Netflix’s Puss In Books Interactive Experiment - Review

Nice try. Maybe next time. Good idea. Bad execution.

Netflix released their first interactive animation based on DreamWorks’ Puss In Boots. 

Creating interactive animation with multiple storylines is time consuming and expensive. You have to produce a lot more content.

I applaud Netflix for trying it, but I didn’t like the result. It came across as really lame. The choices didn’t affect the character (not really) or add anything to the story. I was bored. (Yes, I know there are 2 endings, but it wasn’t interesting enough to care)

I’m also not the demographic for that show. My wife may think that I act like a child (and I do) but I can still enjoy watching a well-written kids show. The concept and writing of this test fell flat. The choices did not much affect the character or the action. I found that after watching one path, I didn’t care about the other paths. The longest path is almost twice as long as the shortest path.

In fact, it looked like it didn’t matter which path you chose in some instances because both actions (you only get to choose 1 of 2 actions per story intersection) played back to back anyway.

 I will be curious to hear from parents whose kids watched it. Do they re-watch and make other choices? Do they enjoy it? Do they care? I would guess for the most part the answers will be ‘no’.

Netflix is experimenting with interactivity in other series, notably Buddy Thunderstruck, which has an older demographic than Puss In Boots. Let’s hope the writing in Buddy will take advantage of the technology to tell a better story and not rely on lame setups and choices.

Mark Simon is the founder of Animatics & Storyboards, Inc. and co-founder of www.SellYourTvConceptNow.com. Check out his LinkedIn course on storyboarding at www.lynda.com/MarkSimon. 

#netflixinteractive #pussinboots #chooseyourownadventure