Beast Games 2 Strong/Smart: an Exhaustive Review

Nobody mentions how eerily similar this show is to Opposite Worlds. It's just what a bunch of amateur bros will come up with when told they can make a game show

You forgot to mention the show’s record for worst fitting suit jacket of all time.

I cannot for the life of me i cannot figure out how to spell mccluenist so i have no idea what it means. Anyone able to help me solve this comundrum?

Homosocial misogyny is wild, Brett wanted Corey, a man, to take ALL the money over the women in the show, and he sounds legitimately hurt that his Bro didn’t screw over the women with him I agree that these are probably just simulacrums of the contestants, but what a wonderful man Brett must be lol

Beyond his soulless eyes, Jimmy constantly using the same tempo and inflection, no matter the circumstance, bugs the hell out of me. You’re famous enough to do something with Survivor! Have a PA cut up clips of Probst so you can lea… Yep, that’s on me. Gotta lower those expectations.

It is a height of hubris of the Beast team to think that they, with no actual experience in compelling game design or producing a "reality" game show, could design actually effective games and craft a narrative. If you have a hankering to watch either a "strong" or a "smart" squid-game like show, the Koreans eat Mr. Beast for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I recommend Physical 100/Physical Asia for the "strong" show, and The Devil's Plan for the "smart" show. Both are on Netflix. While not flawless, both are just spectacularly superior to Beast "Games" in every possible way.

First of all, this was fantastic. What your two videos made me appreciate was how brilliantly Survivor is structured as a game. Obviously their challenges actually function as challenges, but Survivor has done Brains vs Brawn a couple times, and I think a big reason it works is because the entire game is designed around the merge—the brains and brawn tribes eventually will merge together, and the distinctions will blur and new alliances will form. Another reason it works better on Survivor is because most of the fun is NOT the games. It’s the survival! It’s watching characters try and work together to build a shelter, delegate work, deal with each others personalities and weird quirks and habits. It’s fun to watch the difference between how a group of science nerds build a tribe vs a team of body builders and firefighters. Because Survivor (in its heyday) was primarily focused on casting interesting people, you can plug and play the same elements season after season, because PEOPLE are always interesting. I guess I’m saying that Mr. Beast LLC Incorporated does not actually understand reality television or people or games.

Only 19 minutes in and some of the things in this are making me think of the only other reality show/competition that I watch: Hell's Kitchen. Like Beast Games, there's often a case where you have a good idea of which competitors are going to go the distance because the show will put a lot more emphasis on them - they get more confessional moments, we see more "Oh no, they're failing! Wait, they've turned it around!" kind of drama that's put in for the sake of the fact that even a reality show requires characters to hate or root for. Mind you, the early episodes are supposed to give us A LOT of them all around so we can't guess who's going to be a major contender right out of the gate. Like you said - it starts out with 20 people, with usually the ones getting eliminated are just TOO quirky/failtastic to ever consider seriously winning. The idea of bringing back past competitors to swap places with current ones is actually KIND OF a neat idea... but the way you do it is this: 1. 5 competitors, not 10. You're blowing a million dollars on this single swap-out which of course you will get 10 volunteers because anyone with half a brain will just take a significantly large amount of money without the need for effort. 2. Don't make it as easy as just a few volunteers. Instead, you make it another competition - ten volunteers will go head to head - some of whom you've already set up as characters. One will win the money and swap places... the other is eliminated from the competition. It's potential instant elimination vs. instant victory. You get an entire episode out of just these five matches. 3. Add another caveat - guaranteed $100,000 if you win... but you can also elect to stay in the competition and potentially win more or you can trade it in later to save you from elimination or something like that. Basically, there need to be ACTUAL STAKES for the swap-out.

