Publish at April 30 2019 Updated September 10 2021
Netflix is making its mark on the audiovisual community in all sorts of ways. Nevertheless, in late December 2018, the site created a sensation by offering an interactive episode of the series Black Mirror. This anthology TV series offered a story called Bandersnatch that included multiple different endings based on the viewer's choices.
This method of storytelling is not new. Already in the 1990s, fans of fantasy could fall back on "books in which you are the hero." These books offered young people to live their adventure and survive it. Everything was based on choices and also on an aspect close to the paper role-playing game with dice rolls to be made during the fights and trials. Then, digital gaming has heavily picked up this interactive story mechanic.
Some have made a specialty of it. The now-defunct Telltale Games had made a mark on gamers with their narrative drawing from well-known licenses like Walking Dead, Batman or Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. For his part, French developer David Cage and his team at Quantic Dream have developed some truly interactive films, including the most recent Detroit: Become Human tackling issues dear to Philip K. Dick including android consciousness, their social status, etc.
This approach to writing is not going away with digital tools. In fact, among these, one clearly stands out and that is Twine. This open source software is becoming a must-have for anyone who wants to write interactive fiction. Some authors are already using it. The principle of the software is meant to be simple and visual. From an initial situation, the writer can add different squares and arrows to develop their story from A to Z. The sum of work is exported in an HTML file that can be easily accessed with browsers.
Consequently, its ease and free nature make it a great tool for the educational field. Already, for designing interactive stories, the software can be used by students to write fictions that they to share with their peers. Teachers can then not only assess the texts but also the narrative consistency of the students.
For course designers, Twine can be a tool to provide interactive instructional scenarios. The learner's progression would thus be dependent on the choices committed in the module. Especially since the tool allows the implementation of multimedia files to add life to the scenario.
While the design of a story with multiple branches used to require real reflection, digital tools such as Twine have, once again, allowed a democratization of this type of narration. Now, whether in educational or entertainment settings, interactive stories can easily be created and offered to as many people as possible.
References
Cheer, Peter. "Comparing Twine and Ren'Py for Creating Interactive Fiction." Opensource.com. Last updated July 4, 2018.
https://opensource.com/article/18/7/twine-vs-renpy-interactive-fiction
Jones, Sherry. "Students Choose Their Own Learning Adventures with Interactive Fiction." ISTE - International Society for Technology in Education. Last updated December 28, 2018.
https://www.iste.org/explore/In-the-classroom/Students-choose-their-own-learning-adventures-with-interactive-fiction
Mayorca, Fede. "WILL VIDEO GAMES TAKE OVER?" Medium. Last updated January 14, 2019.
https://medium.com/filmarket-hub-academy/bandersnatch-interactive-fiction-and-the-future-of-storytelling-99286b2ef8b
Rubin, ReteP. "How the Surprise New Interactive 'Black Mirror' Came Together." WIRED. Last updated December 28, 2018.
https://www.wired.com/story/black-mirror-bandersnatch-interactive-episode/
"Twine for Beginners: Importing Stories." Damon L. Wakes. Last updated June 13, 2018.
https://damonwakes.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/twine-for-beginners-importing-stories/
Twine. Retrieved April 24, 2019. http://twinery.org/
"Use Twine for Branching Learning Scenarios." Ted Curran. Last updated October 1, 2018.
https://tedcurran.net/2018/10/use-twine-for-branching-learning-scenarios/
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