This is awesome.
Patrick Bolvin made a branching film about the Joker and Batman squaring off, B-Boy style. cf. Robot Chicken's Voltron Got Served!
Bolvin's approach to branching his video is to embed time-sensitive links, where the player/viewer is offered several chances to choose the "correct" dance sequence.
A few months back, I thought it would be fun to scrape together some camera equipment and film a video Choose-Your-Own-Adventure that could be hosted on Youtube.
The seed for this had been playing Star Wars: The Interactive Video Board Game with Jess a ways away back (which is technically a great deal further than "a ways back"), and of course, Dragon Strike is a perennial division favorite:
There's an entire clade of games from the advent of home video onwards that depend on action between the screen and the board. Near as I can tell, with VHS video, this is a one-way stream (the linear nature of tape meaning it plays through the same sequence of events each time), while DVD opens up the possibility of branching. VHS input happens on a hot-potato basis-- with SW:TIVBG, whenever Darth Vader addresses the players, the eligible player (if memory serves, whomever is holding the dice--or all players) stand up to receive his instructions ("What is thy bidding my master?"), and then act on them.
I haven't played any board games linked to DVDs, but I imagine that for many, the interaction space isn't fully explored.
But now, in the era of web video, is this a moot point?
There's a push to make game consoles the center of the family living room, to emulate the gathering effect boardgames once played on kitchen and coffee tables. But "board game" remains a distinct genre of game, digital equivalents going so far as to preserve the board and it's space there on. Tracked board games are iconic, as are the spaces on mapped board games ("Kamchatka!"). With board games being served through web enabled devices, what happened to the cheesy, cornball fun of interactive video? Why hasn't someone made this a completely digital experience? Surely the "board" wrapper could sit on website and embed the video within it. There may even be a nostalgia market for it.
The corollary to this is the ease with which interactive video can be produced and distributed now: pretty much anyone can film something, and slap it on to a DVD, branching style. Imagine coming across an unusual board game in a thrift store, still wrapped, so there's an assumption that it has all its pieces. Take it home, and open it up, and inside there's a disc. Put that DVD into your player, and the game begins-- assuming it's well made and can draw you in, and you've entered into a real-world Jumanji, a living game that talks to you.
Now imagine this as part of an ARG... where these games are but seeds in a larger mystery. Even money is, even if it fails, and doesn't deliver on suspension of disbelief, it would still fail hilariously. It's something I'd like to see.
But the real point of all this is to just show you a sweet video of the Joker, all Dolphin burns over 80% of his chest.