By: Will Barfield
Both “Welcome to Pine Point” by The Goggles and “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” by John Branch distinguish themselves as landmark digital, interactive and multi-media stories.
These two fascinating pieces of work put two pieces of history in the spotlight, one telling the story of a town no longer and the other describing the worst nightmare of 16 skiers.
While they both use interactive elements to convey the whole story to an audience, these stories are not the same and rely on different elements that best fit their story. Each one has a level of creativity that matches what the original stories needed for a quality interactive presentation.
Pine Point
“Pine Point” is a ten chapter interactive digital story which tells the sad story of a mining town that no longer remains. Once full of people, happiness and bustling energy, the town now lives on through the interactive story.
The town was located in the Northwestern Territories of Canada and closed down permanently in 1998 with residents receiving little and short notice.
The online story heavily incorporates:
- Sound effects
- Archived Photos
- Audio Interviews with former residents
- Interactive elements like flipping pages or combing photos
- Creative video elements within the reading
- Real stories
- Unbiased storytelling
This one is the more interactive piece allowing readers to listen to interviews, watch archived footage, flip pages as if reading a book, experience audio/visual effects, and much more.
Snow Fall
“Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” is an interactive story that details how 16 skiers were caught in the middle of a 2012 avalanche which tragically claimed the lives of three people.
The structure follows a linear scroll with multimedia integration, but relies more on the user reading the story instead of interacting it.
However it still utilizes these different elements:
- Long-form text
- Embedded videos
- Real 911 calls from right after the avalanche
- Animated 3D terrain models
- Interactive elements while scrolling
- Real quotes, interviews with survivors
- Unbiased storytelling
While not as interactive as the previous story, this one is definitely the more harrowing, action-packed story… you just have to do a little more reading people! It also feels like it has some of the best interactive elements of the two stories, but it has a lot more words as well.
Where Each Story Stood Out
While both stories were riveting, I also think both stories are better than the other in some ways.
In terms of the most visually appealing story, Pine Point most definitely takes the cake, unless you are strictly a reader who does not prefer interactive web experiences.
From the beginning of the user experience, it becomes aware that one is about to submerse themselves in a different world for a short period of time. The creators did use text to tell the full story, but it was not near as much as Snow Fall… and if it was it was well distributed throughout the story.
It also included digital elements on every single page, something that Snow Fall did too, but something Pine Point just did a little better. Whether it was visuals, interviews, archived footage, sound effects, this story had it all.
Where I thought Snow Fall excelled in comparison to Pine Point is the story itself and how it was presented. While I did mention that I selfishly didn’t want to read the full story, it was more captivating than the Pine Point presentation.
There were live videos from the debris pile at the bottom of the mountain directly after the avalanche, 911 calls, survivor interviews, and much more. It felt like the story meant more.
While Pine Point included tons of pictures and archived footage, the footage and audio included the Snow Fall story has a much bigger potential to compel an audience. Additionally, the Pine Point visuals felt more like clutter at times.
What would this look like today?
If a journalist were to attempt to recreate these two stories today, it could look a little bit different while keeping some elements as the original stories. I think it would require at least a link to the story to be posted on social media, as finding an original audience strictly online is hard to do nowadays.
According to the Pew Research Center, in a random survey of 3,560 American adults, 58% of them are looking for In-depth information or deep dives on newsworthy topics online, while only 31% happen to come across it.
14% say they are looking for funny posts and 21% say they are looking for people expressing their opinions compared to 66% and 64% of people who happen to come across those two types of posts or stories.
This provides hope that people are not just consuming pointless, “brain rot” material because they want to. It seems that social media and search companies need algorithms to do a better job of providing people with the content and information they want online.
A 2019 survey from the Pew Research Center showed that as age increased, user understanding of why certain posts are included on their Facebook news feed decreased.
What I’m trying to get to is this question… do journalists need to get more creative or do algorithms of the social media giants need to do a better job promoting organic, newsworthy content that users would enjoy?
There is plenty of research to be done on this issue, as the last update to the “Algorithm” tab on the Pew Research Center website is from 2022.
Where to go from here
Both stories here are legendary examples of how to execute an online story littered with interactive and digital elements throughout. The creators of both had a vision, stuck with it and the results were fruitful.
However, making online stories like these today would most likely require:
1). Driving people to the story’s URL (in the case of Pine Point)
2). A New York Times subscription (in the case of Snow Fall)
3). An audience that would know to look for your story
4). Different forms of interactive elements
These four things in my opinion would make a successful interactive story on the internet today. However, you cannot get there just by making the story. Even after the countless hours, days, months, years, etc. of putting together these stories, there must be an audience for them.
That is where social media presence is key, and where social media could even be used to tell a part of your story. People need to be driven to your story, and for that, social media is the best bet.
Leave a Reply