Squid Game games miss the point, but viewers want them, says Netflix
After watching and being deeply disturbed by it Squid gameI felt some surprise at seeing the unveiling of Squid Game: Unleashed earlier this month. The new video game adaptation of Boss Fight from Netflix Games transforms the series’ brutal games into crazy multiplayer experiences. There’s still blood, but it’s cartoonish. And different from the characters of Squid gamedeath is not the end for any of these participants. You can keep trying again and again until you perfect these not-so-lethal virtual versions of the originally quite deadly games.
By Squid Game: Unleashed to the next one Call of Duty crossover with Squid gameand even the real-life recreation of the concept from YouTuber Mr. Beast’s Squid Game, any attempt at gamification Squid game probably missing the point of the show. But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Consider the novel’s similar brutality and social commentary Battle Royale (1999), which was adapted into the widespread phenomenon of the video game genre of the same name (as seen in PUBG And Fortnite). Battle Royale The novel is a raw depiction of a fascist regime that dehumanizes its countries’ children through a deadly, performative version of military conscription. In the book, participating in the titular Battle Royale is the worst thing that can happen to you. All that original intent has been lost in later recreations such as Fortnitewhich is fun, and it has Snoop Dogg in it.
That’s all why it actually is shouldn’t I’m surprised to see Squid Game: Unleashed and his ilk. The game’s director, Bill Jackson, told me in a recent interview that this kind of customization is exactly what players were asking for – unlike, say, a Telltale Games-style narrative game set in Squid gameworld that retains the social commentary and intense storytelling of the original TV show. No, people didn’t want that. They wanted to participate in the games.
“We asked the players, the members: if we make games on Netflix, what would you like to see? And the first answer, and it was a huge delta, was Squid game,” Jackson told me. “And we asked, ‘Do you like that? What do you want to do?’ And their answer was once again overwhelming: ‘I want to participate and I want to play those games and try to live, and I’m fine if it means I fail and die. And it can be cruel.” And that was very clear from the first time we spoke to members. So we wanted to make that happen. That’s still a tough mission, but we did it. I really think this is what we were trying to achieve here: you’re going to play the role of a contestant on a stylized version of that show.
Squid Game: Unleashed inherently differs from the source material due to the medium. As Jackson put it: “The most important thing is that you are a competitor and the penalties are brutal if you don’t win. But guess what? It’s a video game. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again. And that is ultimately the essence.”
At this point in the interview I even asked Jackson about it Battle Royale and its influences on video games, noting how much more common these types of stories are across all media. “You can go back to the movie – Death race – there are all these types of setups like this. Or Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon. It’s the same. It’s like they’re the same kind of influences. But in video games, it is indeed a deep setup, right? We’re going to put you in a competition and the punishment is fair: you’re eliminated and others move on. That pattern is: it’s inherent to video games. It is inherent to us.”
As strange as it seems, people like it. It’s not an executive at Netflix demanding that internal game designers remove all social commentary Squid game and turn it into something tastier. It’s the players themselves – ordinary people – who can’t resist participating in the games, just to see how they would do when push came to shove. But of course these players want to do it in a safe virtual world, where death doesn’t matter, but the bragging rights still matter.
That doesn’t mean people miss what really matters about the story of Squid gameor that all these people are just stupid or shallow or something. I think, as Jackson said, this impulse reflects something else, something intrinsic, about all of us. It can be a little creepy, but that’s why all these customizations are popping up in these types of formats. We asked for it.