The Cruel Reality of a 'Gamified Society' Exposed by Squid Game

Have you all watched 'Squid Game'?
Since you opened this article, you have likely already seen it, but if you haven't and plan to, please be aware that this piece contains major spoilers, so I recommend closing it now. And if you do watch it, please come back!

The Netflix drama 'Squid Game' begins its final season this month (June 2025). The reason this show became a global phenomenon cannot be explained solely by its entertainment value, such as the thrills of a survival game or its visual impact. Beneath the surface lies a structure that sharply reflects the erosion of ethics and the pathology of competition in modern society.

I believe this drama serves as a 'fable' for our times, offering many insights... or rather, I am fully aware that getting hooked four years after the first season and then wanting to talk about it is a 'pretty annoying' move, but please, let me do it anyway. Give me a chance!

With the final season starting, I would be delighted if those who have already watched it read this as a refresher.

Squid Game as a Mirror of Korean Society

While 'Squid Game' depicts people driven to extreme situations, its background heavily reflects the structural problems of modern Korean society.

For example, South Korea has long faced social issues such as an economic structure dominated by conglomerates, high youth unemployment, the expansion of non-regular employment, severe household debt, and a suicide rate that ranks among the highest in the OECD.

The characters are all vulnerable individuals burdened by debt and pushed to the margins of society. This reality is the backdrop for why they are forced to participate in a 'game' where death is always close by.

Although the setting is Korea, the contradictions of a capitalist society, the exhaustion of a competitive society, and the breakdown of human relationships are universal themes common to modern society.

Questioning the Essence of the 'Game': Play, Rules, and Violence

In his book 'Homo Ludens,' historian Johan Huizinga states that 'play' is not merely entertainment, but an essential activity that mimics and shapes the structure of culture and society. Huizinga lists the following characteristics of 'play':

• Participation is voluntary

• It is a fiction, not real life

• It is limited in time and space

• The outcome is uncertain

• It involves tension

• It is unproductive

'Squid Game' also possesses these characteristics of 'play'.

According to Huizinga's theory, a game is a 'space of imitation' supported by rules and fiction. However, from a modern perspective, we can see that these rules can be linked to power to 'justify' wrongdoing and act as a mechanism to make things appear fair. 'Squid Game' visualizes this very perverse structure. Huizinga also states the following:

In fact, the operators of 'Squid Game' behave with such bureaucratic strictness regarding the rules that anyone who disrupts order, whether staff or participant, is immediately executed.The logic that 'it cannot be helped because it is the rule' neutralizes the function of ethics. This perversion of making rules an end in themselves or absolutizing them is also depicted as an analogy for modern society.

How does power hollow out ethics? Perspectives from Arendt, Hobbes, and Žižek

'Squid Game' is not merely a death game, but a systematic ethics-destruction system maintained by powerful authority. Here, we examine from three perspectives how power structures dissolve human solidarity and morality.

<The Masked Soldiers> Arendt's 'Banality of Evil'

The soldiers wearing pink uniforms and masks are merely 'operational staff' carrying out orders. The killings they perform are not driven by malice, but are simply an extension of their 'work.' As Hannah Arendt pointed out during the Eichmann trial,it is the thoughtless daily routine that mass-produces evil.

<The Night Raid> Hobbesian 'State of Nature'

The brawl scene that occurs after lights out in the massive dormitory filled with beds reflects how humans regress into a 'war of all against all' the moment they are outside the rule of law. Just like the state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes, fear and violence dominate over reason, and ethics evaporate in an instant.

<Signing the Consent Form> Žižek's 'Voluntary Ideology'

Participants voluntarily approve their participation in the game and even abandon the right to withdraw that they should have gained through voting. As Slavoj Žižek states, ideology functions most powerfully not when it is forced, but when we 'willingly follow it.' The victims themselves internalize and reproduce the system of domination—this perversion is the fuel that keeps 'Squid Game' going.

These three perspectives show the process by which the world of 'Squid Game' hollows out ethics through a triangle ofinstitution, violence, and obedience. Ethics can disappear surprisingly easily through arbitrary institutional design—that is the terrifying reality that 'Squid Game' confronts us with.

Facing 'Death': From the Horizon of Existence

In 'Being and Time', the philosopher Martin Heidegger stated that 'by facing death, one awakens to an authentic existence.'

The players participating in 'Squid Game' are constantly placed in situations side-by-side with death. Within that, they are forced to make 'existential choices,' such as whether to betray or help a companion, or whether to survive or sacrifice their life.

Heidegger also stated thathumans are not born by their own will, but are 'beings thrown (thrownness) into the world' one day suddenly. He points out that having to choose one's own way of being within that world is the essence of humanity.

'Squid Game' depicts the figure of the human as exactly this 'thrown being.' The characters, thrown into an extreme world governed by rules of death and violence, are continuously asked how they will live and what their way of being is.

Gi-hun's choice in the final game of Season 1 was tochoose the 'ethics' of saving a friend over 45.6 billion won. It is the very moment when Gi-hun, who had been acting selfishly,chose his authentic self in the face of death.

As we watch the characters forced to make such ultimate choices, we re-question ourselves: 'What would I do?' Before we know it, we viewers ourselves have been thrown into the 'world' of the drama, becoming beings forced to make choices.

Conclusion: Where is this fable heading?

'Squid Game' goes beyond mere entertainment as fiction, fabulously depicting the lack of ethics and the extremes of competition that modern society faces.

A society where market principles and free competition have become 'gamified.' In it, personalities are stripped away, people are called by numbers, confronted with figures and metrics, rules are prioritized above all else, and humanity is worn down by excessive rationality.

Come to think of it, the data falsification and misconduct by major corporations, as well as the accounting fraud and embezzlement cases by startups that have dominated the news in recent years, are occurring precisely as an extension of a 'game where any means are justified to win.' Ethics vanish while chasing only the 'achievement of numbers,' and crimes are justified under rules that have become ends in themselves—such phenomena feel like a reality that is continuous with 'Squid Game'.

In 'Squid Game,' there are several scenes depicting participants trying to help and support one another. The sight of humans who, even when cast out of society and thrown into an extreme environment where they are forced to kill each other, refuse to let go of their 'ethics' serves as the only hope in this story.

In a society where ethics are being lost, what should we believe in and how should we live? 'Squid Game' poses such questions quietly, yet sharply.

Thank you for reading until the end! If you enjoyed this, I would be happy if you could 'like' and 'follow'.
I will continue to casually update with articles that access philosophical and sociological questions from familiar topics!