Tell at that cloud old man

If I were designing challenges for the strong vs smart format, I would do the following: 1. Players each navigate a maze one by one. At each fork is a math problem. If the answer is odd, you go left; if even, you go right. Answering all the problems correctly will lead a player through the maze. However, the walls of the maze are movable and very heavy. A strong player could bypass the math problems by moving walls out of the way. (The number and weight of the walls would have to be determined during play testing to make it balanced.) Fastest time wins. 2. One strong player and one smart player are locked in a room together. The room has two doorways. One is blocked by a wall of sandbags several metres deep. The other has a lock which can be opened by solving a spatial reasoning puzzle (like a puzzle box or a set of interlocked rings that have to be separated). First to escape wins. 3. A strong player runs an obstacle course. At the same time, a smart player has a chance to solve riddles or trivia questions that correspond to various spots on the course. If they answer correctly, they can add an obstacle (for example, dump water on the course, swing a pendulum, or raise the height of a platform for the strong player). Part of the strategy is choosing in what order to attempt the puzzles. A puzzle becomes moot when the strong player passes the corresponding part of the course. 4. Strong players have to climb a wall on their own. Smart players play in teams of 3-4 to get everyone on the team over the wall. Fastest time wins. 5. Smart players have an opportunity to predict which other players will still be in the game after X number of rounds. They are rewarded with money and/or immunity. There could be an odds system. This would reward players who are socially intelligent and good at reading people even if they aren’t good at winning popularity contests.

I think the Bluff game makes sense when you put it under the murder game show lens. Where people who were in life-threatening debt were instilled with 'kill or be killed' instinct. And was probably play tested with that mentality.

Mini-conspiracy-theory: these game shows have to increase the numbers of contestants because they are having a hard time finding a group of people that wouldn’t form a union to share the prize money.

Dan's "What have we learned here today?" provoked from me the most ugly cackle that I have produced to date.

I am worried that we might be watching a very fancy video from 1981. In 2026, five million dollars isn't generational wealth. It's lifetime wealth, sure. Maybe two lifetime wealth. It would absolutely change your life. But you're not going to be a Rockefeller off one Beast Game. You're going to have an extremely comfortable life and then presumably your kid will have an extremely comfortable life and then the wears and tears of finances and inflation will bring you to upper middle class at best. Or, you'll have generational "comfortable" - and probably only that for two more generations as the assholes at the steering wheels throw all the money in the sea because human existence isn't giving enough infinite growth to make line go up. (I said the thing. I said the title thing. It's relevant. I swear it's relevant.)

I am in pain... How does the whole production team have this little self awareness lmao Do they genuinely think they are doing a good job? Like with the behind the scenes stuff they released, do they genuinely believe it shows them competently creating this show? If I were an investor this would scare the shit out of me, man. I'd pull out so fast after discovering that the show is made with this little understanding of games and TV/storytelling. It's like it is slapped together by a group of high schoolers who have to organize an event for the first time in their lives. They are releasing this info unprompted, they must think it is charming or impressive in some way? Maybe it's just advanced rage baiting. If it is I tip my hat to Jimmy because it is enraging me and I am watching it. But then again Jimmy thinks remembering the order of 4-8 colored blocks is a complicated cognitive task only "smart" people can do, so... maybe not. Sorry I'm being really mean here to Jimmy... It just pisses me off to no end that someone who makes this ungodly amount of money is this terrible at his job. You don't even have to be good at all this stuff yourself, Jimmy. Just take 1 million from the total prize money stack and actually pay people with expertise to design a set of games??? Hire a group of actual testers that know what they are doing??? Just care a little man wtf. Anyway sorry about the rant. Thanks for the videos Dan and team, they were a great watch.

I’ll be honest, I think “super-scaled up game show” could, in theory, be cool. Battle Royale video games are fun, do something with a similar format. Not murder, obviously. But 1 challenge a day, and the bottom X% are eliminated until you get down to top 8 or whatever. But, yaknow, it would have to be interesting and fair challenges.

It's fascinating how every time a game show tries to do strong vs smart, the so called smart people never had a prayer.

So what exactly was the plan if Nick did take the whole 1M$ in Buried Alive? Would the rest of the game play out with the other contestants being unburied and just getting upset? How would they have played the Telephone Game if nobody but Nick had any money?

MrBeast! You tried your best and you failed miserably! The lesson is: never try.

Eggscellent Easter egg at 04:15 when Dan says "the show's director, Tyler Conklin, is adamant that they did, in fact, do loads of testing" but the caption says "they did, in fact, do loads of damage" -- wish I could upload the screenshot.

"Hearts Will Be Smashed" HEART BREAKER, IT WAS RIGHT THERE MAN. COME ON.

