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Very interesting news.

We need to take action and declare war on Netflix before this gets out of hand.

It destroys the point of writing them. ;-;

War is inevitable.

They're gonna do to us what they did to Blockbuster! And BOOKS! 

Somewhere in Netflix Corporate: *thud*

"What was that, Johnson? Get in here!"

A small, meek, fourty year old accountant appears "Sir, it appears the small nation of CYStia has declared war on us"

"That was that noise?"

"No sir, that was a pigeon flying into your window, the fourth one this week"

"Oh, well do what we always do Johnson, hire their leader and give them free lunch Tuesdays. And do something about those pigeons!"

"Already on it, Sir"

One month later, Announcer: "Coming soon to Netflix near you: MinnieKing the wise. Watch as he faces peril to his school life such as PROM NIGHT! WILL HE GET THE GIRL OR NOT! YOU DECIDE!"

And that's how the war was lost

Fuck no he won't get the girl. He'll get the machete and the war tank.

We'll sabotage the filming until they give up. Their lead actors keep ""disappearing""? Oops. Their cameras are continuously broken by metal bats? Totally wasn't us. 

They were all killed in a freakish accident? Innocent!

Hyperlink on the word Netflix

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/0/netflixs-choose-adventure-experiment-multiple-endings-future/

I think their first attempt was the King Kong cartoon they did last year. It has some choices to make to open more battles. It's for kids though.

Are there more out? Or just on the way?

From what I can tell, it's on the way, which probably is anything from three months to a year. Still, it'll be interesting to see how they pull this off.

Historically, one of the first live CYoAs was a fascinating mansion play in Britain sometime in the 90s IIRC. Characters (Actors) were physically moving around the mansion (and playing their parts), and the audience physically followed them (and their interactions with the environment and other characters) from room to room, and you'd have to come back multiple nights to see the entire plot. Very avant garde.

The 80s also saw experiments with cinema halls where the audience had buttons on their chairs for option 1 or 2, and based on majority vote, the next scene was chosen. That one never picked up though, perhaps the videos themselves weren't too appealing.

Netflix stands out from either of these in that its platform is a really interesting fit with this kind of storytelling, and I'm really curious to see what they come up with. That and Ken Levine's Twilight Zone work.

Since we're on the topic, here are some of my other favorites:

Cormorant. Serif typeface that comes in six flavors; I especially like the infant and unicase variants.

Merriweather Sans. A pretty good replacement for Verdana with the benefit of true italics.

Tinos and Arimo. Modern Times New Roman and Arial.

Vollkorn. Serif that, like Georgia, has a really bold bold.

Ubuntu. A more modern Cabin.

Cabin. A less modern Ubuntu.

Eadui. Latin-esque handwriting font with a lot of ligatures and contextual alternates.

I don't dislike Questa, but there's something about it that doesn't completely have me sold. Maybe it's the weird coat-hanger "y".

PFF silly Minnie. Netflix cannot compete with CYS!

The industry invented interactive stories with infinite choices, and that did not stop us.

The industry created interactive stories with actual gameplay, and still we did not cease!

We were confronted by many innovations, multiplayer, actual challenges with infallible punishments, and even essentially the same thing we were already doing, but with graphics and voice acting. All fell before the ancient traditions, for they simply cannot compete.

For the fact remains to this very day, and will remain for all of time: There are always people who lack the skills and the budget to do much besides write or draw shit, and there will always be ways to create interactive stories without really doing much other than writing. Basic CYOAs will always outnumber all other more complicated art forms, by virtue of being easy to make and accessible to every aspiring artist.

Can we create video games? Well, most of us can't. Can we make movies? Most of us don't even have friends or own property, let alone have connections or money. But by god, we can re-arrange letters, and not a single rich douchebag with a fancy suit and greenhorn actors and actresses lining up to get their Netflix debut can ever take that away from us!

Well said (and researched), brother Penguinite. Here's the fun thing, no matter how many new forms of entertainment OR technologies come along, the old ones will still have their niches. Always.

There's an excellent TED talk on how old technologies from 100 years ago are still being used to produce the same exact products in catalogs from 100 years ago - as is.

WE ARE SAVED!!!

DND had a cyoa dvd a few years back. And in the early 2000's there were several animated dvds. I've got them all that I could find. Also, the abominable snow man from RA Montgomery was a cyoa dvd from just a few years back. Very childish, but I own it. Lol 

FYI, there's a RA Montgomery interview here on the site that I personally did through email not long before his death. But yes, there have been several, all though mediocre, attempts at CYOA movies. I'd love to see a better effort put in. 

Dang, you're right. I know I have it in gmail. It's possible I didn't upload it. It's been years. I'll try to get it up soon. This must be remedied. May just post on this thread. Stay tuned. 

This is just some questions I was able to get out of him. He was a busy, and apparently dying, man. Enjoy!

1. Who are you? (You know who you are, I know who you are. But humor us :) )

    I'm still a kid at 73, I hope.  The great thing about kids is that they don't have all the baggage that we as adults lug around with us. I've been trying to shed baggage for years, but it isn't easy.

2. What have you written over the years? (You dont need a whole list, but maybe just a few big ones that might bring back memories for us old folks, or even some that might have slipped by us.)

  MYSTERY of the MAYA is still a big one for me. Recently I have written two books for the IOC ( Intl. Olympic committee) through WADA ( the World Anti-doping agency)  to help kids make decisions not to use drugs for enhancing performance in sports. One is called TRACK STAR and the other for younger kids is titled ALWAYS PICKED LAST    --- both in the CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE line up..  They will be published in the fall. I also wrote   a draft of a full, non-interactive novel for adults concerning modern day China called THE ELEVENTH DRAGON.  It needs a major rewrite which I have not done to date.

3. You were one of the original CYOA'ers, did you have any inspiration for getting involved in that type of writing? 

   I had worked in game theory and role playing simulation design for many years before CHOOSE, and that is the essence of the CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE paradigm.  A you-centric decision-making modality is a very powerful tool for education and entertainment.

4. Did you go to school for literature? Or was this a departure from your early career choice?

     I studied English in college but then went into  macro economics in graduate school specializing in development country economics.  

5. From looking at bios and blogs from you, it's obvious that traveling is a major part of your life. Did you do a lot of traveling prior to writing the stories about these distant places? (ie Himalayas)

I have travelled all over the world and started my love of travel well before the CHOOSE period of my life.

6. Upon rereading The Abominable Snowman, I see big differences in the book and the DVD that was released. What are your thoughts on that? 

     can't say

7. I have always been a fan of the CYOA DVD concept (even making an amatuer one of my own), Do you think there is a future for that type of media? Why/why not?

     price points have fallen in the DVD market. It's a tough market right now.

8. What are your current projects? (If you can talk about them). Are there new books coming out?

See answer to #2

I sure hope it's good.

:)

:O Interesting. How long is it, do you know?

It looks amazing and interesting so far. xD The choices are looking like they actually matter, as I've been caught fervently trying to decide which choice to pick.

I just bought a movie called Late Shift on PlayStation network. It's a choose your own adventure movie with *mostly* Hollywood level video. It's very fun. It keeps track of the decisions you've made and endings you've unlocked. 

Yeah, late shift wasn't Avengers level lol but I still liked it. Some choices did seem to push to the same path, but honestly I liked it. I've played it several times. Sometime I just let it play on its own and it picks different things on its own. For $9 I'm not complaining. 

I played through it last night. Definitely kiddie oriented. But that's what I'd expect. Would love more adult oriented. But kids are the bigger audience I guess. 

I'm actually looking forward to seeing the interactive video. :p 

There's been a couple youtubers who have done stuff like that