Netflix has missed the boat on Squid Game video games, prompting many copycats

The Washington Post

"If anybody is primed to be the 'Netflix of gaming' — a long-discussed aspiration of video game streaming services — you’d think it would be Netflix," says The Washington Post's Nathan Grayson. "This week’s long-awaited launch of games on Netflix comes at an auspicious time: Squid Game mania has overtaken the gaming landscape, with a wave of titles gamifying the show’s action sequences rising in popularity. But the streaming platform’s initial video game offerings do nothing to capitalize on that, despite Netflix owning the popular show. Of all the Squid Game copycat video games, not one is made by or belongs to Netflix. Earlier this year, the gaming industry fervently speculated as rumors and reports suggested that Netflix — the reigning heavyweight champion of living rooms across the world — was about to enter the video game arena. Flash forward to now: On Tuesday, Netflix added several previously released games (and one newcomer) to its Android mobile app. These releases have failed to garner much excitement. On platforms like Steam, YouTube and Twitch, however, players can’t get enough of fan-made games based on Netflix’s latest TV sensation, Squid Game. Case in point: The boldly named 'Crab Game' has managed to pull in tens of thousands of concurrent players on PC gaming platform Steam each day since it launched on Oct. 29. Twitch viewers have turned out in similar numbers to watch their favorite streamers play it — and in some cases, play it with them. Created by Daniel Sooman, a solo developer and YouTuber who goes by the handle 'Dani,' 'Crab Game' hardly sports the polished sheen you’d associate with a popular Netflix property, but it doesn’t need to. The allure of Squid Game-esque challenges paired with online multiplayer has been enough to transform it into an overnight hit. The fact that it’s free probably hasn’t hurt either... Then again, any sort of price tag would have likely upped the risk of legal ramifications."

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• Squid Game, Parasite, BTS and Blackpink have made South Korea a cultural juggernaut: "In the same way South Korea borrowed from Japan and the United States to develop its manufacturing prowess, the country’s directors and producers say they have been studying Hollywood and other entertainment hubs for years, adopting and refining formulas by adding distinctly Korean touches," reports The New York Times' Choe Sang-Hun. "Once streaming services like Netflix tore down geographical barriers, the creators say, the country transformed from a consumer of Western culture into an entertainment juggernaut and major cultural exporter in its own right. In the last few years alone, South Korea shocked the world with Parasite, the first foreign language film to win best picture at the Academy Awards. It has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, band in the world with BTS. Netflix has introduced 80 Korean movies and TV shows in the last few years, far more than it had imagined when it started its service in South Korea in 2016, according to the company. Three of the 10 most popular TV shows on Netflix as of Monday were South Korean."
• American viewers don't get that Squid Game is a critique of U.S. influence on Korea: "The U.S.' 75-year presence lurks everywhere in Squid Game," says Marie Myung-Ok Lee. "Sometimes quietly, as in the opening scenes featuring the boy-man protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a divorced father with a gambling addiction, eking out a living with his elderly mother who makes pennies selling vegetables on the street. When not on one of his minor moneymaking gigs, he lollygags in their gloomy half-basement room. The same kind sunken moldy habitation is a shared motif in Squid Game and Parasite: the half-basement dwellings, called banjiha, prominent in Seoul, are actually not intended as dwellings but were mandatorily build in the '70s as bunkers in case of North Korean attack, but now with the widening gulf of inequality, have been retroactively legalized to house the poor."
• Squid Game is boosting interest in Netflix Japanese dystopian series Alice in Borderland
• Here are Squid Game's most glaring plot holes
• Netflix has added three of Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s films
• Check out the Squid Game cast gathered Thursday night in Los Angeles