Why does the Boy Genius contestant always look like he's about to cry?

Oh my god I can't think of a less charismatic group than Jimmy the dead-eyed homunculus and his Boys.

Stumbled upon your "Why was I invited" video and thoroughly enjoyed. Keep up the good work.

I want to answer all of the "Answer in the comments" question: Yes. No. Maybe. Answer to my comment in the comments. Otherwise great videos and I love a good game theory analysis.

I'm just now remembering, Jimmy should have cribbed more from Kid Nation. CBS show from 2007 that had a few dozen kids (ages 12-16) living in a mock old west town, and they had challenges every week. It had its issues, but the challenges were genius. The four teams competed for the best "jobs" in town (determined what chores they had to do for the week), but every challenge also had a bonus objective that was harder and required the whole town to contribute, and the whole town would get a bonus reward if they did it. For example, one week they had to push mine carts full of rocks down a rail, but they got to choose how many rocks to carry in their carts. So a team absolutely could just push an empty cart and win immediately. But they only got the bonus reward for the town if the teams moved 1 ton of rocks between them all. And watching the teams talk and strategize and make decisions was really interesting. The game's design actually gave them multiple compelling strategies to consider. Another challenge had them digging around for tin cans in a large pool full of baked beans. And it was exactly as hilarious and amazing as it sounds. KN also smartly kept the teams almost totally static (very few changes over the course of the show, so the kids could learn to work better together as units and build chemistry), and did not send anybody home for making one small mistake in a challenge, lol. Actually the reward mechanic was really interesting too. Each week the town council (the four team captains) would deliberate and award a $20,000 cash prize to one kid who they thought was the most iconic that week. Any kid on any team was allowed to nominate someone too. Any kids who wanted to go home were allowed to leave after each week, but otherwise they could choose to stay in hopes of winning a prize later. I'm bummed that show only got one season; it had a ton of potential!

My answer in the comments: Uuuggghhh….

Never been so happy to learn nothing. Thank you.

Watching the "Smart" challenges reminds me of the criticism of the BBC Sherlock Holmes: "You can't write a character smarter than yourself." How smart are the Beast Studios folk when their idea of an intellectual challenge is block-stacking? When was their intellectual peak? How smart do they think their audience is that stacking blocks will seem smart to them? The clear answer is that they can only design content for boys age 9-13 and they only got good at it because YouTube offered them disproportional amounts of money for their skillset. ("...and now we apply this principle to Sam Altman and a funny thing pops out...")

If i was doing a Strong vs. Smart theme, I'd at leaqst steal more from Beauty&The Geek, or Opposite Worlds

Can't wait for your recap of Season 3, incredible stuff

One thing that beast games illustrates to me is the Mr. Beast team really only has the one trick of scale. Beast Games is just so inferior to a show like survivor. The games are worse and horribly designed. They brag about starting with 200 contestants and how much bigger their prizes are but none of it makes for interesting tv. It still feels like their entire focus is still a catchy video title and thumbnail.

Had to pause to see the credits joke: The same four people are credited according to 6 different ways of arranging their credits, without changing the content.

I appreciate Dan's ability to dryly sum up Mr. Beast's failings in single sentences. :) A couple of my favourites... 9:23 "Beast Games conceives of smart people from the perspectives of a group of guys who never went to college and think high school is obsolete, trying to pander to an audience of nine-year-olds." 32:08 "It's B-tier Survivor, which makes it S-tier Beast Games." My biggest takeaway from these videos, having never watched any Mr. Beast content before, is that Jimmy is just... not very bright. Not only is he fundamentally incapable of conceptualizing what a "smart person" is like, the thought apparently never crossed his mind that he would benefit from doing a non-zero amount of research before deciding what would be best for the literal rocket scientists he had brought on to be contestants. My other takeaway is that I'm really glad to be able to look at it through the lens of Dan's analysis, because all the flashiness and melodramatic music looks so over-the-top that it would make the show unbearable to watch on its own. :P

What a certified shitshow. "Isn't that right, certification dude?"

