Recently i've been hearing alot about interactive television, ITV for short. When i think interactive television i think of interactive storytelling. Here, I would imagine a kindergarten teacher in a room full of students at story time. The teacher proceeds telling the story of The Three Little Pigs.
As the teacher goes on telling the story, the students add in their own little commentary. Gasping as the wolf blows down house 1. They are completely immersed in the story, imagining they are inside the house with the pigs, looking out their straw and stick windows at this scary wolf about to eat them.
The kids yell, run, pig, run. Or, fight the wolf little pig.
This is the form of story telling we are used to, a movie with a linear storyline, a book with a specific beginning and a specific end. The interactive television of today expands upon storytelling, but not to the point of interactivity.
If you apply todays ITV mindset to to the Three Little Pigs, you get this strange sort of storytelling that allows the kids to choose the fate of the pigs by voting whether they get away from the wolf or not. The straw pig votes 5 to 9 the pig survives. The wolf gets a nice meal, then proceeds to blow down and eat pig number 2. Pig 3's house doesnt get blown down, naturally, because its brick, but in the hands on the kindergarteners, the wolf sneaks in through the chimney.
Its true, that the second form of storytelling adds a certain amount of interactivity, but is the story really more interesting, or is it just something we find more interesting because its not the same story we all heard as kids? The problem with this form of interactivity is that nothing really changes. Its still the same story, with a beginning and an end, the only difference is that the end is slightly mutilated.
Now, what i imagine as true interactivity, is that which has some sort of control, yet is completely out of control. It feeds on the personalities of each person who is immersed in its story and makes them part of the universe. With the live or die approach, the story stays the same only because the characters never change. The fate of the characters change, but not the characters themselves.
Imagine now, the same kindergarten class, the same students, the same teacher. The wolf is hungry again, and ready for some pork. He goes off on his little trek to find the pigs, but before he finds them, a student yells out, "oops, he took a wrong turn". So the wolf continues on his path, the wrong path, until another student says, "look!, theres a house.". The wolf doesnt recognize this house, so he considers going up to and and blowing on the house anyhow. Because, of course, 90% of houses are full of pigs anyhow, theres a good change he'll have a nice meal. He huffs and puffs and blows the house away. A student yells out "theres a dragon!". Uh oh, the wolf thinks. Then puff, he's blown away by a huge dragons fiery breath. The dragon takes it all in and decides to go off and find some new building materials. A student yells out "The pigs are all building houses!". So the dragon takes flight and looks for three little pigs. He sees them and a proceeds to blow fire at all three houses, burning down the first two, naturally, and simply bouncing off the third. A student yells out "Now the pigs are roasted". The pigs indeed are roasted, but the dragon isnt hungry, he takes all the bricks from the third pigs house and brings them back to rebuild his house, better and stronger. Seeing the dragon come back with a brick house, the wolf decides to go take a look and find out where the bricks came from. When he gets there, he finds a sobbing pig and 2 other roasted pigs. A student yells out "Eat a pig!", so the wolf eats a roasted pig. Another student replies "No, he's too full now". Another student, "the other pig will eat one". So the pig and the wolf proceed to sit and eat their fellow pigs and have a nice dinner, until the dragon gets back, that is.
That tends to be a rather different outcome, but in the sense of interactivity, its a more true-to the source type of interactive storytelling. This type of storytelling represents things that have existed for years already. You'd recognize it as a form of adLibs, or actor improv.
This form of interactivity is already being practiced in the entertainment industry. It exists in the form of video games (such as Fable, or Grand Theft Auto), and live shows like "Who's line is it anyway".
The question that needs to be answered is... How do we play catch up in the film industry? Do we even try? Should we eventually stray away from interactive movies? Will they get boring? How can we keep them from getting boring?
Bottom line is... voting to change tracks in the storyline is cool, but interactive tv can do better than that. Lets raise the bar and figure out how we can make tv truly interactive.