Interactive Web Series: The concept of Interactive Web Series started becoming popular since last year with the launch of Netflix's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Black Mirror Bandersnatch is an interactive film which was launched in December 2018. Due to its different concept, this Netflix original became popular, it offered consumers a new way to influence the entertainment they are watching.
It simply means that viewers are able to control or choose the storyline of the character with the choices that they make, each choice leads to a different adventure. The main highlighting point in this concept is that viewers aren't watching these interactive films just once, rather they are watching them over and over again to find each ending of the show.
Interactive storytelling sounds like a hot new category for the future of web series, but let's be clear with the fact that interactive content has existed for decades - we just call them video games. Games are fully interactive, with users making every possible decision within an experience. Well talking about the interactive tv shows, it takes some serious thinking for the writers of the show to plan out all the different scenarios. There can be small choices like what a character eats for breakfast and some big ones like which direction to take.
There has been sudden increase in the investment in interactive movies and web series, more and more producers are willing to make interactive tv shows. The main reason behind all this is technology. Until recently, production of multiple storylines was extremely difficult, TVs and movie theaters didn't have the necessary user interface for real time viewer input. With the software development, advance technology it is now possible for storytellers to produce interactive content and to engage more and more viewers.
With the rising popularity of this interactive concept, it can be said that there will be more interactive movies. I anticipate different genres of web series will explore interactive formats. Imagine playing through historical fiction this sounds too much fun! After the raging success of Netflix's original interactive film Black Mirror Bandersnatch, Google owned YouTube is now working on interactive web series and live specials. YouTube has already experimented with interactive advertisements, but interactive programming with multiple storylines requires a far larger investment to ensure choice load. Netflix has built technology that remembers the choices users make over the course of a story.
The project is under the supervision of Ben Relles, former head of YouTube's unscripted programming. To keep the story flow smooth, the different storylines are made to intersect at certain points, resulting in different potential endings for a single web series, which once started, cannot be paused, rewinded or forwarded. The details about an interactive show or series by YouTube remain unclear as of now.
One major hurdle to interactive web series is the increased cost and time consumption. This type of content present unique challenges for creators who must develop multiple storylines for the same web series, this extra work increases the cost of producing the content, making it a bigger gamble for companies.
Due to the cost and complexity, it's likely that most interactive content is shorter or of movie length which makes amortizing costs once again difficult. Some people are against interactive web series/movies they argue that the beauty of normal movie is that the viewers cannot control those characters, sometimes interactivity of tv shows ruin the quality of writing as writers have to write multiple endings. Another major issue is that most of the viewers don't have devices or equipments on which interactive web series run, as interactive web series runs only on advance level of televisions or mobiles.
So still there are lot of challenges in the way of interactive storytelling, the future is bright but the roadmap is full of hurdles and uncertainties, hence it is still unclear that if interactive web series are the "future of web series".
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