{"id":1077486,"date":"2026-01-23T02:45:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T02:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=502005"},"modified":"2026-01-23T02:45:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T02:45:02","slug":"squid-game-games-miss-the-point-but-viewers-want-them-says-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/squid-game-games-miss-the-point-but-viewers-want-them-says-netflix\/","title":{"rendered":"Squid Game games miss the point \u2014 but viewers want them, says Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Having watched and been profoundly unsettled by Squid Game<\/a><\/em>, I felt some surprise upon seeing the reveal of Squid Game: Unleashed<\/a><\/em> earlier this month. The new video game adaptation from Boss Fight at Netflix Games repurposes the show\u2019s brutal games into madcap multiplayer experiences. There\u2019s still gore, but it\u2019s cartoonish. And dissimilar to the characters of Squid Game<\/em>, death is not the end for any of these participants. You can keep on trying over and over until you perfect these not-so-deadly virtual versions of the originally-quite-deadly games.<\/p>\n

From Squid Game: Unleashed<\/em> to the upcoming Call of Duty crossover with Squid Game<\/em><\/a>, and even the real-life recreation of the concept seen in YouTuber Mr. Beast\u2019s Squid Game<\/a>, every single attempt at gamifying Squid Game<\/em> arguably misses the point of the show. But this isn\u2019t the first time that something like this has happened. Remember the similar brutality and social commentary of the novel Battle Royale<\/em> (1999), which was adapted into the widespread video game genre phenomenon<\/a> of the same name (as seen in PUBG <\/em>and Fortnite<\/em>). Battle Royale<\/em> the novel is a raw depiction of a fascist regime that dehumanizes its countries\u2019 children through a deadly, performative version of military conscription. In the book, getting enlisted in the titular battle royale is the worst thing that could happen to you. All of that original intention has been lost in subsequent recreations like Fortnite<\/em>, which is fun, and has Snoop Dogg<\/a> in it.<\/p>\n

All of that is why it actually shouldn\u2019t<\/em> surprise me to see Squid Game: Unleashed<\/em> and its ilk. The game\u2019s director, Bill Jackson, told me in a recent interview that this type of adaptation is exactly what the players asked for \u2014 as opposed to, say, a Telltale Games-esque narrative game set in Squid Game<\/em>\u2019s world that preserves the original TV show\u2019s social commentary and intense storytelling style. Nope, people didn\u2019t want that. They wanted to compete in the games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked the players, the members, if we’re making games at Netflix, what would you want to see? And the first answer, and it was a huge delta, was Squid Game<\/em>,\u201d Jackson told me. \u201cAnd we asked, \u2018You like that? What do you want to do?\u2019 And their answer was with, again, overwhelmingly, \u2018I want to be a contestant and I want to play those games and try to live, and I’m fine if that means I fail and I die. And it could be brutal.\u2019 And that was very clear from the first times we talked to members. So we wanted to make that true. Now, that’s still a hard mission, but we did. I really think that’s what we tried to deliver here is you’re going to be \u2014 you play the role of a contestant on a stylized version of that show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Squid Game: Unleashed<\/em> is inherently different from the source material by dint of its medium. As Jackson put it: \u201cThe main thing is you are a contestant and the penalties are brutal if you don’t win. But guess what? It’s a video game. If you fail, let’s try again. And that’s really ultimately the loop of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point in the interview, I actually asked Jackson about Battle Royale<\/em> and its influences on video games, and he noted how much more prevalent this type of story has become across all mediums. \u201cYou can go back into the movies \u2014 Death Race<\/em> \u2014 there’s all these kind of setups like this. Or Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon<\/em>. It’s the same. It’s like \u2014 it’s the same kind of influences. But in video games, yes, it is a profound setup, right? We’re going to put you in a competition and the penalty is fairly \u2014 that you’ll be knocked out, and others will move on. That pattern is \u2014 it’s intrinsic to video games. It’s intrinsic to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As weird as it may seem, people like it. It\u2019s not some executive at Netflix demanding that the in-house game designers take all the social commentary out of Squid Game<\/em> and turn it into something more palatable. It\u2019s the players themselves<\/em> \u2014 regular people \u2014 who can\u2019t help but crave competing in the games, just to see how they\u2019d do, if it came to it. But of course, these players want to do it in a safe virtual realm, where death doesn\u2019t matter, but bragging rights still do.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that people miss what really matters about the story of Squid Game<\/em>, or that all of these people are just stupid or superficial, or something. I think, like Jackson said, this impulse reflects something else, something intrinsic, about all of us. It may be a bit creepy, but that\u2019s the reason why all of these adaptations are popping up in this type of format. We asked for it.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having watched and been profoundly unsettled by Squid Game, I felt some surprise upon seeing the reveal of Squid Game: Unleashed earlier this month. The new video game adaptation from Boss Fight at Netflix Games repurposes the show\u2019s brutal games into madcap multiplayer experiences. There\u2019s still gore, but it\u2019s cartoonish. And dissimilar to the characters of Squid Game, death is not the end for any of these participants. You can keep on trying over and over until you perfect these not-so-deadly virtual versions of the originally-quite-deadly games. From Squid Game: Unleashed to the upcoming Call of Duty crossover with Squid Game, and even the real-life recreation of the concept seen in YouTuber Mr. Beast\u2019s Squid Game, every single attempt at gamifying Squid Game arguably misses…<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1077487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polygon"],"yoast_head":"\nSquid Game games miss the point \u2014 but viewers want them, says Netflix | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Having watched and been profoundly unsettled by Squid Game, I felt some surprise upon seeing the reveal of Squid Game: Unleashed earlier this month. 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