Squid Game asks its players to make life-or-death decisions with limited information, and game theory is about modelling our decision-making under uncertainty. Using some of its ideas, we can analyze whether the characters' actions make sense, what we would do in the same situation, and what that says about us.

3rd October, 2021

If you haven't watched Squid Game yet, stop socializing or hustling your life away and park yourself in front of a screen for nine hours. Especially watch the show before reading this blog post: you'll have to in order to live with the spoilers and also evaluate what you would do if you were in the show.

The premise of Squid Game is that 456 players have been gathered on a remote island to play six games. Only one player will walk away with the prize money of 45.6 billion South Korean won (USD$39 million). The catch—as the players discover after the first game—is that the prize money accumulates with each player's death.

For each player who is "eliminated", 100 million won ($85,000) are added to the victor's pool.

Although Squid Game has been lauded for its scathing critique of capitalism, through its extreme presentation of how far we would go for money — is it really extreme, the idea that every other person's death not only adds to, but is necessary for, the winner? There are other interesting questions it also presents and answers about human life: How much of it is chance versus under our control? What are the rules that govern our existence? Are they fair and equitable? Is "success" a zero-sum game? If yes, how should you play to win? And what does that say about human nature and society?

Fundamentally, Squid Game keeps asking its players to make life-or-death decisions with limited information. And game theory is about modelling our decision-making under uncertainty. Using some of its ideas and concepts, we can analyze whether the characters' actions make sense, what we would do in the same situation, and what that says about us.

Should you play Squid Game?

The first piece of missing information the players have to contend with is that the games are life-or-death situations (!). All 456 individuals have been lured onto the island with the promise of large sums of money in exchange for playing some games. The players are all indebted in the outside world, with millions of wons of loans to pay off and disappointed families to deal with. They are already the most likely to do anything to survive. Now here was this "game", miraculously offering them a chance to overcome their miserable lives.

Game #1 is "Red Light, Green Light", based on a popular children's pastime. You can only move under a certain condition; any movement outside of it results in immediate death. After innocuously entering what must have felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, 255 people die in five minutes—mostly for fleeing in panic, even after being told that slight movements would kill them. And otherwise for their slight movements giving them away, despite grasping the rules.

Once the game ends, there is outrage among the 201 survivors. But when 25.5 billion won—an amount equivalent to the number of dead players—starts to fill a huge pig-shaped glass bowl above their heads, the survivors finally realize what they have signed up for.