How Netflix and Charlie Brooker are turning Black Mirror into more than just a TV show

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At this year’s GDC, we attended a Netflix-focused panel that highlighted transmedia innovation, some of its biggest IPs and creators, and how Netflix is aiming to push into greater storytelling. 

During the panel, there was an in-depth conversation moderated by Jason Altman, which featured Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, who unveiled details about a narrative-driven game developed alongside an upcoming episode in the popular series. 

Narrative inspiration

Early in his career, Brooker was a video games journalist in the 1990s, and he highlighted that his background in games has often influenced his dystopian storytelling, as evident in Black Mirror. 

“A lot of the stories I’ve written have drawn on games for inspiration,” he said. “Sometimes that’s obvious, like Striking Vipers, which is about two guys using a sort of Tekken-style fighting game in an interesting and erotic way. And San Junipero, one of the inspirations there was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.” 

Brooker went on to share how his experiences as both a gamer and games journalist have often stuck in the back of his mind. But one of the reasons he wanted to enter into television was because you could control what was happening. “It felt like a magic trick to me,” he said. 

The conversation then steered to how the upcoming season of Black Mirror has also been accompanied by the creation of a video game. Something Brooker states is a “fun and useful” experience. 

“In pre-production when we started collaborating with the games team, it meant that we actually started taking cues from them,” Brooker said. “So actually collaborating on the game improved the look and feel of the game in the episode itself, and hopefully vice versa.”

Brooker also emphasised the importance of authenticity when portraying games on screen.

“If we show you a game in an episode, it has to feel like a real thing, not just a game that’s been invented for a TV show,” he stated.

Bandersnatch to Thronglets 

Brooker went into some detail about Bandersnatch, Black Mirror’s interactive storytelling episode and what was then an early look at what an interactive narrative-type experience on Netflix could look like.

“There aren’t as many memorable characters in video games as there are in movies, because most of the time you, the player, are the character,” he said.

“So what I ended up doing in Bandersnatch was making you, the viewer, realise you’re the antagonist in the story.”

Now we have a new Black Mirror game, developed by Night School Studio, which intends to build upon both what was achieved with Bandersnatch and Netflix’s narrative blend between TV and video games.

The game is a dark twist on life simulation titles reminiscent of Tamagotchi, where players care for AI creatures known as “Thronglets” as these digital beings evolve over time.

Speaking about the project, Brooker shared that when Netflix Games approached him, he already had an idea in his head about the game and had influences from his past experience as a journalist. 

“I had a motion in my head of what the game would look like,” he said.

“It was partly based on some of my experiences as a game journalist, kind of somewhere between Sim City and The Sims. And then it was like a riff on what people do to The Sims.

“So I always had an idea because the story was already sort of written, but the look and feel of the game evolved.”

Creative feedback

Following up the initial panel, the founder of Night School Studio Sean Krankel, now the GM of narrative games at Netflix, joined the discussion. His role includes overseeing the portfolio of all the narrative-focused games the platform has to offer, including the new Black Mirror Game, Thronglets.

He shared that he had actually previously pitched Brooker with another game idea, but nothing ever came of it. However, when Krankel heard about the episode, he revealed how the partnership had come about.

“Six months before, I pitched Charlie some other game, but he wasn’t all that into the game,” Krankel said. “But when I heard about this episode, that there was a game in it, I was like, oh my god, we should make that.

“We didn’t want to make just a tie-in, we wanted to make an artifact from the episode. The game becomes something you bring home with you.”

Brooker spoke about how the collaboration evolved in unexpected ways.

“We were looking at the design of the creatures, we were trying to save money by having everything in camera, and we ended up having to replace it all because we redesigned them later. A lot of that was as a result of looking at the game team’s work.” 

Krankel added: “The approach that we’re trying to continue to do with all the games we’re building at Netflix on the narrative side is that there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

“And for this one, to build a game where we can partner directly with Charlie and his team over the course of the entire game meant that we weren’t doing the usual ‘throw a game over a fence and get approvals and then get feedback’. We worked very closely with Charlie and his team over the course of the year.”

Looking ahead

When asked to reflect on what the future of interactive storytelling may look like, Brooker joked with a cautious but optimistic response.

“The more integration, the merrier,” he said. “I think it’s been a really interesting process, making an episode in conjunction with the game at the same time. So, more collaboration is what I would like to see.

“Where it will be in 10 years, that I dread to predict. But presumably, we’ll be locked into some kind of infinite entertainment cortex, which sounds better than the real world.”