I got together a group of 5 friends (myself included) together to play Spyfall. It was a mixture of two players who had played previously, and three who had never played before. When I first introduced the game, they didn’t fully understand the rules, one friend telling me “I hope you aren’t graded for this on my game proficiency”. However, once it began, everybody was able to pick it up relatively quickly.
Our first round, not all players understood that the spy could guess before the round was up (due to my poor communication of the rules), leading to an ambiguous conclusion. During the round, we were quick to try and communicate without saying words, somewhat “speaking each others’ languages”, and I started noticing discrepancies between our different playing styles. My friend Annabella, for example, gave brief, one-word answers to everything, something that I perceived as “suspicious” but ended up just being her tactic for keeping the location secretive. Another friend, T-Top, was similar, trying to give minimal detail to an extent that almost got him accused of being the spy. When asked what he did at the place (hospital) in his role (nurse), he said “get water and attend to things”, which seemed too ambiguous. I noticed that I enjoyed the social “power” of knowing the location, and wasn’t shy about providing ample proof that I was in the “in-group”, and enjoyed the puzzle of putting together the subtleties of what people said. I realized that I personally enjoyed the process of solving the puzzle and challenge. I was originally nervous that the high-stakes environment and distrust in the game would carry over into the post-round debrief, but as soon as the game was over the “roles” instantly broke, and we talked normally about the game from a “spectator’s perspective”. My friends really enjoyed playing the game and, to my surprise, asked if they could play another round (and then another).
Our second round went by more quickly, as everyone figured out ways to discretely communicate their shared understandings of the location. I caught the spy on a technicality (them claiming to be my assistant when what I’d revealed of the role would be clearly unassisted), and everyone trusted the my authority on the matter. I felt a lot of pride in my ability to convince the group to vote a certain way, and it felt like we were all “catching on” to the game.
On the third round, I was the spy. I hated this role. I think that it’s because the pressure of trying to be found out feels too high-stakes for me (even though it objectively wasn’t high-stakes). The group had been deflected by Arabella’s intentionally vague answers (at this point, people were interested in making the game more difficult, which annoyed my friend Alex, whose second round it was). I realized that I struggled to stomach deception, and hoped every time someone looked at me that I wouldn’t have to answer a question. Phong, who had been the spy twice before, began claiming to be “coworkers” with anyone who was slow at answering questions (both Anabella and I). After two rounds, it just made for a more interesting game to prolong the questioning period — the joy wasn’t all turning against ne person, but also the creative elements that the game brought out of us. When I guessed wrong (and was exposed), I felt relief at losing, like I could finally confide in my friends outside the circle of magic on the experience I’d had trying to deceive.
In deception games, the circle of magic feels so distinct that lying doesn’t feels like a wrong action. Because it’s framed as “survival” in a fake world, I feel more comfortable lying than I would normally, but I still didn’t find it particularly enjoyable. It wasn’t that I felt bad lying to my friends — when in different roles within the game, nobody feels like their actual identity, and instead we step into abnormal roles (competitors, spies, etc). Because of this, lying feels less amoral, because you don’t feel like you’re the one doing it. I’d liken it to putting on a. Play and playing the villain: this doesn’t make you a bad person, it just means you’re following the instructions in a way where nobody is harmed. However, it’s hard to shake the feeling of wrong-ness from your body, and the stress of the feeling of lying, as it’s difficult for your body to fully internalize the reality of being in a role, or playing a game. The one real moment of tension within our gameplay was when Alex got frustrated as Phong for breaking the rules of the game, saying he “had to answer as his role” and not throw the guessing off in the na
Gallery:
Phong and Anabella, third round. Phong claiming that they’re “coworkers” because he’s been spy twice and empathizes with how hard it was (I was the spy).
T-Top and Josh, suspicious of both Anabella and I after Phong claims that both of us are coworkers.
