Beastly Games: YouTube's Most Challenging, Never Ending TV Hurdle

It's too early to call Mr. Beast's new show a hit or a flop, but it's the latest example of YouTubers struggling to figure out TV despite YouTube becoming television.

The fact that Beast Games exists is like a parable out of a Dostoevsky novel. How do you find compassion for others when put in a situation that demands humanity’s worst? How do you fight to keep your sanity in an absurd nightmare governed by narcissism and unbridled capitalism? How do you combat feeling like an idiot for being gentle and forgiving when the world seems to reward materialism and egotism above all else? 

Dostoevsky would despair at the very concept of Beast Games. The new Prime Video show is hosted by Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson, and arrives after his mega-viral take on Squid Game’s first season that swapped out actors for influencers, garnering more than 680 million views. Beast Games also swaps out Squid Game’s dystopian environment and satirical point of view with honest ambition and greed. It’s not making a point about something; the fact that it exists is the point. Squid Game warns about the psychological and societal warfare that bottomless greed structured by capitalistic systems produces, pointing out the inevitable end for many (death) in a structure that is guided only by growth, by more greed. Beast Wars is the unapologetic ignoring of this warning. 

But I’m not here to review Beast Games. It’s not my job to argue what should and shouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t be very good at it anyway. It is my job, however, to track and analyze where large audiences give their attention in an attempt to unravel what that says about our current culture, and what our commanded attention suggests about where we’re headed and why. For all that may be wrong with Beast Games, it was also inevitable. It is the unavoidable next step of the content creator ecosystem, one that defines value not by quality (accolades, reviews) but by quantity (views, subscribers). 

Though it’s disingenuous to suggest that creators aren’t skilled craftsmen or ingenious creatives, such as it’s similarly deliriously obnoxious to think that awards are the only thing that define quality, we defined a creator’s success from the earliest days of videos hitting the internet by the total sums that explained why we were giving them attention at all. Meryl Streep may win an Oscar, but Mr. Beast has nearly one billion people watching one 30-minute video. Naturally then, the lesson we impart onto creators, who are increasingly where we turn for our entertainment, is whatever grabs the most attention is the only definition of success, not just one aspect of it. Since creators are also growth-minded because they work on platforms and for audiences who want more and more and more, it becomes easier to grab attention as viewership snowballs but it becomes harder to deliver the next big event and surpass what came before. 

Enter Amazon, a company that combines the mantras of YouTubers like Donaldson (deliver what customers want, listen to what the customer demands, and never stop growing) with the next level in the battleground for creator attention: television. Now Donaldson isn’t just upping his attempts to continue conquering YouTube. Amazon gifted him a new sandbox, a whole new potential audience he can convert back to his own brand, to hawk his own products, to mold into that original value equation he defined his success by more than 14 years ago on YouTube: subscribers; followers. Attention. 

YouTube’s Lessons for TV

YouTube’s place as TV’s new heavyweight champion is an undisputed truth. More than two billion hours of content are consumed monthly around the world. In the U.S., more than 13% of time spent watching TV is spent with YouTube — five percentage points higher than the next competitor, Netflix, and with a fraction of the investment in content. More than 85% of adults in the U.S. said they use YouTube each month as of June, a jump from the 78% of adults who said they turned to the service monthly in 2018. At 85%, YouTube is also 15 percentage points higher than Facebook (70%), 35 percent points higher than Instagram (50%), and 52 percentage points higher than TikTok (33%). Not to mention that YouTube also runs an undeniable monopoly on monetizable internet video. Put another way, if you want to make money from publishing videos on the web, you can only really do so on YouTube.

YouTube’s growth as a percentage share of time spent with TV in the United States (11/2023 - 11/2024), Nielsen.

