In a world where free to play multiplayer titles fueled by a microtransaction business model are the hottest and most profitable, and companies far and wide are trying to get a slice of the games-as-a-service model, crossovers have become all the more commonplace. For better or worse, Fortnite is still the crossover king, but Genshin Impact has already tested the waters with a Horizon Forbidden West cross promo. While a real crossover between Genshin Impact and Squid Game seems unlikely to say the least - the tone, style, subject matter and settings are so vastly different and anachronistic to each other - that hasn’t stopped the fandom from speculating. One particularly crafty fan whipped up a little custom video showing off what such a crossover might look like in practice. Squid Game is about much more than children’s games with a deadly twist, similarly exploring deeper social themes as in the director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s previous work. It’s a layered piece of social commentary about morality and greed, underpinned with class struggles and wealth disparity in the modern world. That said, it’s definitely the games themselves that get the most media attention, and that are the most talked about aspect of the show - how this reflects on the viewership, considering the other themes, is quite ironic. The ‘red light green light’ game is the one which pops up in clips most often, possibly due to it being the first game contestants are subjected to in the show, so it sets the whole tone going forward and acts as an initial shock; it’s definitely memorable. It’s also the particular game that the video’s creator chose to adapt for this little bit of parody. Various characters in Genshin Impact have all kinds of fancy idle animations, and these animations end up being the death of them - any motion when it’s ‘red light’ time means elimination, which in this case is expedited with an explosion, courtesy of Klee who is the stand-in for the creepy doll. [sic] - Genshashin, creator of the fan video Genshin Impact isn’t the only game which has been infected by the Squid Game bug - Roblox players have gone and recreated just about all of the games they could with the mechanics at their disposal, and the developers of Fall Guys are revisiting a previously scrapped ‘red light green light’ map now that the viral show has popularized it so much. All that remains now is picking a name for this hypothetical crossover: Squid Impact or Genshin Game? The former definitely has a much better ring to it.