The lack of thought that went into the game design here is just... unbelievable (but also makes perfect sense knowing the way these guys produce stuff). For context, I spent most of last year doing prop/FX fabrication for a reality show with similar games, and that particular production was, relative to many others, kind of a shitshow. And yet the challenge producers and I still spent at least a month testing and iterating on a challenge that was literally just making a stack of 10 weirdly shaped blocks/objects. Tweaking foam densities, paint gloss/sheen, weight, so many different elements of the object itself to make it tricky but achievable. Then even more testing regarding the game design - what sort of time limit should be added, various complicating factors (e.g. adversarial elements, needing contestants to test the tower's stability, needing it to reach a certain height with limited resources to push them to stacking in a riskier way, and so on), done internally ourselves, and later bringing in random externals for test days for all the games. The stacking was one of about a dozen games/challenges and most got a similar time investment to making sure it'd all work. And that's not counting all the time spent figuring out where each challenge should go within each episode and what order the episodes should go in to maintain good pacing, narrative, consistent eliminations, etc. Given how hectic that show was (mostly thanks to executive producers and frustrating department heads), I can't even begin to imagine how much of a nightmare Beast Games would have been to work on, trying to make all of Jimmy's stupid untested bullshit work...

I'm just a history teacher, but if I were given the job of coming up with interesting strong/smart challenges, I would drop the single-elimination aspect, have everyone do all the challenges, and score them on performance. Then advancements would be based on point standings. Just two that I'm rattling off my dome: Smarties -- build a raft out of junk to float some stuff across a pool and get points for making it, plus how much weight you carry. Toughies -- using the same pool, row a kayak/canoe back and forth to carry individual items, get points for how many things you carry across in the time limit. Again, I'm by no means an expert, these are just some things I would enjoy watching people do competitively, haha, way more than the nonsense Jimmy has these poor folks up to.

"Everyone of those who signed on this should lose their job" Bold of Dan to assume there was any forms where multiple signatures had to land on.

I am absolutely floored how something with such colossal levels of organization, safety, set building, logistics, travel, HR, camera, editing….etc…never thought to just bring on a creative director/game designer. It’s almost as if it’s by design, but I don’t think they’re that smart. Just the first strong challenge is so inept in its execution…it’s clearly obvious climbers and cyclists and gymnasts are going to dominate that. There is hours and hours of YouTube content showing how body builders lack muscular endurance (climber vs body builder format…etc). As another example, the giant block stacking was clearly way too high and would run way over time/budget. Anyone of even average intelligence could look at that and say, “if we just lowered this halfway and turned it into a race…we’ll totally make our timeline and save budget by building half the set.” So yeah, raises the question. Why not just hire a game designer? Dan probably answered that question as he talked about Jimmy and the boys, but it kind of baffles me. We learned nothing. So true.

Can we get a followup on the thumbnail a/b results? Also, pulitzer level scoop. This was amazing 🥲

There being another secret hour and a half long video is a level of YouTube-related glee I have not experienced since the hbomberguy greenscreen fakeout

I love imagining Jimmy and the boys designing the smart house, sitting around asking each other what smart people like and just coming up with “desk toy” and “I don’t know, microscope?” And then calling it a day. Like it’s not even a nice microscope.

The first season had so many bribes early on with obviously better EV that if felt to me like everyone who was willing to do like basic math would have cashed out in some manner before the halfway point. Glad to see that in season 2 that thread has culminated to being nearly tantamount to a literal schoolyard bullying of the smart kids.

there's the actual smart game! - taking 100k to leave

Since watching this for the first time when it was posted last night, I have kept randomly thinking of different Taskmaster bits that have core concepts that would easily work for the “smart” challenges. Basically all of them are simple twists on existing things - parsing a confusing direction, identifying a code from a series of clues, picking the correct option based on working out a puzzle, etc etc. Given how much of this show looks like vague rip offs of existing reality tv challenges, it’s insane that they didn’t widen the scope of reference even slightly. Really makes it seem like Jimmy is just pathologically obsessed with replicating his squid game success.

No idea why they'd film the rest at night, but the Riyadh stuff needs to be filmed at night because it's way too fucking hot during the day.

Old Dan Yells at Cloud

After watching both these videos today (I didn't get much work done) I'm now reading everything on the internet in Dan's voice. Including what I just wrote.

