#beast games

The conclusion most draw from this is typically that Jimmy doesn't have passion for what he does, it's all about popularity and money. This is not inaccurate, far from it, but it goes deeper.

By being so metric focused, Jimmy has an understanding of what is popular (at least at the time he rose to prominence) but no understanding of why. And that failure to understand is a huge detriment because it means that he doesn’t know how to innovate and build outward from his format.

Beast Games is illustrative of this. The Mr Beast video style translates very poorly to an actual reality show. The fact he had to ask other YouTubers how to build fandom is pretty damning. He doesn’t understand why people like things and mistakes hyperbole for excitement.

Jimmy is in an interesting position. Outside of YouTube, his ventures into real world businesses have largely failed. Lunchly was a moldy disaster and Beast Labs is functionally dead. He's like a kid who cheated on his physics exam and is now in charge of a nuclear reactor.

hey mrbeast what the fuck

First, you need to understand that a camera person, ironically, is practically blind, since their whole focus is on the shot. While carrying around heavy, cubersome, and extremely expensive equipment around. In such a volatile, crowded and chaotic place as a reality game show, they need a handler to guide them around the set and be their eyes. That's 16 more people.

But they aren't (or at least I hope not) just wandering about the set, taping random stuff. Often there's someone checking the live feed (more people), plus people watching the whole set directing the cameras to points of interest ("player 45 is crying, go check that out" that kind of stuff.) Also making sure the 16 cameras don't overlap, getting redundant shoots of the same stuff at too similar angles.

And all of this for... Behind the scenes. The stuff that often ends up in the cutting room. Because is behind the scenes. It is the extra stuff. Why. Why. Maybe 40+ crew for what.

Let's be generous. Let's say the interview is taking advantage of the Kulechov effect and just showing the main cameras as background footage, only implying they are BTS. Let's say that in reality the BTS are using lightweight set-ups, like mounted smartphones. Lets say (and I fucking hope so) there were deemed not important enough to have another team coordinating the BTS. That's still 16 more people running around a live set, getting in the way of the actual shoot. I think adding 16 extra cameras to a live stadium concert might get you some weird looks. This is a tv show on real fucking time.

It's such a stupidly large and ineffective number only a kid would think of it. I've barely worked on live recordings and the idea of it makes me dizzy. This can only be some poor PA's karmic punishment. A ring in Dante's Inferno where "fix it in post" producers are sent. The whole thing is like boasting living in a house with 16 full toilets and trying to convince people that you actually live there.

It's made even worse when you consider the fact that this isn't the first "IRL Squid Game" ever attempted, Netflix UK did one that was specifically based on the actual show in January 2023 called "Squid Game: The Challenge".

(I've seen people in the tags get these two shows confused, they are different - Beast Games is on Amazon, not Netflix, was filmed at the end of July this year, and hasn't come out yet).

But Netflix UK have their own scandal to answer for.

That original British Squid Game was also a disaster. "Beast Games" was filmed in the middle of one of Nevada's hottest Julys on record, hence why so many contestants suffered from extreme dehydration due to the lack of water. On the other hand, "Squid Game: The Challenge" was filmed during an unusually cold British January.

The players had been given coats, leg warmers, space heaters, and so on during the lead up to the game, only to have those warm clothes taken away before the first challenge began, because they needed to wear those paper thin canon-accurate Squid Game tracksuits. They weren't even allowed to zip them up, because the cameras needed to see the numbers on their shirts, and the fake blood spurting out when they were eliminated.

They then had to play Redlight-Greenlight in the blistering cold, holding poses, completely still, for increasing lengths of time (2 minutes at the start of the game, 30 in the late stages). Players starting collapsing from the cold, and had to be rescued by medics.

The game started with 456 competitors on Day 1, and ended up with 228 by Day 2.

Here's the Variety article: Inside Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Disaster: ‘The Conditions Were Absolutely Inhumane’

TL;DR - Here are some choice quotes in case you want to read them:

“The second time the song played, I saw in my left peripheral vision that this girl was swaying. Then she just buckled, and you could hear her head actually hit the ground,” says Marlene. “But then someone came on the [microphone] and said to hold our positions because the game is not paused. After that, people were dropping like flies.”

Jenny, a player from outside the U.K. who had been flown in for the game, tells Variety: “I’m infuriated by the narrative that Netflix is putting out there, that only [a few] people were injured…we were all injured just by going through that experience."

“I’ve never been that cold for that long a period in my life. We couldn’t feel our feet or our toes. It was ridiculous,” she says. Jenny also claims that while the game was in production, restroom or water breaks weren’t allowed.

“Take some responsibility for the fact that you were ill-prepared for this kind of thing, with this number of people,” continues Jenny, between tears. “There were some things I guess [producers] didn’t think about, but when they saw the weather was going to be that way, they should have made adjustments.”

All three players [John, Marlene and Jenny] say they returned to the hotel between 7 p.m. and midnight without having dinner. Dinner orders had been taken at lunch, but because the game had run longer than expected, contestants were transported back to their central London hotel without having eaten. Production had ordered pizzas for those arriving, but there wasn’t enough food to go around, and some people went to bed hungry.

“In the morning, I woke up and there was a cold hamburger from McDonald’s and a side salad in front of my door that had been there for God knows how long,” says Marlene.

(Variety, Feb 3, 2023)

(Also, "Marlene and Jenny" are pseudonyms, because like Beast Game they signed NDAs.)

There are some other similarities with Beast Games - denial of bathroom breaks, lack of food, lack of water, inadequate medical care, and so on.

Netflix is denying these claims, or at least denying that they are as bad as contestants are suggesting, and said that while it was undeniably cold on set, "participants were prepared for that". Participants have claimed that they were, in fact, in no way prepared for that.

We know MrBeast has probably seen "Squid Game: The Challenge", because they've tried to one-up it. The British show originally had "the biggest cash-prize ever offered in reality TV" ($4.5 million), until Beast Games showed up with an ever bigger prize of $5 million.

So, it's not just "Jimmy recreating the Torment Nexus after watching the show "Don't recreate the Torment Nexus".