Game Name: Among Us
Game’s Creator: Innersloth LLC, PlayEveryWare
Platform: iOS
Target Audience: Gamers who like social deception games, people looking to play a group game
When playing this game, I started to realize many things in regards to my own communication style. Since this game deals with the overall goal of capturing the impostor if you aren’t the impostor and not getting caught if you are the impostor, there are alot of elements of communication that can help these goals be achieved. For example,
I asked my friends to play with me yesterday and I could see how the impact of us being in person influence how we play. When we got to the part where we needed to vote someone as impostor in round one, I found it interesting communicating with my friends and talking about things we did to prove our innocence. Even for me, I liked how I was able to use their facial expressions or tone of voice to kind of guess and guage if I think they’re lying or not. With that being said, it made me realize I like the verbal communication that comes with deliberations and like how among us used the formal element of resources through the user. For example, if someone witnessed the true impostor kill someone in one of the scenes, then the witness easily becomes a resource to the rest of the players. However, I also like how there’s a possibility for the players to not believe the witness and think he’s lying to hide his identity. This concept I feel really shows how the objectives of the impostor vs a normal player can play such a huge role in the outcome of who wins or loses the game.
While I really enjoyed playing this game, I feel that I also noticed some flaws. One flaw that I noticed was how it was easy for this game to become messy and very toxic to play because during deliberations is when accusations are made. There could be comments or accusations made that might seem harmless to one of the players but hurtful to another. Some moderation could be nice to handle this problem. As someone who used to play among us before there was a rolesystem, when I got assigned to be the tracker in one of the rounds I started off very confused in the beginning because I didn’t know what that meant. For example, in many social deduction games such as Werewolves Within, they usually explain all the roles possible and what they do rather than when the game is about to start. Therefore, I feel like late explanation of the roles was another flaw of Among Us.
Is Lying A Wrong Action in the Game Scene?
In the context of social deception games, I don’t think that lying is wrong if the lies don’t do harm to others feelings and stay within the context of the game. When playing games that deal with lying and deception, I feel like it’s very important to establish these norms before gameplay to avoid situations where lies go out of hand. I don’t think there’s anything so special about games that should permit us to lie to our friends but I think its honestly harmless if the lies only deal with the context of the game. For example, if a user lies about how they were in a certain room when they weren’t vs another user lying about staying still during their game because they were texting their boyfriend will have two different weights to the conversation. So yes, I do think lying is wrong generally but in the context of the game, I feel like it is fine with moderation.