It's wild that the competitors openly conspired against the rules of the games several times and at no point did production step in to stop them. I feel like since Jimmy has such a thing for betrayal, he liked that they did it. But it seems to have turned the whole thing into just a popularity contest where certain players were always going to get to the end no matter what just by being part of the in group. Which is maybe how a lot of game shows operate but usually not so blatantly

Given how much money they spent on the entire endeavor it's painful to know that they simply didn't hire some good game designers and editors who are familiar with the genre who would know how to construct a good narrative structure not just for each episode, but for the entire thing. Incredible.

To be honest, the way I would solve the issue of games is... do something completely unrelated to smarts or going to the gym. Do stupid challenges. Like a literal egg hunt to see who makes the biggest ommelette. Show them a picture of Jimmy dressed as Napoleon and make them paint a portraint of that from memory. Make them clean the dishes while having to sing along some famous song.

"Survivor x BeastGames is the most insane crossover in television history" It's like the Tommy Westphall universe means nothing to this man!

i'm just confused how a project like this can shoot for 45 whole days and still run into constant time crunches... were the contestants just sitting around playing jacks for a month before the cameras turned on???

Its astounding to me how frank they are in how ill conceived everything is in the bts content

I have no suggestion for a good smart contest, as most university psych courses I took hammered into me the idea that trying to measure intelligence with some kind of general testing is next to impossible due to, as pointed out in the video, the many different kinds of intelligence. Though as a colour blind person I would prefer that people in general and Mr. Beast in specific would stop equating colour matching as some baseline measure of intellect.

I find it quite cathartic that this cynical, cruel show completely fell apart for half the runtime because they completely failed to account for people being willing to collaborate with and trust each other in adversarial circumstances. It is possible to acknowledge people will collaborate for their self-interest, and still create a cynical story that argues selfishness is human nature. It's genuinely almost kind of wonderful that Beast Games never even got that far.

Beast games is so shitty towards women that this video makes me feel gross even three layers removed. I’m really glad you pointed this dynamic out. It makes me want to rewatch the first video so I can revel in Mr. Beast’s implied downfall.

I feel so bad for the women and twink on this show, stuck in a humiliation ritual for Mr. Beast is a horrible fate

Quick question; is the version of your companion video any different between youtube and Patreon? You had mentioned something about an uncompromised version to Patreon but it looks like it's the same one that's on youtube?

you fucking jumpscared me with yung gravy, he was my old managers roommate before he was famous, my manager was constantly whining about his business major roommate rapping on soundcloud and then mr clean dropped

Re: the utter failure of the Smart/Strong challenge structure, I kind of wonder if Team Beast has such a low estimation of their audience that they assume they would be alienated or threatened by even relatively easy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire-style trivia questions or moderately challenging math/logic puzzles.

some technical feedback here, pls ignore if this is a known thing, i watched both videos from this series right here via patreon and as opposed to the youtube one, the player used for this part 2 upload made my laptops fans go off like i was running a triple A game at the highest rez, to the point of the video starting to break up... not sure why this is but just wanted to let you know, bc i do have an okay gaming laptop and i've never had this happen with a video tbh so i can't imagine what this will do to a weaker machine. That being said, enjoyed both videos very much! Thank you for taking one for the team and engaging with Mr Beast content on a genuine level for viewing pleasure! xD

"So what did we learn today? Nothing." *chef's kiss*

It’s like Takeshi’s Castle mixed with the threat of being beaten up for your lunch money.

For that group having some difficult highschool tests as a start could work. Not like 90 minutes of math or anything but pick the shortest but difficult ones from all the subjects makes it multiple choice and while not ground breaking could work as a start. Maybe do an escape room with multiple solutions focusing on idfferen subjects. Edit: It is just amazing how little thought was put into these games. I feel like I would think more about it. Like just letting trhem play poker with their won money would be a better game, AND have some advantage for "smart" people. Like how is it so bad??? Also that ending...

What are the odds we get BigJoel's Exhaustive Review of FoldingIdea's Exhaustive Review of BeastGames Season 2?

wonderfully incisive stuff

The challenge design is so bad at playing into the brains vs brawn theme that I forgot that that was supposed to be the point about six times

Brilliant video! My expectations for the game design were low, but they sailed under them with plenty of clearance.