Child's Play and Survival: Examining Children's Games in the Squid Game

Zahra Rizvi's paper, presented at the 2022 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) proceedings, examines how Netflix's Squid Game repurposes traditional Korean children's games such as ddakji, Red Light/Green Light, dalgona, marbles, and the squid game as lethal survival contests. Its central thesis is that play and violence are inseparable, both within the series and across the wider gaming industry. The author builds on game designer Jeeyon Shim's concept of "cyborgization," arguing that the show strips these games of their unpredictability, social warmth, and touch-based care, replacing them with individualistic, mechanized competition.

The analysis identifies several key dynamics. Players employ cheating and "spoilsport" tactics, the guards function as cyborgized enforcers, and the show's prize of 45.6 billion won is framed as "child's play" to expose the logic of modern capitalism. Viewers are also implicated in the spectacle of death, with particular attention to the representation of Asian and Black bodies. Against this competitive logic, the paper highlights an ethics of care that emerges through Ali's rule-breaking rescue of Gi-hun and the teamwork of Gi-hun's group, which the author reads as a form of "response-ability" that allows for more than one winner.

The paper's scope is interpretive and textual rather than empirical. It draws on theoretical frameworks from game studies and posthumanist thought, including Chang, Jansen, Stahl, Gray and Leonard, and Haraway, alongside media commentary, and it offers no quantitative data. Its conclusion is that Gi-hun's return to the game, prioritizing collaboration over mastery, enacts a "ludic cyborgism" that rejects the emptiness of control and offers a critique of competitive capitalist play.