ENGELBRECHT’S
WORK IN
INTERACTIVE
TV COULD—
IF VIEWERS
PLAY ALONG—
CHART A
COURSE FOR
HOW NETFLIX
STAYS
RELEVANT
AND DESIGNS
EVER MORE
BINGEABLE
STORIES.
she played with paper and pen so she could track and
draw the maps. “You’d have the best of both worlds,
where you’d get to read and also interact,” Engelbrecht
says. She remembers her enthusiasm for the 1985 mys-
tery film Clue, which has three different endings.
The novelist Yiyun Li has written that her moti-
vation for reading fiction is “to be with people who,
unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence.”
Engelbrecht, however, has never required such dis-
tance. Her style may align more closely with that of Julio
Cortázar, the Argentine author of such experimental
works as Hopscotch, who said that “literature is a form
of play” and should aspire to be a game both “profound
and serious.” Even when Engelbrecht was young, the
boundary dividing characters from viewers seemed a
little porous. “My mom referred to soap operas as ‘I’m
watching my characters!’—it was a relationship,” she
says. She felt a version of this herself, wondering, “What
is my relationship with the story?”
At college, where Engelbrecht studied political
science, she gravitated to journalism, later applying
for jobs at National Geographic, Motor Trend, and
Highlights for Children. She landed at Highlights, a
monthly publication whose mission is to “help children
become their best selves.” Engelbrecht sees her time
there as “this world of play,” she says. As part of the job,
she’d go into schools and watch how kids interacted
with media. She took those observations to PBS Kids
and Sesame Workshop and eventually to a doctorate
program in education at Columbia University, where
she studied the social dynamics of videogame usage.
Before graduating, she founded a game design con-
sulting firm, No Crusts Interactive, which helped cre-
ate four Sesame Street games. (She has never managed
to dislodge the Elmo song from her head.) Around that
time, Engelbrecht met with Todd Yellin, VP of prod-
uct at Netflix, for a possible job. During the interview
process, they talked about the possibility of pursuing
interactive stories.
In 2014, Engelbrecht joined Netflix as the manager
of kids’ products, combining her interests in game
design and education. She saw Netflix as a giant sys-
tem to be interacted with, and she and Yellin started
experimenting with nonlinear, or “branching,” shows
for children. “We knew if we couldn’t make this work
for kids, it would never work for adults,” Engelbrecht
says. “There’s a more inherent willingness to interact in
kids,” who are often better versed in typing and swip-
ing. Over the following years, Engelbrecht and Yellin
rolled out a series of interactive shows for children
and young adults: Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe
Pile; Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale; and, most
recently, You vs. Wild, a reality show in which you try to
keep professional adventurer Bear Grylls alive. Though
viewers can passively let the programs make choices
for them, Netflix says 94 percent of You vs. Wild and
Bandersnatch viewers took an active role.
