Jun 29, 2019 - Economy

Gen Z's move toward interactive storytelling

Years ago, "choose your own adventure books" were all the rage for young millennials. Today, Gen Z has taken the concept of "choosing your own adventure," or interactive storytelling, to a whole new level.

Driving the news: A Twitter thread featuring a chose your own adventure tale about Beyonce has gone viral.

  • The thread allows users to chose how they would spend a day in the life as Beyonce's assistant, including binary choices about how they would feed and entertain her, trying not to get fired.

The big picture: The "choose your own adventure" concept has penetrated everything from books, to movies to TV shows.

  • Netflix has been doubling down on interactive storytelling, and plans to expand its "choose our own adventure" content library, after first debuting the capability in late 2018 for "Bandersnatch."
  • YouTube is also developing some of its own "choose your own adventure" programming, Bloomberg reports.
  • NBCUniversal and Endless Entertainment launched an interactive storytelling mobile game in April called "Series: Your Story Universe."

Yes, but: Interactive storytelling requires a dramatic increase in production budgets, making it unlikely the trend continues to expand in a major way in the entertainment sector at this point.

  • Our thought bubble: Expect to see more gaming companies leverage storylines from entertainment companies to build out more compelling storylines within interactive games.

Go deeper: Gen Z's favorite brands

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