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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I'm still waiting for shows where the plot can be changed on demand.

Call me odd man out here, but I can't imagine wanting that. My input could probably improve a bunch of shows I consider 'bad', but if I think that, it's usually because of either lazy exposition or predictable plot lines. For shows I consider 'good', it's hard to imagine my input making them better, or on the chance that it did, it seems like it would ruin my enjoyment of it.

Past that, since democratizing the plot would almost certainly yield a regression to the lowest common denominator, it seems like a really fun way to ruin quality television.

Obviously you can't fix incompetent creators with options given to you by the creators, but I don't think that's the only possibility here. Ithink the most useful possibility for a technique like that would be a "customize your experience" kind of thing. Maybe some people want more action, while other people want more romance. There are shows right now struggling and failing to balance the disparate desires of their audience, and sometimes they'll miss the balance so badly that nobody's very happy. Allowing somebody to just click a "more pew pew now" button might actually benefit those shows. Possibly.

Interactive movies have been around for quite a while, and they work OK on DVDs, yet they never became very popular. Or, as far as I know, made for great works for art.

It's hard enough writing a single good plot, let alone multiple plots that have to branch from each other. Plus it's much more expensive (many more scenes filmed per show), and it kills the shared experience between viewers.

I thought he meant that the audience can vote on where do they want the plot to go. Only one story line would be recorded.

I like the idea, but I'm not sure people are able to tell in advance what will bring them the most entertainment.

This would be interesting as a one-off experiment, but in general I don't even want to know what's going to happen next never mind help decide it.

That's even harder, because it prevents shows from filming episodes in advance. TV series don't make each episode each week; they go to a location and might take scenes from episodes 5, 8 and 11 on a single day. Plus they need a buffer for when there are problems with an actor, or a set, or the weather, etc. And of course, it comes with its own plot writing challenges.

Maybe it could work for something with a small cast and with only studio locations, but even then it's a big risk.

There are some interactive games which basically allow for that albeit with limitations (not endless). I suppose an example is Mass Effect. But even a game like CoD single player is basically a story plus a FPS. Though its scripted with only one path, not multiple like you prefer.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (another Bioware IP) might be an even better example -- the story swings rather dramatically on how you play the game, with the potential to kill (or save) multiple characters.

You get 30+ hours of ad-free gameplay (that's > 60 half-hour TV shows), PLUS the chance to replay and experience a new story. (Good) RPGs are the best bang for your buck entertainment-wise.

Haven't played it (nor Mass Effect, actually) though heard good things about it. I have played SWTOR which is also BioWare and from what I heard from people who've played ME series you can feel that. If you play the class storylines, you end up with a more diverse MMORPG than something like WoW which is practically the same for every class -- until the last expansion, Legion, but still not comparable to SWTOR. SWTOR's user interface was laggy though (not sure if it still is) which made competitive PvP a joke. The raids were lackluster as well. But the stories, I can recommend those. Not to say the WoW storyline of Legion wasn't epic; but only once IMO. Not enough diversity.

Yeah, they dropped the ball a bit on SWTOR. I'd have loved to see a single-player KOTOR 3. Ah well, Bioware's slowly dying, so it's up to new companies to innovate on the stories.

I could see Netflix testing the water with a short interactive movie, but the complexity and cost of doing interactive TV shows must be quite high, especially if there's multiple episodes.

Isn't it basically video games?

I think this better as a video game (like Heavy Rain or Sam and Max). Otherwise, the effort to make a 2 hour movie would probably make a 10 minute choose your own adventure movie.

That's basically what Late Shift tried to do: http://lateshift-movie.com/

So "Twitch writes Game of Thrones"?

Rummage through some bins at goodwill for some FMV PC games from the early 90s and you'll be set!

Netflix actually does have interactive titles. Search for "Puss in Book" on their website.

I believe we will see the democratization of content creation with AI.

That's called a game!

That sounds like some Fahrenheit 451 type shit.

Twitch shots a tv show

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