I have always loved interactive media. As a kid, I read the American Girl “Choose Your Own Ending” book A Winning Goal over and over again. I was a big fan of Episode and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. I was very excited for last Thursday’s Nighttrap event. We began with the 1992 interactive film, I’m Your Man, from Interfilm Technologies. Originally released in theaters, I’m Your Man allows the audience to make decisions through the Interfilm Systems “joysticks” embedded in the theater seats. The first few decisions of the film involve choosing between following Jack, Leslie, or Richard. Initially, you get a fragmented view of the characters and their relationships with one another. It isn’t until the three perspectives converge at the party that the more linear narrative begins. At this point, the choices relate more to specific characters’ actions than to choosing which perspectives to follow. I enjoyed the film and am somewhat surprised it wasn’t more popular as a format. Interfilm went on to produce two more interactive films, but fell apart by 1996.
The past 10 years marked a comeback of interactive media with Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, and Choose Love. However, Netflix has removed all interactive titles (including the Netflix Stories game app) as they pivoted away from interactive programming. I was shocked by these decisions, as our media becomes increasingly personalized to us each day through algorithms. With AI, the future of media will be even more interactive, automatically generating the stories people want to see.
Reality TV presents an exciting frontier for interactive programming and narrative-driven video games. The only thing better than watching Love Island is causing chaos in the villa yourself. There are some narrative mobile games based on reality TV shows, but they offer minimal agency, and you are forced to be a particular character. In the next 10 years we will get even better versions of these games, and they will be huge.
I also really like interactive media. Reading this post reminded me a lot of video game streamers and improv groups—both involve creating an entertaining narrative with audience interaction. That being said, a key aspect of all the things you listed and my examples are that they were made by people for people. I don’t think we should look forward to or celebrate a world where we take the people out of story creation, so the idea of AI “automatically generating the stories people want to see” seems rather bleak. AI is great at consistently producing average work. Nothing more, but oftentimes less. If we want interactive media, we should push for things that are worth interacting with.
Looking back from early interactive experiments like I’m Your Man to where interactive media has gone more recently, it’s truly wild how ahead of its time that theater setup was. I think you are right. The idea of shaping reality TV chaos yourself feels like exactly what people would line up for. I also agree that with AI automatically generating narratives people want to see, media would be more interactive in the future. But this is sort of concerning. I still appreciate something created by humans more, though it would probably be difficult to distinguish between something AI made or human made.