The first four episodes of Beast Games have now aired, the beginnings of what is likely to be a long-term collaboration between the world's most popular YouTuber and Amazon Prime. Beast Games is inspired by both Netflix's Squid Game and the most popular video on MrBeast's channel, "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!", and the basic setup is 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million prize while being brutally eliminated via simple team games and in some cases psychological tests.
Squid Game is one of Netflix's breakout hits, with the second series out now, a fluorescent and creepy tale of what desperate people will do for money, and the people who exploit them and watch. The show's twist, which is a minor spoiler though it becomes clear early in the series, is that these childrens' games are deadly, and the losers do not walk away. One of the threads in the series is how different contestants deal with this realisation, and each other, while coping with the degrading and unsafe conditions they're kept in en masse between events.