Bluntly and blatantly, YouTube is a capital-b Big deal, and it’s only continuing to grow. Audiences approach videos on the platform with a similar attitude that they approach streaming services or cable television, looking for something to immerse themselves in. This is why we’re seeing more time spent with YouTube on living room television sets, YouTube moving more into traditional TV spaces (NFL’s Sunday Ticket), and YouTube’s algorithm rewards longer form videos for the main platform while heavily pushing its TikTok clone, Shorts, on the mobile app. The more time that YouTube can dominate, the more lucrative its advertising business is, the stronger monetization reward systems it can promise aspiring and established creators, and the stronger its monopoly becomes each day. Plus, relationships formed with creators on YouTube are similar to relationships we’ve formed with television characters for decades. (A reminder that parasocial relationships were first studied in the context of relationships women had with soap opera characters in the late ‘50s.)

And yet because these creators aren’t just characters on our screens, because they are themselves (even hyper exaggerated forms of themselves), YouTube also maintains a strong resemblance to the Instagram influencers that we choose to follow. Consider that TikTok’s beauty is in not needing to really follow anyone to enjoy the app; there are creators we love and videos more aligned with America’s Funniest Home Videos — as instantly gratifying as they are forgettable — but the euphoric chase is an infinite stream of subconsciousness disguised as entertainment. It sucks in all our attention because it’s so noncommittal. Instagram, however, creates a feeling of day-to-day connection, with influencers right there beside your brother or former boss. We watch their Christmas stories, celebrate their highs and lows, and do so in the context of people in our actual lives. We end up doing the same thing with YouTube creators: think of the David Dobriks or Emma Chamberlains of the world. 

YouTube’s greatest strength is straddling those two worlds. Stagnancy is, however, a crime. YouTube doesn’t need to grow into other spaces it doesn’t already dominate, but that would deny the foundations of neoliberal capitalism — and no one wants to make shareholders unhappy by refusing to grow where growth is possible. Heaven forbid. YouTube, therefore, is now attempting to widen its space in a world that for so long deemed it unthreatening: traditional TV. It’s a two way street: there’s actions taken by YouTube as a company directly, and actions taken by YouTubers, like Donaldson, that also theoretically benefit YouTube in the long run. The experiment needed now is determining whether audiences want more of a YouTube experience in their non-YouTube time. 

Preference of YouTube vs Netflix amongst different age demographics, The New Consumer/Dan Frommer

Enter Beast Games. If ever there was a person to conquer this divide, it’d be Donaldson and it would be this format. Game shows and competitive reality TV, after all, are the cornerstone of television. We must consider what hasn’t worked in the past in the YouTube to traditional TV jump, and what has worked in the opposite. YouTube tried to establish itself as a more prestigious, premium destination with scripted originals, unscripted series starring famous YouTubers with large audiences, and documentaries. None of these particularly worked. Audiences weren’t interested in the type of scripted or unscripted fare they could get on other platforms, and it wasn’t like access to their favorite creators was removed. Those free channels were still available, and were still the dominant focus for creators who understood that connection was more important than substance or pedigree on YouTube. 

Not to mention that YouTube was also caught in the relatively unique predicament for a tech company of having to defend some of its top creators (like Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg at the height of controversy for videos on his own channel while also featuring him as a significant part of this newly funded program). Similarly, other traditional series that star YouTubers on TV networks, like A Little Late with Lilly Singh (CBS), Colleen Ballinger’s Haters Back Off (Netflix), or David Dobrik’s Discovering David Dobrik (Discovery+) haven’t found large audiences, haven’t necessary converted their YouTube audience to streaming subscribers or engaged customers, and have faced cancelation.  

Trying to make traditional television work on YouTube didn’t work, and trying to make YouTubers work outside of the setting their fans liked them in also went kaput. Bringing formats to traditional TV that work for audiences on YouTube, however, exceeded all expectations. Take, for example, the master of this: James Corden. The former CBS late night host understood that if he wanted to remain relevant for the audience of tomorrow, he couldn’t rest on the laurels of yesterday’s distribution.

