Eric Eldredge has turned his lifelong passion for reality competition shows like “Survivor” into academic research and, now, his “five seconds of infamy” on Netflix’s hit show.
Some people enter reality competition shows for the money. Eric Eldredge is in it for the love of the game.
When Eldredge received the call that he would be a contestant on Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a reality competition show version of the hit dystopian thriller “Squid Game,” he was more than ready. Like the show that inspired it, “Squid Game: The Challenge” pits players against one another in games of chance and skill. Players steadily get eliminated through twists of fate and betrayal until there is only one left to win the cash prize.
A reality competition show obsessive and game designer, Eldredge has been training for this moment ever since he first saw “Survivor” as a teenager. He runs fanmade versions of “Survivor” and even wrote his master’s thesis at Northeastern University about what makes these kinds of shows tick.
His time on the show recently came to an end, but Eldredge doesn’t have any regrets with how he approached the game and what became his “five seconds of infamy.”
“I have applied to about 600 reality television shows, and 599 times it didn’t work out so great,” Eldredge said. “The big thing I wanted to do was lie — a lot. I came in with a lot of lies that I wanted to tell, the biggest one being that I had a kid on the way. My girlfriend helped me come up with the idea.”
His deceptive strategy came from a lifetime of watching, playing and studying social manipulation games like his first love, “Survivor.”
“I loved the combination of social strategy, social manipulation, the competitiveness, the setting, the theme,” Eldredge said.
For years, reality competition shows were Eldredge’s not-so-guilty pleasure. However, in 2023, Eldredge decided to professionalize his passion.
He entered the game science and design master’s program at Northeastern and became one of the few, if only, researchers to academically analyze reality competition shows. He ultimately developed a way to quantify which game mechanics in these shows connect with audiences and which don’t.
Eldredge identified 27 popular game mechanics in “Survivor” and surveyed fans and a group of 20 experts, including game designers, producers on reality competition shows and former “Survivor” players. He had them all rank the 27 mechanics across nine factors and correlated those factors with fan enjoyment.
Across those nine factors — fairness, memorability, comprehensibility, characters, conflict, plot, message, status and vengeance — he found that fairness was the most important for viewers. Meanwhile, change in status, vengeance and message (or theme) were least important.
For Mark Sivak, a teaching professor of art and design at Northeastern and Eldredge’s adviser, this research highlights not just the inner workings of reality competition shows but what makes a good game in general.
“If the game is unfair or if you break some of these initial rules, it would have a resounding impact on the audience, but it’s also interesting because some of the rules can be broken for the betterment of the show,” Sivak said.
It was during his master’s program that Eldredge was selected as one of the 456 competitors on “Squid Game: The Challenge.”
Although Eldredge says some players struggled with the intensity of the experience, he thrived.
“I was a kid in a candy store just walking around in my little costume,” Eldredge said. “Reality TV, I am such a big fan, and if you watch it, you might think, ‘How fair are these games? How real is it?’ It was incredibly real.”
Eldredge, or Player 415 as he was known on the show, took his big lie — that he had a child on the way — and ran with it. It was his way to gain trust and sympathy from the other players. He memorized a fact sheet for his child, codenamed Little Squiddy, and even made a big emotional speech on his “birthday” about how hard it was being away from his pregnant partner.
“My nature and my experience playing a lot of social manipulation games made me very detached,” Eldredge said. “I had no problem lying. I had no problem playing the games and cutting people.”
That doesn’t mean he didn’t make hard choices on the show. In his final moment on “Squid Game: The Challenge,” Eldredge confessed his secret to another player, Melissa Miller, aka Player 110, with whom he was actually friends from their time competing in fan-made “Survivor” games.
“Are you kidding me? You’re an idiot,” Miller responded, before tearing up. While Eldredge thought the show was “all one big game,” Miller said she was on the show for her real family.
After his confession, Eldredge ultimately left his fate up to chance: He let Miller choose between two marbles. Depending on which one she chose, one of them would move forward. She chose right.
It was a disappointing moment for Eldredge, but he hopes he left a lasting impact on how people play the game in seasons to come.
“It was a great run, and I apologize to all actual expecting parents in season three because no one’s going to believe a word they say about their kids,” Eldredge said.
While he looks to move into reality show production himself, his elimination ultimately highlights what he loves about reality competition shows.
“A lot of viewers, we love these shows for the strategy, but strategy is meaningless without human connection,” Eldredge said. “Shows excel when their games are designed in such a way that their mechanics expose these human issues, this conflict, these relationships, these character-building moments, and layer the strategic implications on top of that.”
Original Source: https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/11/21/squid-game-the-challenge/
Cody Mello-Klein is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on X/Twitter @Proelectioneer.