How to play Bandersnatch as a game, and what that means
From the artistic perspective I was wrong in thinking there can be a “true” path or ending. The makers of the artwork have explicitly and very clearly stated that there is no true ending and the multiple paths are all valid. Carla Engelbrecht, director of product innovation at Netflix, says it most bluntly about the Pearl ending, which I previous said was the real ending:
“It’s not the ‘real’ ending”
It doesn’t get much more stark than that! Charlie Brooker, the writer of the film and most of Black Mirror in general, says with similar brevity that “There’s no correct path”.
Annabel Jones has her own way of putting it that is more focused on the artwork.
“Hopefully, it seems they are all truthful to Stefan and keeps the whole experience in a cinematic feel, because there is one character and he is always truthful.”
She goes on to say
“It’s a little bit crude to think of it in terms of specific endings, because they could all co-exist[.] We tried to create it so that all of the endings make sense for Stefan. He would like a few of those experiences to come true. And then we want people to experience it and have their own emotional reactions.”
And lastly, elsewhere she says
“All of the ‘endings’ hopefully all build to one world in which Stefan has fallen into, and all of them make sense and are possible alternative, parallel universes for him.”
All in all (I won’t quote everyone but there are others), the entire team are united is eschewing the validity of one ending over another. They encourage us to chill out and allow the experience of it to dictate truth, and so to embrace it as a post-modern artwork. Part of this must be to bolster the credibility of a new and complex form of cinema. In order for all scenes to be of value, and so justify the full extent of the enterprise, all must be valid.
What they do not seem to realise, at least there is no evidence for it, is that it’s not about the ending per se and is rather about the two main connections to other Black Mirror symbols: the branching glyph and Tucker entity. That there is a connection is apparent, but the nature of the connection is very unclear.
There are many ways of watching Bandersnatch, several different perspectives from which you can approach. There are however other perspectives and I didn’t maybe appreciate this aspect fully when I penned my first article.
Read this from blogger Unfamous Eden H:
As a gamer, I went into Bandersnatch with the mindset that I needed to get the “true” ending […]
The writer goes on to say that the time travel / mother ending is the “true” ending. I disagree, as though it’s certainly the most neat, it involves time travel which breaks the known rules of the universe. Debate me on that if you will, but I maintain that it remains a very reasonable reading of physical laws.
However the point is not that disagreement, the point is that I too share that gamer mindset. I hadn’t realised this but that is where I, and I think many of the Reddit sleuths are coming from.
Then, to search for the good ending is to play this thing which we are not sure actually is a game as if it is a game. This is all the more striking when we consider the rather different focus the creators have on the artwork, as a slippery undefinable experience with uncertain subject and an uncertain source acting on that subject.
The game that I now realise I played with Bandersnatch was the game of playing it as a story-telling adventure which would reward me, I hoped, with narrative treasure. I would know this treasure by it making sense within the larger Black Mirror context. To be clear here, “context” does not mean that the narrative has to take place really in the world of any or all other worlds shown in Black Mirror episodes, but that it would explain the link of the core symbols. These symbols are the branching glyph and Tucker entity.
The game theorist and designer Ian Bogost puts forward the idea that it is by a process like this that meaning is generated from play. [1]
By embracing more limitations, a seemingly meaningless idea becomes a more meaningful experience. This paradox of play — the idea that fun arises from limiting freedoms rather than enhancing them — isn’t only true of board games or card games or playground games or video games. It can be found in any kind of material whatsoever.
If the imposition of external restraint hasn’t been effective, why not embrace its opposite: constraint, the adoption of controls and limitations from inside rather than outside a situation. Constraint has the flexibility to cover all forms of material construction across all media. Rules describe the internal logic of a system, but constraints delineate its edges, the membrane that contains these machines and separates them from other beings, creatures, devices, and experiences in the world. Constraints are the features that delimit both the system’s characteristics and the user’s possible actions.
[…] [T]he contents of a specific circumscription gives value, and how deliberately and seriously one treats the results.
When plainly stated, it is clear that to treat Bandersnatch as a game like this is different than treating it as a cinematic experience, or even as any other possible game. The constraint here which it is tempting for certain gamers to add, independently of one another and yet in loose coordination, is obvious to us now: play Bandersnatch as if it makes sense of it’s symbols.
This is why I still think the Pearl ending is the most interesting ending. As I said in a wonderful conversation with Redditor u/sheveqq, one of the reasons for this is that it contains the strongest hints for Bandersnatch to be coherent outside of itself, and thus a greater meaning. This search is inherently religious and so narrow minded, but it’s worth remembering that mythologising is the most epic form of storytelling. The completeness offered is singularly satisfying. To temper this is one of the great tasks of sci-fi, and I personally find there the deepest satisfaction.
I didn’t find this to really come up for me a viewer in the first four seasons. But now in Bandersnatch the glyph link to White Bear, and smaller ones to several others, is just to great to ignore. This is the “good” ending, the one in which we have more answers, yet more questions and contradictions, and the most links to the “outside world” of Black Mirror and even to real life.
I will delve into the links between these symbols, and how I intend to relate this to completing Stefan’s game, next time.
Non-link references
[1] pg 140, Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games, by Ian Bogost
