Understanding Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Through Playing The Sims
If you’ve played the ultimate life simulation game, you’ll be able to predict your choices.
In case you’ve been living under an internet-blackout rock: Black Mirror released a special interactive episode on Netflix a week ago. I included the trailer, which dropped the day before the episode did, on my weekly round-up here:
The episode allows viewers to make decisions for the main character, Stefan, played by Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead, as he navigates the programming of a game back in 1984.
It’s trippy stuff, and it involved a ton of out-out-the-box thinking, both in terms of tech, and the story itself. Netflix even released a couple of featurettes about it.
Of course, the question then is,
Does it work?
After all, you don’t want it to be a matter of Jurassic Park-esque
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
(that’s still one of my favourite quotes of all time, by the way.)
A straight review
For a formal, spoiler-free review, you can check out Dan Owen’s lovely handiwork:
I just want to pull out one quote from that review that really spoke to me, and that was:
“It’s all very clever and achieves its aims, but there’s often a nagging feeling you’ve made terrible choices and the story might have been better otherwise.”
My own experience watching/playing this episode:
I was so uncomfortable that it made me want to crawl out of my skin.
(which sounds like the effect Black Mirror always has on me, so I guess they succeeded in that sense.)
Depending on which path you unwittingly choose, the decisions you have to make differ. That means that, while there were some seemingly innocent choices, like what cereal to eat, there were also some truly awful decisions you had to make (yes, murder is involved).
Since I wasn’t watching it alone, though, that experience didn’t belong solely to me, and I got to see my loved ones making decisions I would never have made in a million years.
And that’s how we got to The Sims.
This show made me think about a(nother) game that was famous for its ability to simulate experiencing a character’s life:
In The Sims, you create this entire world, sandbox-style, and get to control almost every single variable that happens to your characters.
That is different from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, where the premise is laid out for you (yes, we could have used more recent interactive story games, such as Heavy Rain or The Wolf Among Us (RIP, Telltale Games), but The Sims is still more popular and more well-known).
However, I have noticed a few similarities between players (both former and current) of The Sims and viewers of Bandersnatch.
1) If you were laissez-faire with your Sims, you’re going to have a hard time choosing for Stefan
I was quite easygoing when I played The Sims as a teenager; most of my characters were created using the ‘random’ selection, then customised slightly to look ‘more normal’.
Most of my families hence ended up looking like, well, my own, and I generally let the Sims make their own decisions when it came to school, jobs, etc.
(I was only particular about the design of the house, which I created using all the cheat codes I could find.)
I only interfered when it came to
(1) not starving,
(2) going to work on time,
(3) romantic relationships + baby-making
Because of this, I was paralysed by the number of choices I had to make for Bandersnatch.
What do you mean I have to keep choosing?
Why don’t they tell me what the default answer is?
Wait but what if it’s the wrong answer?
What kinda choice is “Yes!” or “Fuck Yeah?!”
FUCK I don’t want to choose anymore!
I just want Stefan to be okay!!
At some point, I actually threw my phone across the bed to my boyfriend and refused to continue choosing.
Speaking of evil answers, though…
2) If you killed your Sims, you’re going to choose the evil route for Stefan
One fact that will always remain true about The Sims:
It follows that theory about two types of people in the world.
You will either be:
(A) supremely concerned about your Sims having a good life and doing things properly, or
(B) finding 300 ways to murder your Sims.
And if you are type A, like me, you will spend the entire episode of Bandersnatch trying to figure out how to save poor Stefan by making better choices.
If you’re type B, like my boyfriend, you will look at the two choices available and then decide to choose ‘branching-pathway symbol that represents continued mental breakdown’ over ‘Netflix’.
3) If you tried to redo each moment of your Sims life, you will rewatch Bandersnatch again and again.
Did you rewatch Bandersnatch, again and again, to try and get another result?
If that’s the case, this is how you feel about Bandersnatch:
The Sims came before Bandersnatch
In the end, what I learnt from comparing The Sims and Bandersnatch is that we don’t change very much in our lives, especially when it comes to our choices for fictional characters.
Considering that The Sims was released in 2000 when I was a child, and Bandersnatch came out last week, it says a lot about the immutable nature of our imaginations.
I will always look for the happy ending, while others will seek out depressing shows (and novels, too) that teach them about the fragility of life.
