Squid Game Season 2 changes gaming in one major way

This article contains Huge spoilers For the second season of “Squid Game”.

The concept behind “Squid Game” is simple: 456 players currently struggling to survive in financial ruin are brought together in a competition where they play popular schoolyard games from childhood until they die, and the last person standing walks away with 45.6 billion won, or Approximately $32 million depending on the current exchange rate. Once players agree to play, they will emerge victorious or leave in a body bag. Sure, this is painful and miserable, but it’s certainly not hard to swallow. While a lot of Aspects of “Squid Game” Season 1 Moving on to Season 2, show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has added some new wrinkles to the games, unlike… The malevolent President Snow in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

After Seung Ji Hoon (Lee Jung Jae) won the matches last season, the overwhelming guilt he felt over surviving while 455 others died radicalized him, driving him to put an end to the matches for good, inspiring him to re-enter and take over. Things from the inside. However, he realizes very quickly that this year’s games work a little differently – after each game, players can now vote to split the money and run or keep playing in the hope that the bodies pile up and the golden piggy bank gets a little full.

It was one thing when everyone was on their own, it’s another thing when half the room had the option to leave and vote publicly to put your life at risk. This seemingly democratic addition to the game helps deepen the social commentary of the original series; The elite are constantly pitting the poor against each other, but now that players are voting on whether to continue playing or not, factions will be created and they will focus their rage against each other directly instead of remembering who the real enemy is.

“The Squid Game” is not the first (nor will it be the last) story to focus on Players volunteer or are forced to play horrific gamesbut expanding on the voting element brings the story closer to home than the first season — especially for Americans who will be following events after the recent presidential election. Contestants in these titular games literally vote as if their lives depended on it, but everyone who votes is pushed to the brink. This is a group of terrified, traumatized, and exhausted people who are hungry and with debt hanging over their heads. Those who want to leave realize that no dollar amount is worth their lives, but that can’t be said for everyone.

Some feed on greed, others feel as if they have already come this far and shouldn’t leave with a bigger payday. The evil of the games has corrupted many, but some are just afraid. While it’s easy to demonize players who vote against their best interests, acting as if they’re all nothing more than greedy, bloodthirsty monsters is wildly inaccurate. The real villains here are the people who put them in these positions in the first place. Watching the voting after each game is horrific, not only because we witness the collective nature of a microcosm of humanity disintegrating before our eyes, but because we can even sympathize with those who wish to vote in a way that puts them in a difficult position. The direct path to financial damage, and they still cling to the hope that this vote will be the one that brings them closer to a successful life. If only it were that easy.

Season 2 of “Squid Game” is now streaming on Netflix.