Game/Theme:
For this week’s critical play I chose the game Mafia, a favorite childhood game of mine that has aged well over time. This game is played often during summer camps or free periods in class, and involves a large group of people (8+ persons). The game has two phases: day and night, with four different roles: the narrator, mafia, detective, civilians, and doctor. The goal of the game is for the mafia to kill off all the civilians without getting caught or for the civilians to kill off the mafia.
Mechanics:
- Group of people sitting in a circle and their roles are assigned in secret (cards, extra player, etc)
- Narrator is the moderator of the game. During the night, he asks each role “Who do you want to kill?”, “Who do you want to save?”, “Who do you want to know about?”
- The Mafia includes 3 people that awake at the same time during the night and point to someone in the group to kill.
- Doctor is a civilian that chooses someone they think has been killed, to be saved
- Detective points to someone who they think is the Mafia and are told by the Narrator whether they are right.
Dynamics:
- Fellowship: civilians have to work together and gain each other’s trust throughout the game
- Bluffing: mafia have to pretend like they are civilians and lie throughout the game so they don’t get caught
Fun? The game promises fun to its players as it promotes fellowship that increases throughout the game but also synchronously also builds suspense. During the night, players do not know if they will live or if the person next to them is the killer. It’s exciting to be part of the game but also be killed, as you start to understand who you’ve been fooled by and who were your true friends
Conclusion:
Mafia differentiates itself from other social deception games as it is much more suspenseful. The narrative of “killers” and “civilians” creates much more fear than other games like Spyfall, where the enemy is simply out of place. Mafia however, creates consequences from its antagonists. Also, having the players close their eyes in the night creates vulnerability and fear as people’s roles are slowly revealed. I don’t see a way the game can be abused, as the narrator moderates the whole game so that no roles are switched and the day/night progresses smoothly. I think the game can be made better by giving the players time during the day to interrogate each other with yes/no questions about the previous night. This would be similar to Spyfall and will help civilians decipher who the suspicious people are based on their own judgement.
