“I hope you’ll find that ‘interactive’ becomes another genre, or approach, or style along the lines of a musical.” – Charlie Brooker
Netflix’s Black Mirror series has picked up two Emmy Nominations for its interactive episode “Bandsnatch”. The episode is nominated in both the “Outstanding Television Movie” and “Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media with a Scripted Program” categories.
The announcement came as part of the Emmy’s full nomination press release a couple of days ago and it’s worth noting that while many IF fans criticize “Bandersnatch” for not being exactly revolutionary in the interactive fiction space, it does mark the first time an interactive episode of mainstream fiction television has been nominated for an Emmy. Netflix’s You Vs. Wild was also nominated, but it fits more in the vein of reality tv and documentaries that generally see this kind of honor.
But what exactly are “Bandersnatch”‘s chances you you may ask. We think it has a chance to take the prize in the interactive media category, but it faces stiff competition in the Television Movie category including the recent Deadwood movie, and Brexit, both from HBO.
When asked how they felt about the noms, creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones saw some irony as it relates to the choose your path aesthetic:
“It’s quite funny, the irony of now people having to go away and vote on whether ‘Bandersnatch’ wins or doesn’t win is quite amusing,” Jones told TheWrap. “So the interactivity, the choose your own ending, takes on a whole new level.”
Brooker continued, saying, “It was always our ambition to focus on ‘Bandersnatch’ being a thrill, first and foremost, and obviously the interactivity is absolutely essential to the story and part of it. But we wanted this to engage with the characters in the story. So hopefully that’s why it’s got this nod at the moment.”
We’ll keep our eyes on the Emmy’s to see if Bandersnatch takes home any awards on the eve of September 14, 2019. If it does, it could only serve to solidify the trend towards more interactive programming to come from the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Eko and others in the future.
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StoryFix Media produces interactive fiction games and traditional novels. Our interactive sci-fi adventure The Pulse is out now. Our novels New Horizons and The Blue Moon are also available now.
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