PERSPECTIVE
The Outer Limits
Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment
ALEX SPENCER
What kind of person wants to play the games from Squid Game? Honestly, I don’t get it. The Netflix show is an unbearably tense thriller, with some incredible production design and an excellent twist to the death-game genre in that its contestants volunteer. But it never really makes any of the activities look fun, does it? Surely the entire point is that these are simplistic children’s games, where success is as arbitrary as it is in the real-life systems being satirised.
And yet people quite literally fell over themselves to take part in first the bootleg YouTube version organised by Mr Beast and subsequently Netflix’s official game-show version, The Challenge. Watching the latter’s contestants cheer at the sight of the Red Light, Green Light killing floor – just like on telly! – then obediently pretending to die when eliminated is grimly funny. Provided you can laugh while being reminded that there’s no critique of capitalism that cannot be converted into another way of making money for those already at the top.