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Netflix is basically remaking all of TV now
- amelius 8y agoI'm still waiting for shows where the plot can be changed on demand.
- Fnoord 8y agoThere 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.
- tonysdg 8y agoStar 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.
- Fnoord 8y agoHaven'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.
- tonysdg 8y agoYeah, 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.
- icebraining 8y agoInteractive 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.
- comboy 8y agoI 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.
- pinum 8y agoThis 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.
- icebraining 8y agoThat'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.
- dominotw 8y agoIsn't it basically video games?
- koolba 8y agoSo "Twitch writes Game of Thrones"?
- nopreserveroot 8y agoThat sounds like some Fahrenheit 451 type shit.
- borne0 8y agoRummage through some bins at goodwill for some FMV PC games from the early 90s and you'll be set!
- remir 8y agoI 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.
- bmelton 8y agoCall 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.
- chc 8y agoObviously 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.
- basset 8y agoNetflix actually does have interactive titles. Search for "Puss in Book" on their website.
- Raphael 8y agoThat's called a game!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- whataretensors 8y agoI believe we will see the democratization of content creation with AI.
- baby 8y agoTwitch shots a tv show
- stordoff 8y agoThat's basically what Late Shift tried to do: http://lateshift-movie.com/ http://lateshift-movie.com/
- Can_Not 8y agoI 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.
- bmelton 8y ago> It can play with the structure to make the shows work better for its ad-free format I think people underrate how big this is from a creator perspective. As viewers, we typically appreciate when work is uninterrupted by commercials (though some shows are more forgiving of them than others), but to my understanding, it's quite difficult as a creative to segment your work out into 12-14 minute segments, constantly building up enough momentum that people will be riveted through the commercial long enough to stick around, and then having to ensure enough recap is done after the break that it doesn't break the narrative flow.
- S_A_P 8y agoThis times 100000000000000e100000
- magicalhippo 8y agoThis is one of the reasons I prefer Netflix-only shows, where the episodes aren't filled with contrived cliffhangers just for the sake of trying to hang on to viewers during ad breaks. Instead episodes usually feel much more like short movies, with proper pacing and reveals.
- christoph 8y agoSomething I'm glad they've taken advantage of is having episodes in a series with totally different runtimes - e.g. Master of None, episode lengths range between 22 mins & 58 mins. It really frees up the writing & directing to have more room to breathe.
- noir_lord 8y agoFor me it's the 5 minute recap, 5 minute content, 5 minute break, 5 minute recap loop on most shit.
- c22 8y agoThey just stick the contrived cliffhangers on the end of each "episode" instead.
- Gorbzel 8y agoProblem is, this spam the market approach yields a lot of crap content. I realize this is anecdotal (feel free to ignore), but most times I open Netflix and go through almost everything they feature on the home screen...before turning it off because there isn’t anything that looks good.
- jhall1468 8y agoSo, you look at a bunch of book covers you don't like and call it "crap content". I can't even count the number of Netflix shows/movies that the description didn't look all that appealing and the show absolutely was wonderful. Chef's Table was probably the biggest example. It looks like a cooking show. In reality is a beautiful documentary series about how world-renown chef's made their way. Don't judge a book by its cover.
- fabianhjr 8y agoBlack Mirror has gone downhill in an effort to create a mass audience. (Mostly the fourth season) What they do is create "hit" content that is very consumable not necessarily great or timeless. "We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art" ~ Ursula K. Le Guin That said, their documentary productions are way better than the crap Discovery, History Chanel, et al. have been producing this past decades or so.
- baq 8y agoExactly. My guess is that's why they passed on The Expanse - it's a great story that is absolutely impossible for the majority to watch because it actually requires you to look up from your phone and pay attention. That's also why sense8 got the axe.
- jhall1468 8y agoSense8 got axed because it was a $1 million niche show. The same reason they passed on The Expanse. at $700k an episode. They are both wonderful television, but the masses want Survival so that's the garbage we get. At least Netflix and HBO still show actual TV.
