Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Other Squid Game: How Splatoon 3 Promotes a Culture of Coziness, Inclusivity, and Becoming-Cephalopod

2024; SAGE Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/15554120241288747

1555-4139

Nikolas Matovinovic,

Crustacean biology and ecology

The 2021 Netflix series Squid Game's themes of economic critique are often framed as contradicting the exploitative nature of its ancillary texts like Squid Game: The Challenge (Netflix 2023), a reality series that materially reproduces many of the same hardships that the narrative series ostensibly condemns. This paper argues that this is a product of the series’ emphasis on interactive screen media as a marketing and production tool without accounting for how this modal difference would alter the themes of the series’ narrative. The Nintendo multiplayer shooter Splatoon 3 (2022) serves as a useful example of how these challenges can be overcome within the context of a popular multimedia franchise. This is done through the game's emphasis on an ecological coziness whereby principles of cozy gaming and a cephalopod-like tentacular approach to screen media create a text whose themes and inclusive community standards do not exhibit the contradictions seen in Squid Game.