For my first critical play, I have chosen the game Spyfall. Spyfall is a social deduction game created by Alexandr Ushan and published by Hobby World, and was first created as a board/card game before added as an online browser game, which I played with six other people on Discord. The game targets a wide variety of ages as it does not require much reading or understanding in general, as long as players can understand the location and features about the location. The mechanics of the game are pretty simple. The non-spies need to figure out who the spy is, and the spy needs to figure out the location that all of the non-spies know. This is done by asking questions about the location to other players, and gauging how suspicious every player is are based on their answers. As such, I argue Spyfall successfully emphasizes social deduction by embracing the ambiguity of information exchanged based on the simple rule of questioning and novel objective of maintaining ambiguity.
[Perspective as a non-spy]
Simple rules are crafted to facilitate open-ended interactions and ambiguous exchanges between players. Both spies and non-spies alike must carefully create their questions and answers in order to extract information about other players or the location without revealing too much about their own knowledge or suspicions. Likewise, the responses they receive are often shrouded in ambiguity, forcing players to decipher hidden meanings and subtle cues to uncover the truth. The zero-sum structure of the game as well as the addition of a time limit adds pressure to the game, forcing players to deduce who the spy is or where they are from a small set of information. The addition of a list of location also serves as a double-edged sword, as spies are able to use the list to narrow down locations while non-spies can use this list to misguide the spy, although at the risk of confusing their fellow non-spies. Thus, the key of this social deduction game lies in the ambiguous and forces players to navigate a delicate balance between trust and suspicion, constantly reassessing their perceptions of their fellow players and the stories they tell others.
[List of locations]
What sets Spyfall apart from other social deduction games is its unique objective of maintaining a certain level of ambiguity. Similar social deduction games such as Mafia or Werewolf tend to start off with a lack of information with the goal of the game to narrow ambiguities of roles and vote off mafias or werewolves. However, Spyfall is novel in the fact that the majority starts off with a certain amount of information and instead of eliminating suspects, the main objective of the game is to keep the location secretive enough but not too revealing. This introduces an element of risk management, as players must weigh the benefits of sharing information against the potential consequences of inadvertently aiding the spy. For example, as non-spies, we asked many questions such as “Is there a movie about this place?” or “How much money would you spend at this location?” that circumvent the actual location too much as we were scared to tip off the spy. Because of this, non-spies were unable to vote out the spy when the timer ended, giving the spy the win anyways since we were too ambiguous. As a result, the objective to maintain a precise level of ambiguity encourages social deception by creating atmosphere of uncertainty, where words have the potential to shift the balance of suspicion among all players.
This dynamic of ambiguity generates various types of fun for both the spies and non-spies alike. For spies, the main type of fun is challenge: spies start by knowing nothing at all. This initial disadvantage could be daunting for some, but also thrilling for others as they have to use their wit and cunning to overcome the obstacle of winning against the non-spies. As a result, winning as a spy is often more rewarding than winning as a non-spy. For non-spies, the main type of fun is fellowship, as non-spies try to seek out other non-spies in order to vote out the spy and win the game. The process of ruling out non-spies based on mutual understanding adds an element of teamwork and social interaction to the game. As such, winning as non-spies result in a sense of collective achievement.
In conclusion, Spyfall‘s success in emphasizing social deduction is due to its simplicity in forcing ambiguity at every turn of the game. Because everyone has a chance to be ambiguous, this ensures that every player can find enjoyment in the game, regardless of their role.
