Game designer Sam Barlow deserves a lot of credit for spearheading the “redemption” of FMVs. The full-motion video game format was developed in the early 90s as an innovative visual technique in a time when computer graphics were simpler.
But long before that, filmmakers were experimenting with ways to make films more interactive, both in theaters and on home DVDs. The effort had mixed success – until Black Mirror: Bandersnatch became a hit and at the same time justified the interactive format and nullify all future attempts.
As part of the release of our documentary The Big Game: The Making of Spycraftwe asked FMV fan (…and prolific podcaster… and former Polygon writer) Justin McElroy to sit down with Barlow and talk about the appeal of this strange genre and the way it has evolved throughout the history of entertainment has changed. The entire conversation can be found in the video above.
The Big Game: The Making of Spycraft Was recently nominated from the New York Videogame Critics Circle for a New York Game Award for Best Games Journalism. You can find out more about it the New York Game Awards and our fellow nominees here.
Sam Barlow: In the 90s there were a few movies with big plastic buttons. And they were just terrible.
Justin McElroy: I am your man is one that I know is on – you could get it on DVD. It was an interactive DVD, one of those things where you could make decisions at home with the remote control.
Barlow: There's this good talk, I think it's online – I think I want to say Brian Moriarty did it at NYU – about interactive films where he says, “Hey, people have been trying for ages , to do that.” And back to the early fake interactive films. William Castle, the great producer, made a film called “ Mr. Sardonicus. And the gimmick of that movie – because he loved his gimmicks – was that when you went to the cinema you got a big gift – maybe it was like a big hand or some kind of big prop. At the end of the film, the character turns to the audience, so we already establish that, and says, “Hey, what do you think? Should this big bad villain, Sardonicus, be punished or should we forgive him? Now you as the audience decide.” And everyone had to raise or lower their thing to signal whether they wanted to kill the guy. And one of the ushers would pretend to count the votes… and then disappear. And then the movie would play out and the ending you get would depend on the vote. Here's the thing: William Castle understood his audience. He knew the vote would always be a punishment. So it was a linear film. It was just a movie that waited three minutes and then went: The audience has decided to punish Mr. Sardonicus.
McElroy: Well, just in the last few weeks, Megalopolis was released with an interactive scene with an audience member asked to recite a line in the film. This is an interactive element.
Barlow: I still have yet to see this movie, but I have to say that the stuff I've seen looks like an interactive movie from the 90's. Like some of the rear projections, the CGI and certainly the performances.
McElroy: There are up to eight CDs.
Barlow: Jon Voight is exactly the kind of guy you would have cast in a 90s FMV back in the day.
McElroy: I think his CD had some scratches. Jon was having a hard time.
Barlow: They'd say, “Could we get some Hollywood talent in our FMV game?” And they'd say, “Well, Tom Cruise isn't returning our calls, but Jon Voight is down as long as we get some money for the Trump Donate to the campaign or something.”
McElroy: Do you wish more people would explore this space, this interactive cinema area? Do you feel like there's a lot of room for iteration and growth, or do you think it will remain some sort of subgenre or even some sort of branching medium between two different types of media?
Barlow: If I'm not cynical for a second, I'm very excited about the possibilities. And I think when Your story exploded, I had a lot of meetings with people in Hollywood and stuff, at a time when Netflix was kind of messing things up and a lot of people were like, Shit, we have to figure out how to do the digital thing. We need to figure out how to get gamers watching TV again. Because they don't. They're too busy with their phones, aren't they? And I thought That's really coolbecause I think there are so many interesting things that could be done on the – I would say TV side – compared to the gaming side. And the technology is kind of there, and I think there could be a big, interesting change that would create really interesting things.
How many years has it been then? – Almost 10 years ago I just saw Oh no, the world of Hollywood is so risk averse… I was told over and over again, ‘We don’t want to be number one.’ We want to be number two. Let someone else lay the foundation, then we can step in.” So I heard things like, “Well, you know what? When Steven Soderbergh comes out Mosaicthen the floodgates will open.”
Mosaic came out and didn't change anything. I think you're looking at it Bandersnatch and this is what came out [on Netflix] and I think that kind of killed a lot of these discussions because it was almost – if you tried to kill this movement, Bandersnatch was a great opportunity because it was very successful. The Hollywood mindset is: OK, let's repeat that. Well, wait a minute: it worked because it did Black mirroran IP that allowed you to have fun with technology, to have that kind of humor and just that kind of self-awareness. The story revolved around Choose Your Own Adventure games from the 80s.
McElroy: Right, the form and the content somehow match [baked in].
Barlow: And you've seen Netflix struggle. Said: Oh, we're going to do a lot of that now. Well, actually everything that has been done since then has not had these advantages. So the structure of the TV show Choose Your Own Adventure collapses when you can't nod and wink at the camera, when it's not self-referential, when it's not about the literal nature of what it is. And I think it kind of killed things because all the other people in the industry were like: Well, hey, Netflix did this really well and it was really successful, but I just don't understand how – so, it's a one and done. And I think that has allowed people to withdraw.
[Ed.’s note: In December 2024, two months after this conversation, Netflix pulled all but four of its interactive programs. Bandersnatch is one of the remaining titles.]
Whereas […] Take Netflix for example, they've – to use a phrase I hate – gamified the experience of choosing what to watch, right? I've stopped doing this now because I want to escape my digital hell. But there was a time when I thought, if I had a free evening and my family was out or something and I could choose what was on TV: Okay, Dad's going to watch something cool on TV. And I sat down and 45 minutes later I'm still scrolling through Netflix, watching the stuff and seeing the algorithmic decisions. So they've done a really good job of making the “browse the shelf” experience feel very interactive. It's personalized, right? Different shows are put in front of me. Not only do I get different shows, but also different thumbnails. The funny thing is that you put the stuff exactly where it is as it says in the thumbnail Godfatherand then it's a picture of one of the female characters The Godfather that doesn't even have a speaking line because the algorithm decided Oh, you like things with women in them, we have to force that on you.
And the other thing that delighted me was when there was a Netflix show: Love, death and robots. And the cool thing about an anthology show is that you have to decide what order to put the episodes in. And that's a fascinating problem. If you think about a traditional linear structure, you can't have the best episode first because then you somehow won't be able to meet the expectations. But you want a good episode.
McElroy: [Laughs] Not so good!
Barlow: The episode that will keep people hooked but still give us room for the best episode. And Netflix was algorithmic and it was all like this: Hey, we know how to solve this problem. We can A/B test and try different algorithmic episode orders and see which one works best. So they did that Love, death and robots. There was a journalist on one of the tech sites who was gay. He's watching Love, death and robots. The first episode he gets is the “gay episode” without quotes, and his roommate is watching too Love, death and robotsand the episode he gets is the unquote “extremely heterosexual” episode, and the two say: Wait, damn, does Netflix know I'm gay? And then you think: Yes, that is probably the case. If Netflix sees what I'm watching, you might make assumptions. And then they were extremely scared. So This guy wrote this article of like, “Holy hell, Big Brother is watching. Netflix knows I'm gay and is now targeting content based on my sexuality. That's kind of scary.” Then Netflix had to immediately step in and say, “We didn't do that, it was a coincidence.” We just picked the episodes at random.”
McElroy: “But that’s a really good idea too and we’ll write it down if that’s okay with everyone.”
Barlow: I thought, There's something so cool about it…It's almost like building to a species War of the Worlds moment of the same, Hey, my video content, which in the past was static and safe and located behind my TV screen, is somehow conscious and alive.
We'll be sharing more excerpts from this conversation between Sam Barlow and Justin McElroy every weekend, for the next few weeks.
