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Kids Interactive Adventure trailer from Netflix.
Kids Interactive Adventure trailer from Netflix.
The streaming service announced an ambitious experiment in interactive storytelling today with the children's programs Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile. The shows, which offer thousands of permutations, bring the "choose your own adventure" format to internet TV and make every one of Netflix's 100 million subscribers the director. (Puss in Book is available today, while Buddy lands on July 14th.)
It helps that Netflix can do pretty much anything it wants with its original programming. Shows need not startor endat a given time, or follow a prescribed format. That provides tremendous creative latitude, something that Carla Fisher, director of product innovation, says led Netflix execs to wonder, What could we do with that?"
These "branching narratives" follow two years of tinkering and work like this: at certain, predetermined points in the story, Netflix pauses the tale and offers you a choice. Should Puss (yes, that's Puss from Shrek) befriend the bears he just encountered, or fight them? Your choice dictates his next move, and changes the arc of the story.
Puss in Book offers viewers 13 opportunities to shape the story, which features two possible endings. You can wrap things up in as little as 18 minutes, or as long as 39. There are three thousand possible permutations of how the story could go, Fisher saysas well as a heated debate about whether there could be thousands more.
If that's a bit much, Buddy Thunderstruck will provide eight opportunities to make a decision, an average length of 12 minutesalong with an ending that loops back through. You could stay in Buddy forever, Fisher says, laughing. The story worlds are really up to the creators imaginations.