So we just finished exploring the interactive movie experience that is Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. We always look forward to new Black Mirror content and this interactive movie episode certainly had us curious as to what the team would accomplish with this sort of a medium. The result was a fairly fun meta-narrative that made nice use of the interactive element to elevate above the level of a gimmick.
But what is a little annoying is how people keep talking about this as a revolutionary experience or some sort of innovation for the genre, which may not necessarily be the case. First of all, the movie itself is set in the era of PC adventure games, which is one of the oldest interactive digital story formats out there and one that will always be close to my heart. And Tobie has dredged up a few examples of prior interactive movies and even interactive music videos to show that the success of this piece should not be about it being a pioneer of some sort.
In the end it's a well-executed story that makes good use of its own little story path journey and edited in a manner that leaves you with a pretty seamless entertainment experience. Now those merits are worth celebrating.
It would be nice if the success of this episode would somehow translate to increased interest in adventure games and other forms of interactive storytelling still out there, but I won't exactly hold my breath for that eventuality just yet. Companies like Telltale games died for many reasons, the chief among them are poor sales for adventure games of relative simplicity.
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