$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!

"$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" is a 25-minute YouTube video by American YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known on YouTube as MrBeast. The video, released on November 24, 2021, is a competition based on the games featured in the 2021 South Korean Netflix show Squid Game. 

Donaldson began work on the video in October 2021. Partially funded by Finnish video game developer Supercell to promote its mobile game Brawl Stars, the video cost  to produce, of which $2 million was spent on sets and production and $1.5 million was given as cash prizes to the contestants. Donaldson recreated several of the show's sets for the video. As in the show, the 456 players competed in a series of games until only one player remained.

After the video was published on November 24, 2021, it quickly received over 100 million views and became MrBeast's most viewed video. As of October 2023, it has received over 500 million views. Publications praised Donaldson for his accurate recreations of the sets, but some critics saw the video as unoriginal and a misunderstanding of Squid Game's anti-capitalist themes.

Background 

Squid Game is a South Korean television series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk and first released on Netflix in 2021. The show centers around a fictional game show in which 456 indebted contestants compete to the death in variants of traditional children's games to win a large cash prize. The show received critical acclaim and became Netflix's most viewed show in its first month. In November 2021, Josh Coulson of TheGamer described Squid Game as a "worldwide phenomenon".

Jimmy Donaldson created the YouTube channel MrBeast in 2012. The channel rose to popularity in 2017 for Donaldson's stunts and challenges, which tend to be philanthropic, ambitious, and expensive. MrBeast became one of the most-subscribed YouTube channels, with 76 million subscribers by the time "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" was released.

Production 
On October 11, 2021, Donaldson published a video on TikTok saying he would recreate Squid Game if the video received ten million likes, which was achieved. Work on the video began in mid-October. YouTuber William Osman was hired by Donaldson to lead an engineering team to create blood squibs to explode with fake blood on a contestant's elimination; Osman was given three weeks to deliver five hundred of the devices.

"$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" cost  million to produce. The video was sponsored and partially funded by Supercell to promote its mobile game Brawl Stars. $2 million of the budget was spent on sets and production, while the remaining $1.5 million was used for cash prizes. Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times noted that the video cost $134,600 per screen minute to produce, while Squid Game itself cost approximately $43,500 per screen minute. Donaldson recreated several sets from the show, including the contestants' bunk room, the tug of war platform, and the indoor playground. Some of the post-production was completed by visual effects company SoKrispyMedia.

Video 

"$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" is a recreation based on Squid Game and is not intended to be a parody. Donaldson cast 456 contestants, and a $456,000 prize was awarded to the winner. Instead of death, players were eliminated and given at least $2000 as a consolation prize. Mirroring the show, the players competed in a series of games, each reducing the amount of players: Red Light, Green Light; the Dalgona game; the marble game; tug-of-war; ddakji; the glass bridge challenge; and musical chairs. There were some deviations from the show: Donaldson's game included ddakji as a round, which was featured in the show but not as a game round. Additionally, the final round was musical chairs instead of the show's titular Squid. The winner of the grand prize was player 079.

The video was published to the MrBeast YouTube channel on November 24, 2021. The video reached 100 million views within three days and quickly became one of Donaldson's most-viewed videos. Brawl Stars saw a 41 percent increase in downloads and a 54 percent increase in revenue within six days of the video's release. As of October 2023, it is the most-viewed video on Donaldson's channel, with 525 million views.

Style 
Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times described stylistic differences between the show and the video, such as the replacement of Squid Game's "high-minded social commentary" with "the MrBeast house style of upbeat stunt philanthropy". Pearce noted the "narrative efficiency" of its extensive use of fast cuts, music changes, and sound effects and graphics in the style of American reality television. Like Donaldson's other videos, the video uses clickbait marketing and an "outrageously absurd" premise to convince viewers to watch, a style that Donaldson has "pioneered and perfected" according to Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch.

Reception 
Interviewed at the 2021 Gotham Awards, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk apparently responded to the video, saying "I loved it, and it helped me to promote the show, too, so I want more people to do it." Jennifer Bisset of CNET described the re-enactment as "scarily real-looking"; other writers described it as "perfect". Charles Cameron of Screen Rant praised the video's faithful re-enactment and called it an "admirable homage", but criticized its use of product placement for "ruin[ing] the immersion". Reality TV editor Katherine Griffin likened the video to reality television for its style and length, but disapproved of its lack of credits for the editors.

After the view count of "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" surpassed that of Squid Game itself on Netflix, writer Jon Youshaei tweeted in praise, seeing the video as exemplifying the future of the creator economy; Youshaei wrote that the video had "more views, less time, [and] fewer gatekeepers" than Squid Game. Youshaei's tweet was criticized for failing to account for the differences between the production of a television series and that of a YouTube video and apparently dismissing Donaldson's debt to the creators of Squid Game, and was ultimately deleted in response. Critiquing the concept of the creator economy in response to Youshaei, Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch noted how creators who make high-budget videos must continuously increase their budgets such that viewers do not "become desensitized" to their production value and novelty. As Donaldson has stated that he makes "razor-thin [profit] margins" on his videos, Silberling argued that these increases in expenditure are unsustainable, writing "the success of [the video] may be better news for YouTube, or even Netflix, than it is for Donaldson". Gita Jackson of Vice News and Hussein Kesvani of Polygon saw the video as exemplary of a "fundamental" problem of YouTube: derivative and unoriginal content which profits from the work of others (e.g. reaction videos); Kesvani described the video as the "logical conclusion of this creator economy".

Donaldson received criticism from a number of journalists and the wider online public for a perceived misunderstanding of Squid Game's anti-capitalist themes. Jackson called the video "perverse" and a "recreation of the villain's ultimate desire to watch desperate people compete for money purely for his amusement". According to Silberling, the video lacked the "emotional resonance and suspense" of the show because the contestants faced no risk of punishment for losing. Joseph Allen of Distractify opined that viewers still enjoyed the video whether or not they recognized Donaldson's misunderstanding of the show's "critique of capitalist structures". 

Tyler Wilde of PC Gamer considered it "hard to declare that $3.5 million spent on a YouTube video and cash prizes is bad, but $21.4 million spent on a Netflix show is good" in light of criticism of the video's large budget, calling it "about as accurate [a recreation] as you can get without actually shooting anyone".

See also 
 Squid Game: The Challenge

References

External links 
 
 

2020s American game shows
2021 YouTube videos
MrBeast
Viral videos
YouTube controversies
Squid Game