- rayiner 8y agoNetflix is an amazing testament to the fact that copyright does promote the creative arts. It started out as a mere middle man service trying to make a cut in the transaction between content creator and content consumer. But show and movie providers realized the true value of what they were licensing to Netflix, forcing Netflix to create its own, new content. The result is the best, most competitive market in television shows in American history. Netflix never would’ve done all this if (a) they could easily just stream other peoples’ content, and (b) other people could easily stream their content. Instead, the logical business play would’ve been trying to leverage network effects and lock in to keep consumer eyeballs on their service instead of a competing service.
- mbroncano 8y agoHunger is a wonderful incentive for creativity and invention, and nobody would argue hunger is desirable.
- kbutler 8y agoThat's an interesting perspective. I've never heard the argument that copyright promotes progress by making works inaccessible, thereby forcing new creations.
- jhall1468 8y agoI think copyright has largely always been considered a good thing. The reason it's talked about derisively is that it's basically become infinite thanks to the likes of Disney. It was never intended to live that long.
- transfire 8y agoNot actually all that happy about this. They were striving for quality at first but now it's given way to quantity. I think the turning point for me is when they canceled Marco Polo. I no longer could count of Netflix to be better than the other guys, by allowing a show to come to a natural enjoyable conclusion. There is nothing worse than a show that ends mid-story. I simply don't bother to get involved in any show anymore unless I know it has had its due run.
- ghaff 8y agoThere was a lot of narrative at first around data-driven decisions etc. As far as I can tell Netflix and Amazon have realized it’s mostly a game of darts, data it not. They don’t have to cater to mainstream tastes as much as the networks. But picking hit shows still seems like a crapshoot.
- alexashka 8y agoIt's true - Netflix is the new television. I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before there are ads, the price goes up a lot or it gets split up into 'channels' where you'd have to pay separately for separate set of content. Another thing I think that's coming, is Netflix adding daily shows like the Jimmy Fallon show or Ellen. It seems like a no brainer - they're trying it out with David Letterman monthly series, and it's doing very well as far as I can tell.
- deft 8y agoHere's how I see it: Netflix and other streaming services are recreating all of cable now. It's not a good thing, just wait. Networks moved to the current cable model because its the most profitable. Netflix disrupted that in the same way Uber disrupted Taxis, now they're both becoming what they sought to change.
- a_imho 8y agoI don't get the appeal of streaming and find Netflix shows mediocre at best. It could very well be just my personal preference but I find HBO shows much better.
- baq 8y agoHBO also does streaming, so I don't get your point. If it's just 'most stuff on Netflix is cheaply made crap', that's a fact the article more or less states in it's body. That said, the expensive things are quite good, if rare.
- a_imho 8y agoI prefer cable and don't bother with streaming, period (I'm not even sure their streaming services are available here to their full extent, mind), thus Netflix as a service is completely irrelevant to people like me. Second, the description fits my experiences with Netflix quality quite well, so I don't really care about them as a producer either, regardless of the platform.
- aaronblohowiak 8y agoSeems like this might be a good time to mention that we're hiring! My team works on availability and latency optimization through global demand distribution and ensuring sufficient scaling.. If you are a Sr SWE or SRE, ping me! Lots of other jobs open, too: jobs.netflix.com. /shameless plug
- local_yokel 8y agoWell, they're certainly not doing anything differently than traditional producers when it comes to taking the axe to shows after just 1 or 2 seasons. Whenever I see a new Netflix show released, which seems to be just about every week now, the first thing that comes to mind is "even if I like this, will there actually be a second season?". This degrades the time investment of immersing yourself in a show's characters and storytelling.
- scarface74 8y agoNetflix shows also don't force their producers to make 18+ episodes a season that draw out plots. There are lot of serialized TV shows that would be better with shorter seasons.