Kliuless #17: Bandersnatch, a Black Mirror on the Fourth Wall

Bandersnatch's plot is centered around a choose-your-own-adventure novel and game of the same title, and the creators brilliantly designed the experience to easily nudge users to want to explore the other branching narratives

Whenever a user reaches the end of a specific branch, Netflix rewinds back to the most recent user-given choice that could fork into an alternative ending

This process repeats, going further upstream the user's decision tree each time, until the user exhausts all significant endings

However, unlike Eko or Mosaic, Netflix never reveals "the man behind the curtain," wisely choosing to keep the skeleton structure of the actual decision tree and the choices made hidden throughout the whole experience to avoid overwhelming the user

What Bandersnatch does instead to refresh users' memories when returning to a fork is quickly playback a recap sequence of key scenes and decisions that have led up to that fork

However, the biggest problem to a solution like this is that over time these recaps can easily feel repetitive and boring

The Stanley Parable developers faced this same problem, and mitigated some of their early game triteness by injecting randomly generated events to occasionally delight players

In a similar vein, the Bandersnatch creators have cleverly sprinkled Easter eggs and other surprises not just in the recaps, but throughout the entire experience, motivating users to continue exploring other branches

Incentivizing greater "completion" of the narrative is important because anything that goes unseen in the other branches results in lower efficiency from a return on investment perspective (note that Netflix likely incorporates user engagement into its definition of "return")

All of Bandersnatch's novel two-way interactions demand from Netflix's otherwise "lean back" audience that they must instead "lean in" for this experience

In requiring continuous interactivity with its audience, the applications of this new-form entertainment are inherently more limited in fiction due to the incessant breaking of the fourth wall

The Bandersnatch writers understood this well, and opted to not just dent, but wholly obliterate the fourth wall in multiple ways throughout the various branching scenarios

Though it may be a bit gimmicky at times, it works well for Bandersnatch, partially because of its unique self-referencing plot and partially just because it is Netflix's first. Time will tell how successful subsequent offerings can be with or without the fourth wall

In fact, simultaneous usage of TV and digital devices has grown to the point where now 45% of Americans say they always or very often "second-screen"

As an aside, my biggest disappointment with Bandersnatch was the inability to Chromecast it on TV and control the narrative with a phone, but I would imagine that Netflix would add this functionality eventually if it opts for continued interactive media investment