Squid Game has to be Netflix’s most iconic and successful show of all time. It’s first and foremost an ode to the political and economic problems that plague South Korea (and a huge chunk of the world, really) but your first thought would be about the Red Light, Green Light machine girl instead. The creator of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk had campaigned for over a decade to get Squid Game into the hands of a production company, but now, he feels the series has become nothing more than a chore for him.

“I’m so exhausted,” he explained. “I’m so tired. In a way, I have to say, I’m so sick of Squid Game,” he said. “I’m so sick of my life making something, promoting something.”

Squid Game has had incredible commercial success, but in a way that completely contradicts everything the show stands for. Even Forbes wrote how “its format is no longer revolutionary and the market has become saturated with it, especially as the show has signed so many commercial partnerships.”

via Netflix

It’s not just the boredom that’s made Hwang Dong-hyuk hate Squid Game – he also described feeling “numb” to the extreme levels of violence in the show. He told Sky News: “For some of the scenes, like where they’re harvesting organs in the first season, I think if I wasn’t the one creating it, I would probably cover my eyes too.

“But as a creator, I have to visualize what I’ve created and written. I guess in a sense I’ve become a little numb to that, but I can say as a person, I’m not the type who can watch those very graphic scenes easily,” Hwang explained.