The direction of his show therefore focused on creating YouTube-centric segments designed for people to watch after the show had already aired. Carpool Karaoke was his first major hit, and he steadily beat out competitors including Kimmel — arguably first to YouTubeifying his show with segments like “Parents Eating Kids Halloween Candy” or “Mean Tweets” — and was copied by comedians like Seth Meyers (Day Drinking). Late night hosts weren’t changing the overall format of their show for the linear audience, i.e. those who flip to ABC, NBC, or CBS for a specific format they know, nor were they trying to impart that traditional format on an untraditional audience. Instead, they catered to YouTube by doing what works on YouTube. 

The problem with Beast Games is that it’s a YouTube video with a higher production budget and an elongated “seasonal” approach, but doesn’t understand how to exist beyond that initial hook that often works enough for a solitary 30-minute video. How do you take a YouTube approach to a season of television when the focus needs to change from spectacle to characters, but characters aren’t the focus of Mr. Beast videos. 

Now, an important aside: there is a very good chance that Donaldson’s show breaks into Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 list. It is apparently the most watched unscripted show on Prime Video, according to Donaldson, a figure that doesn’t mean anything without proper context from Amazon about other performances. And if Donaldson was able to convert 5% of his 340 million YouTube subscribers into active viewers on Prime Video, that’s a solid 17 million eyeballs. But Google Trends already suggests that attention is dawdling, Beast Games hasn’t appeared on Top 10 lists from JustWatch, ReelGood, or Samba TV, and it’s dwarfed by Squid Game 2, which was released on the same day. It’ll be fascinating to see if Beast Games manages to pull off being a show rather than just an elongated spectacle, as reality star producer Dylan Reeve recently noted. 

“Beast Games is a massive spectacle. One that has probably been crafted, predominantly, to appeal to the hundreds of millions of people who are already fans of the content he’s been making on YouTube for years — content that is basically the same as what’s unfolding in this Amazon series,” Reeve wrote in Webworm. “If you think the show is so fucking boring, you’re probably not the demographic in the first place. And, I suspect, if Amazon had insisted the show adhere to the more traditional structure of reality TV, with character arcs, background interviews, confessional thought tracks and downtime between challenges, then the Beast audience would be just as bored.”

The response to Beast Wars, including a staggering split of five star reviews (mostly Mr. Beast fans) and one star reviews (mostly people who don’t know what a Mr. Beast is and/or those who absolutely loathe everything about Donaldson), seems to reflect Reeve’s point. Amazon’s lesson for the TV industry is just one step further from Reeve’s analysis — YouTube is already television for a growing, global audience body, but trying to turn what works on YouTube into TV is a disastrously difficult challenge that hasn’t worked. 

YouTube is Already Television; but It Shouldn’t be TV

There’s no question that the creator economy will continue to be tomorrow’s dominant form of entertainment. Evan Shapiro shared some fantastic data in his recent newsletter, a few of which I’ll highlight below: 

1. The creator industry generated roughly $250 billion in 2024; it is expected to near $600 billion by 2030 (Shapiro)

2. The supply and demand paradigm. Creators “distribute 15X more content on YouTube each year than the combined US Media Complex produces as a whole.” (Shapiro)

3. The creator economy grew at 5x the rate of traditional media in 2024 (Shapiro)

YouTube doesn’t need to be TV in order for it to be television. This is something that C.E.O. Neal Mohan and his team have discovered over the years. They can instead offer portals into all kinds of TV (YouTube TV, Sunday Ticket) while finding ways to make YouTube the go-to destination for time spent with television. It’s traditional TV then, a realm dominated by studios and production companies and limited shelf space for expensive shows, that tries to figure out how to bring some of the YouTube magic to its world. Beast Games is the most recent example, but Nickelodeon teamed up with Ryan Kaji for a show on its network, Netflix struck a deal with Moonbug for Cocomelon, and Hazbin Hotel was a Kickstarter project with one episode on YouTube before Amazon picked it up for a full season on Prime Video. A few successes in a field of disappointments doesn’t make for a trend so much as it makes for an anomaly in the data. 

