The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books | The New Yorker
The history of the Choose Your Own Adventure series and how it evolved over time. Branching scenario training even gets a brief mention (as "Branching Path Simulations" for training nurses). If you're looking for practical tips for creating branching narratives, this isn't that article. However, if you loved the original books and are curious about the history, it is interesting.
You didn’t necessarily identify with the unnamed “you” who starred in each book. It was more that each protagonist offered you an alternative to yourself, or forty alternatives to yourself. The second person was less like a mirror and more like a costume.
The fact of multiple endings offers a sense of freedom and safety at once, reconciling two conflicting desires of childhood: autonomy and protection.
Randomness was never part of his compositional strategy. “My philosophy was that it should be like life,” he tells you. Smart decisions were more likely to result in a better outcome but wouldn’t always guarantee it. Virtuous choices didn’t always pay off.
Anson always writes one “Golden Ticket” ending where you get exactly what you want, and a few “Golden Ticket minus one” paths where you get almost everything, but not quite.