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Luckily, Brooker and Jones had the Netflix product team to keep them sane. Following the production of interactive kids titles like “Puss in Book” and “Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile,” Netflix director of product innovation Carla Engelbrecht realized that the company was onto something. “There is so much more that we can do than just linear television,” she said.

But while younger viewers may be fine with relatively simple choices, adult audiences clearly require more complexity, which can be a huge logistical challenge. That’s why Netflix engineers built the company’s very own script-writing tool for branched narratives, dubbed Branch Manager.

The tool allows creatives to build complex narratives that include loops, guiding viewers back to the main story when they strayed too far, giving them a chance of a do-over, if you will — something that Jones and Brooker artfully incorporated into the story. At one point, one of the key characters even tells Stefan that he chose the wrong path, leading him to realize: “I should try again!”

“Bandersnatch” comes with 5 possible endings. Viewers who choose the quickest path, and decide against any do-overs, can make it through the film in around 40 minutes. The average viewing time is around 90 minutes.
Altogether, there are over a trillion unique permutations of the story. However, this also includes relatively simple iterations that don’t necessarily impact the story itself. For instance, one of the first decisions is helping Stefan to choose which cereal to eat in the morning. “We want them to have a successful choice early on,” said Engelbrecht.

Engelbrecht’s interactive content team got a lot of help from across the company to build the tech for “Bandersnatch,” which also included tweaking the way Netflix streams content. “Fast-forward breaks in a non-linear story,” she explained. Instead, Netflix began testing simplified playback controls with “Bandersnatch.”

Another tweak affects Netflix’s streaming itself: The service’s apps typically pre-cache some content to make for a smooth streaming experience even when a viewer’s internet connection temporarily slows down. For “Bandersnatch,” the app now has to pre-cache two possible paths — something that older versions of the Netflix app aren’t able to do.

That’s why the movie simply isn’t available on some older smart TVs. The company is also skipping Chromecast and Apple TV for technical reasons, but Netflix vice president of product Todd Yellin didn’t seem to be too worried about leaving anyone behind. “Almost every single Netflix household has a device that can play ‘Bandersnatch’,” he said.

Other design decisions that went into the creation of “Bandersnatch” are more subtle, and sit somewhere between product design and storytelling. For instance, the team had to figure out the right pacing for an interactive story like this. Give viewers too many choices, and they may tire of all those decisions. Let the plot go on too long without a choice, and half the audience may have misplaced their remote controls. “We talk about cadence a lot,” said Engelbrecht.