I’ll wait. Or not—I’ll limit spoilers, as what I want to examine here is the structural aspects of the experience, but note that reading this article beforehand may frame your experience of it.
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4 comments:
When I first watched Bandersnatch, I spent approximately six hours trying to achieve every single ending. I loved it! I thought it was so creative and I wished there were more moments of choice, but I understand how time consuming this version was, I could only imagine how much more time would be spent if there were double the options(that would mean approx quadruple the endings!). However this article tackles television and film immersives in a really interesting way. Analysis of this immersive structure could be very beneficial for other companies looking to do something similar or just generally immersive through a screen. Something notable this author touches upon is acknowledging how your audience will approach a choose-your-own-adventure. Personally, when I played Bandersnatch I did play until I got every single ending. That was simply out of wanted to accomplish all endings, and to see all the outcomes. In addition, this author takes consideration of how an audience member might approach their choices, like a human, or like a fictional character. The “safe route” compared to the “extreme route” provides an immersive maker to consider that they should provide both sides of that coin for an audience. And if they’re not, what does that mean for the experience.
Bandersnatch was super fun concept and it felt to me like everyone watched it when it came out. The idea of being able to make decisions about what the course of the movie keeps the audience both invested and entertained. I had a different experience from the author when watching it for choosing which path I went down. The two of us alternated which path we chose. I find it interesting how this author was very worried about repeat business whereas I didn’t even consider the idea of watching it twice. This was the first type of movie that I’ve heard about that did this, and I wonder if more movies like it are in the making. Is this the future of the entertainment industry? Also, how does this apply to theater and are we going to get more and more immersive theater? I’ve heard of immersive theater projects and improv certainly looks for audience participation.
I thought that Bandersnatch was an incredibly intuitive idea when it was announced, and then eventually released. I mean, the choose-your-path stories of my childhood brought to the modern age in my second home (Netflix, of course)! I watched/played through it, too, and thoroughly enjoyed my experience with it. Ultimately, though, with one good thing to come, others are doomed to try and replicate or follow.
I think that the business of interactive entertainment (outside of video games, of course) is going to try and blow up, though ultimately die down and rest around where it is. Commonly said in history, too much of anything can be bad, and that includes good things. As a child, that meant I shouldn’t eat four boxes of Reese’s Puffs in a day because I was bored. Now, I see that theme appearing throughout my life, especially in films. For instance, the rise in superhero films: though I love them and their respective universes (except you, Batman v. Superman. Boo you), the immense amount of films coming out on them are beginning to desaturate the genre and make it lose its spice for me. I hope that there’s a moderate amount of good interactive films and experiences, such as Bandersnatch, but I hope it does not reach that point of oversaturation that many good things suffer.
One I first heard about Bandersnatch I was in shook. A tv show that would react to what you decide? I knew this would change how we watched tv and would change the tv industry. When it was first announced I knew I had to do it. The first problem though is that the option to choose your answer is not available on all tvs. If you have to use your laptop to connect to the tv it can be annoying. Once we started though it was so interesting. At first you don’t think the choice matter but they do. Even the littles of choices do. Bandersnatch also put a lot of time into details. One question was about which cereal we would like and the one we picked would show up throughout the show. At first we didn’t realize what was the ending or if we just died. Once we realized it had multiple endings we tried to find all of them.
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