Interactive Narrative and Engagement for Indian Content

It was fall of 2017. I was on a trip to the US to learn about achievements of academia in the field of communication. I was walking down the Hollywood Street and received a mail from the President of MICA, checking with me if I could attend Future of Storytelling Summit with the Dean of MICA in New York. I could not have denied this recommendation. I immediately said yes and registered myself for the summit. The summit was hosted by The Future of Storytelling University, in Staten Island, New York.

I reached the other side of Staten Island, downtown New York for the ferry service by around 7:30 am. I was all excited about the first presentation. Steven Soderbergh was invited to talk about his latest version of interactive narrative Mosaic. Mosaic was made ahead of David Slade’s much acclaimed Bandersnatch, a standalone film of Black Mirror. The audience was jam packed. Many present in that room were going to witness interactive narrative for the first time. It was around 9:30 when he started discussing about the narrative. How he thought of empowering the viewer with this narrative, which has multiple ends. Mosaic is a murder mystery starring Garrett Hedlund and Sharon Stone, written by Ed Solomon. Typically the narrative was divided into six episodes culminating into multiple decision making nodes that a viewer has to choose from. In other way it gives the viewer a feeling that he or she is in command of the narrative. For all practical purposes the viewer here decides the way how the narrative would flow. I was quite impressed with the presentation.

When I was heading back to New Jersey where I stayed for a week, I kept thinking about how empowering it would be for a consumer. Few obvious takeaways from the Mosaic experiment were that it (1) empowered the consumer (2) it gave the viewer a feeling of being involved in decision making (3) to an extent it gave a feeling of “I am in command” to the normal consumer. So was this the first time an interactive narrative was tried? I was trying to remember who was experimenting back in time on interactive narratives? And Dashrath Patel crossed my mind. He was my neighbor and an ace designer from India. Dashrath had introduced me to Kinoautomat (1967), which is documented as world’s first interactive film. The film was conceived by Radúz Činčera for an expo in Montreal, Canada. Interestingly in that film at nine different points the film would stop and the performer would come on stage and ask the audience to choose, which direction the film should go forward. Out of two options, whatever majority of them chose, the film would move that direction. I remembered everything that Dashrath had described. Unfortunately he passed away in 2010, he would have been very happy to see Mosaic. Technologies and inventions take a lot of time before they become a matter of mass consumption. After Mosaic came Bandersnatch. Again it was talked about by several forums. People find a lot of potential in interactive narratives.

I have been observing my ten year old son Vitaan heavily into gaming. I checked with my elder son Taapas if a lot of Vitaan’s friends are on gaming consoles. He categorically told me, almost all his friends are on PlayStation or Xbox. There is some sort of similarity between interactive narratives and gaming. The most common things are too many possibilities and the consumer in control of the narrative. India is a country of narratives. We are endowed with influx of content with so many OTT players and television channels in the country. We have the access to the technology, however someone needs to take the first big step. I see a lot of potential in interactive narratives for younger audiences culminating into engaging games like Fortnite. This is a new world. The interactive content is addictive. We have been content addicts as TV consumers. OTT platforms have been giving strong signals of consumption in recent times. This is the time when a player with knowledge of consumer insights of India and repository of television content comes forward and creates a new language for content consumption. Gaming is one of the highest growing segment in the Media and Entertainment industry of India. Paradigms of interactivity need to be broken into actionable items that could bring engaging narratives to the next level. I would not be surprised if I end up seeing a Crime Thriller on an Indian OTT platform in an interactive narrative format, culminating into a game which I can play online through an additional app download or a gaming console tie up, where the leader board would push me to consume new seasons of content on the OTT platform to be able unlock ample of new reward points. Future is everything!!!