Although it may sound disingenuous or flat out annoying to say something along the lines of “when they zig you zag” or “if they hit low, you go high,” that’s kind of what it boils down to for YouTube and for traditional media companies. We’re already seeing traditional media companies start to rethink strategies, leaning into producing less content overall, re-focusing on strong IP projects. We’re starting to see a reemergence of focus on theatrical projects instead of sending projects straight to streaming. These efforts won’t stop the bleeding. Theatrical attendance is still low, people are still canceling cable at alarming rates, churn is an industry-wide concern. But as I said in my piece about not building TikTok clones to fix the issue of TikTok existing, trying to solve a consumer need that doesn’t need to be solved will only result in a loss of cash. 

Another unspoken truth is that while competing for attention exists within one, finite 24 hour period, not all attention is equal. When audiences choose to open Netflix or Prime Video they’re specifically choosing a different experience than one when they open YouTube. Therefore, YouTube might receive the most attention on a per capita scale, but this does not diminish the value of other attention given. The difficulty lies in getting that across to advertisers, in keeping the cost of that value up for subscribers paying monthly fees and choosing to compete with similar attention value drivers rather than seeing all attention seekers as true competition. Consolidation will continue as time spent with more traditional scripted and unscripted content diminishes (slowly, but surely) — but the need and want for those types of character-driven, highly produced, seasonal stories and big explosive theatrical movies isn’t dying. 

Dan Frommer over at The New Consumer suggested that YouTube’s big advantage is, in large part driven by “two decades of evolution in its platform-specific content: Videos that could really only appear on YouTube — and largely wouldn’t be considered on services like HBO, Netflix, or Amazon — because they don’t fit the traditional TV mold.” We know this. What we don’t get nearly as caught up over, however, is the reverse. Much of traditional television — procedurals, thrillers, dramas — would still unlikely work on YouTube even though they bring in tens of millions of viewers each week. People still want and need those stories. 

I was reading through the reviews of Beast Games when I came across this random post. It’s a little long, but well worth your time:

“I had high hopes for MrBeast's Beast Games on Prime Video, but I found myself feeling disappointed and uneasy after watching. The show feels like a repetitive cycle of the same old reality competition tropes, lacking the creativity and excitement that MrBeast usually brings to his YouTube videos. Instead of fresh ideas, we get a series of flashy challenges that quickly become predictable and monotonous. To make matters worse, the entire premise feels like a blatant rip-off of Squid Game, which only adds to the sense of unoriginality. I found myself wishing for something more innovative and engaging, as the over-the-top stunts started to feel more like a gimmick than genuine entertainment.

What really struck me, though, was how the contestants were treated. It was hard to watch as participants were put in emotionally charged situations, often begging and pleading for their chance to stay in the game. It felt uncomfortable and exploitative, as if their struggles were being used purely for entertainment value. These are real people with real emotions, and seeing them in distress for the sake of a show left me feeling uneasy.

In the end, Beast Games missed the mark for me. Instead of a fun and uplifting competition, it felt like a repetitive spectacle that overlooked the humanity of its contestants. I walked away feeling disheartened, wishing for a show that could celebrate its participants rather than exploit their vulnerabilities.”

The tl;dr? In the end, Beast Games missed the mark because it felt too much like a YouTube video. That’s not what this person wanted from a Prime Video show. Exploitation works on YouTube because the colosseum battle for microdoses of attention is understood. The gimmick is understood. The format is understood. The trade off in value is well defined. Transfer that to a different platform with a different expectation of value, and it falls apart. Much like how Humpty Dumpty shouldn’t have been up on the wall in the first place, Beast Games may have worked better as a Prime Video sponsored series on YouTube. Hell, maybe Jimmy could have hawked Prime gift cards on those who didn’t make it past the first round. If you’re going to take the wrong lessons away from Squid Game, you might as well go all in on the exploitation that has defined large segments of YouTube and Amazon for more than a decade.