The Infancy of Interactive Live-streaming
The first live streaming platform that truly took the spotlight of the public was Twitch, a streaming website primarily used for video game streaming, and has created millionaires out of some of the very streamers who helped raise it to its peak. The boom of video game watching game in the early 2010s, which saw the likes of PewDiePie, Markiplier, and Jacksepticeye soaring in the ranks of subscriber counts and view totals. This is even when PewDiePie became the most subscribed to YouTube channel, a title he held for a jaw-dropping five years. Naturally, when people like watching their favorite YouTuber’s play video games in highlight form, that would create quite an audience to watch them play live online. However, as innovation continued, so did the demand for live-streaming, both based on audience and on content complexity. So, the next logical step is interactive streaming, and the potential that it has to affect the world of digital narratives carries an impact that would re-shape the way people interact with media.
The advent of interactive streaming has come at a slower pace than many other digital narratives like it. The biggest example of interactive streaming has been the mobile game called HQ. It is essentially a game show in which users are the contestants. Those who want to play can log in at specific times throughout the day, once in the morning and once at night, and compete against everyone else who has logged in for a pot of money that the winners will split. However, just recently HQ has announced that they will be ceasing all operations after losing funding. A game that once was a juggernaut is now seeing its downfall only two and a half years after its meteoric rise. This begs the question, does interactive streaming just not have a place in modern society? Is the growing demand for instant gratification just not matching up with the commitment that can be demanded of from streaming itself? Interactive streaming’s biggest trophy has already fallen before anything else can really step up and take its place, so then what’s next? The answer is not exactly what many would think.
An article from a blog in 2017 lists some ideas on how live-streaming could be used to share stories as they are happening, some of which are streaming during events, backstage, from the field, or during interviews. However, the one that caught my eye was a “live video series.” This is how streaming will continue to grow, and this is the next stop on it’s journey.
While not yet accomplished by anyone (or at least to an extent that has captivated the public), the idea of a fictional series shot entirely during a live stream will change the way that people look at digital media, and will stretch far passed than just the industry of digital narrative. It will affect the groundwork of how stories are told.
The first mainstream example that we have seen begin to go in this direction is the Netflix special Bandersnatch. This was an interactive movie that was entirely based on the decisions of the viewer. Each storyline was entirely dictated by who was watching. In one storyline, the main character kills his father and is inevitably caught by police, while in another the same character realizes he has actually just been a part of a Netflix television special this entire time, bringing it to an entirely new level of meta. While this was in no way live performed, this set the foundation for what will eventually become the primary way people consume media.
Bandersnatch was a societal marvel not seen in the same facet before, and it goes much deeper than many even realized. When a key decision is made in the show, it not only gives the audience the opportunity to experiment with different choices, but it allows the audience to be in the shoes of the main character, in a sense allowing the two to become one. Just watching a story unfold, especially a well crafted one, has the effect of putting the audience into the shoes of the main character. Bandersnatch blew old media out of the water when it comes to user engagement. User engagement is a novelty in film. In interactive live streaming, it’s a requirement. If you don’t interact, you just simply are not correctly experiencing it. That would be like turning on a movie, then sitting on your phone the entire time (which happens quite often, and is the reason that interactive media is going to dominate the landscape soon enough.)
Live streaming is still in its infancy, essentially just being live television that people can also chat on the side during. However, the idea of being able to do a “choose your own adventure” story entirely live is opening up a whole new world for creators. It would allow streamers to create stories that blend the worlds of fact and fiction, or of video games and reality. The audience at large would decide all the character decisions by vote, having the same effect of Bandersnatch in which the creator and the consumer begin to blend, but this time creating an even more in depth emersion as these activities are taking place in real time somewhere in the world.
As stated earlier, nothing of the sort has come to live streaming just yet, but the success of Bandersnatch has corporations seeing dollar signs in their eyes. Even despite the fact that HQ is now closed, it still cashed in while it was relevant.
Whether we like it or not, interactive streaming is coming. It is only a matter of time before it is here, and is all around us. Engagement is far and away the most important thing when people create something. No one creates an advertisement if they don’t want people to see it. No one writes a book if they don’t want people to read it. No one shoots a movie if they don’t want people to eventually watch it. Engagement has never been a given when it comes to old media. Now, the price of entry is engagement. The only way to be a part of the experience is to engage with it. You can keep reading and not retain the information, or watch a movie and not remember anything about it. With interactive media, you are the only reason that it keeps going. Once you start it, it is going to be absorbed, engaged with, acknowledged, and talked about more than any medium before it based off the simple predication that it will garner the most thought from the viewer. As the great Thanos once said, “one way or another, destiny arrives.” One way or another, streaming is arriving, and if you choose to interact with it, then you will engage with it.
