Investigation of Traditional Recreational Games in the Squid Game Series: Semiotic and Content Analysis

Series and movies play a mediating role for individuals who aim to manage their free time effectively and wish to communicate voluntarily to enhance their life satisfaction and motivation. In this context, the Squid Game series offers society an alternative to manage their free time in the triangle of time, money and culture. The research aimed to identify the traditional recreational games depicted in the Squid Game series and to analyze the meanings. Additionally, using data from Google and Naver search engines as well as Netflix, an attempt was made to determine which children’s games in the series garnered the most attention from viewers. For this purposes, nine traditional children’s games were identified. Moreover, the most searched games on Google wereidentifiedas “Sugar Honeycomb Game and Dalgona Candy”while on Naver they were “Red Light Green Light Game and Squid Game Doll”. It was observed that the obtained data were also corroborated by Netflix data. On the other hand, children’s games are considered an effective tool that can serve therapeutic recreation purposes, such as supporting individuals’ physical, mental, and emotional helth, reducing stress levels, and enhancing social interaction. Recommendations were subsequently developed by linking all findings to therapeutic recreation.