Among Us
The game Among Us is an online multiplayer social deception game by Marcus Bromander using Unity. The audience are people ages 10+. Whenever I play Among Us, I always want to be the imposter. While I try to be very honest in my day-to-day life, getting to lean into a character or bit is a nice. In deception games, lying is not only acceptable, it is celebrated.
Early Failure
When I played Among Us, I hadn’t played in a long time, and I found myself selected to be the imposter on the first round. I ran around trying to familiarize myself with the tasks so I could have plausible deniability when a body showed up. Unfortunately, I saw the option to jump in a vent, and when I did so, someone saw me.
I didn’t realize venting was a mechanic only available to the imposter. They immediately called an emergency meeting, and everyone voted me out. I didn’t even try to fight the allegations. This was a departure from when I played mafia in class. In person, there is so much more I can use to my advantage. In person, I can gauge by people’s facial expression and body language to discern whether they believe me or not. Being fully online and only using the text feature makes it extremely hard to know what kind of reasoning (ethos/logos/pathos) to apply.
Redemption
The next time I was the imposter, I tried to be more aggressive than the previous iteration. It was hard because I was on my computer and using the arrow keys didn’t make it easy to click on the button that kills someone. Among Us relies heavily on timing, so having to split my right hand between navigation and action was super clunky. What I ended up doing was positioning my cursor over the kill button. This way, all I had to do was press down with my left hand while chasing my target. Once I learned how to use the sabotage button, it was over for everybody.
I wish it would have been clearer from the start how to sabotage. The game should have a way of knowing it was my first time playing, and it should have suggested I sabotaged and shown me how. After understanding how sabotage worked, I started sending people to fix the meltdown, following along pretending to participate, and then picking off a victim. When I did this, I reported the dead body myself. Because everyone had been so close by, it really could have been anyone.
I noticed I was capped at 2 emergency button pulls, so I had to get sneakier and more aggressive. I would follow people and then not kill them when I very obviously could have gotten away with it as a method to build trust. I would then go and find someone else to kill immediately. When an emergency meeting was called by someone else, I would take a back seat in the voting process and never be the one to vote first. I think the cooldown mechanism was a big aspect to the game. I almost got myself caught by trying to kill someone during the cooldown phase. If they would have turned left instead of right, they would have seen the body I just left.
Ethical Considerations
On the topic of lying constituting a wrong action, I don’t think lying is wrong if it is within the context of the game. If we ask the same question of actors — is it wrong of Cynthia Erivo to pretend to be green? — it seems clearly ridiculous. With that being said, I do think gameplay can transcend the magic circle and turn into real-life resentments. When this happens, I think it is more of a manifestation of someone’s frustration with themselves. Everyone likes to think they are discerning and can suss out a liar. I think when someone is bested and they become upset about it, the resentment is transferred to the one doing the deceiving. Like Ice-T says, “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game”.
