Yes, the participants involved in the Netflix series Squid Game chose to join the game by their own volition.

However, the 1 immersion breaking part of this otherwise perfect show was that no one ever said “yes, we willingly obliged to join the game to win money, but none of us knew that we would be killing one another or putting our own lives at risk!”

There was 1 particular scene where one of the main protagonists was shouting and questioning everything that was going on, and 1 of the people running the show, maybe it was the Front Man himself, said how each person chose to be there on their own accord. And that was that.

And as I sat there watching this scene unfold, I was waiting for the contestant to say: “well, duh, yeah.. but we didn’t know we were joining a game where we had to kill each other or that we might get killed in the process!”, because that’s what I was thinking.

It’s funny how smart these characters were, how smart the writing was, but they weren’t that smart. The fact that no raised this argument was kind of a immersion breaking and a bit of a let down.

Because the first question asked in this scenario was: “none of us wanted this!” and the response given was “but we didn’t force you to be here!”. So the next logical response/argument to raise is “true, but you never told us what we’d be getting involved in!” which the response then would be “if we told you, you’d never join the game!”. Of course if the people running the game told them what they were getting involved not only would no one join, but the people running the game might actually get arrested. All you needed was some people to record the conversation about “join our game where you have to kill other people and you might even be killed yourself, but you have a chance to win a ridiculous amount of money”. Not to mention it would ruin the surprise of what they were getting involved in.

The writing was 99% smart except for this one part, and maybe a few other scenes, but nothing’s perfect. And I’m pretty sure if the contestants knew about what they were really getting involved in from the git-go, they wouldn’t have ever joined the game in the first place.

But then we’d never have (this wonderful and amazing series that is) Squid Show.