The Squid Game can certainly feel like an extreme version of life: a zero-sum competition, with winners and losers. We all want the same things - a fulfilling job, a family, a house, nice holidays -  but living under conditions of scarcity means some of us won’t get what we want. Hence life becomes a battle, a competition to beat others. But the extreme nature of the Squid Game is also an opportunity to pause and question whether we really want those things and whether they are worth living in a constant state of competition for. It can be scary to question whether our goals in life really make sense, but it can also be liberating, allowing us to step out of the game we thought we had to play, writes Rebecca Roache.

Read Edward Castronova’s counterpoint article, Life is a squid game.
 

The Netflix series Squid Game depicts debt-ridden characters who compete in a series of childhood games. The winners get a huge cash prize, but the losers will die. It’s the latest in the so-called ‘battle royale’ genre of stories, named after the 1999 novel Battle Royale by the Japanese author Koushun Takami. Watching Squid Game, we have the uncanny experience of thinking: ‘Wow, thank God life isn’t really like that. Oh, wait—actually, it is’.