When attending a club in Final Fantasy XIV, players usually bring their best party glam, but on Oct. 30, players dressed up in their finest Morbol Green and played games from the popular South Korean TV show Squid Game and gave out Gil to the winners.
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are busy days for Final Fantasy XIV clubs, which are nestled in the many wards of player housing. Groups of players sometimes turn their Free Company houses into clubs, but this group of players turned a house into Squid Game for one epic night of partying and games. Players joined the in-game party and were handed some Morbol Green dye to keep the aesthetic as the contestants of the game.
Walking into the club, players could see the iconic bunk beds on the left or right, with a staircase to the front where several DJs played for the night. While games were on cooldown, players listened to Twitch DJs and danced along to the music while players in pink glam impersonated the guards, and the VIPs even made a presence in the club.
The Squid Game party wasn’t just for show, players got to participate
Every 10 minutes or so, players were ushered into a room and asked to play one of the games from the television show. Each game had a dedicated room where players used the /random command to roll a number between one and 999. Depending on the rules, players needed to roll a certain number to proceed through the game. An element of role-playing and imagination came into play since there aren’t many options to host games besides using dice rolls, but players had a blast with it regardless.
In the Red Light Green Light room, players needed to roll higher than a 400 to proceed to the next spot in the room. If they rolled under, they’d use the /sit or /playdead command to indicate they were out of the game. Players who made it all the way to the back rolled again, and the highest roller won one million Gil.
The room had each milestone marked on the floor and even had the iconic doll standing at the front, which can be seen in the lower right corner below.
The honeycomb room had some decorations on the wall indicating what shape they were in front of, and each shape had a threshold they needed to meet when they rolled. If they rolled within their threshold, then they successfully carved the shape out of their sugar honeycombs, and if not, they broke it and were killed. The remaining survivors rolled for the 1 million Gil prize.
The Tug of War was hosted above the venue itself, which is a feat considering it breaks the game a little bit and hosts decorations in “the void” above the house. Players picked a side and the game runners made sure it was fairly even. Then, players rolled. The person who rolled the lowest lost the game for their entire team, and that side had to jump off and “die.” Those who didn’t fall off could try for the Gil prize.
The most impressive room in the entire house was the marbles room. Not only could players instantly tell what it was, but the room was so impeccably decorated that players were so busy looking around and commenting on its beauty that this game certainly took the longest out of all of them.
Players were asked to find a partner and do a random roll. The person who rolled the lowest “died” and the survivors rolled for the prize money. Just as it happened in Squid Game, some friendships were tested during this game.
Next was hopscotch, and this game was the only one that wasn’t reliant on rolls, although the game master may have been using one to determine which platform fell. Players were asked to stand on either the left or the right platform. Then, game masters deleted one of the platforms, killing whoever was on top. Players that made it to the end were able to roll for the Gil, but few were left towards the end.
The last game was done in the main room, and it replicated Squid Game as best it could with the limited game mechanics FFXIV has. The entire room rolled, and the highest and lowest roll then played split or steal. Each person messaged the game master whether they wanted to split three million Gil or steal it. For the first two sessions of the night, the players stole. In the last game of the night, the game masters finally got to split the winnings between two people.
An event a year in the making
Final Fantasy XIV player Raskal came up with the idea to do Squid Game for an event about a year ago. Raskal is Twitch streamer and FFXIV DJ Frank “djayYAMS” Oyola’s manager, and the themed nights started when YAMS was just starting out. Raskal would design the club to be specific to the theme, but the house they were working with was only a medium-sized house.
This year, Raskal and their friend, who owned the house, got their hands on a large but could only use it for the night, which meant that the day after the event, the house was completely back to normal. The house took about a month to set up and will be set up with new decorations for Club Prism next week. Raskal said they didn’t hit the indoor decoration maximum of 400, but they got pretty close. He estimates that there are close to 350 pieces in the house that they used to decorate with.
Then, a little promotion in addition to the instant crowd that DJ’s YAMS, SWAGE, and Minai bring in, and the event was a smash hit. For each DJ that performed, another round of the games was played, which meant that event organizers were handing out a ton of Gil for the event.
The party was the perfect theme for the weekend leading up to Halloween, and participants of the event were constantly commenting on how cool the decorations were and how well thought out the games were, too. Besides a little death during the games, players seemed to really love this well-planned FFXIV Squid Game party.
