I played Among Us, which has a target audience of players 12 and older, but most players fall within 14-30 years of age. The developmental creator of the game is Innersloth, a small, indie game design studio based in Washington. Among Us supports cross-platform play with common platforms including iOS and Android devices but expanded to support Windows, Nintendo Switches, PlayStations, and even virtual reality.
My experience playing this game was highlighted by various mechanics including random role assignment, teamwork and partner-work, and a strictly enforced time limit on rounds. The random role assignment added a dynamic of uncertainty and equality to the game, which I feel adds a bit of thrill even just to the start. I found that my personal communication style in Among Us relied heavily on allowing other players to dominate the conversation while I tried to talk as little as possible, and I think the mechanic of teamwork amongst the crew members and partner-work between two imposters (if there are two imposters) brought out this behavior. I think this might be a demonstration of the theory of social loafing in psychology that proposes that people are less likely to contribute in a group because they believe others will pick up their slack. The deliberate choice around the formal element of the number of players in Among Us was likely done to facilitate cooperation and also just to keep the game fast paced (in the case of having more than one imposter), but perhaps it also unintentionally created a situation of social loafing. I think the design of the game lacking direct imposter-imposter communication may cause this because there are unset norms or expectations of roles but I also trust that this design decision may have been deliberate to avoid overcomplicating the chat feature.
Furthermore, the visible time limit on rounds adds pressure and promotes risk-taking to the decision making process. This gave me more incentive to kill someone if I was the imposter but also make hasty decisions if time was running out. Psychology research has also shown that people often make decisions based on feeling rather than logic under time pressure. The visibility of the ticking clock differentiates it from Mafia, a similar game, because it is highly visible. The dynamic it creates can be positive, in that a game would not be dragged on for too long and players can budget their time, but also negative in inducing anxiety that could lead to bad decisions.
In discussing the ethics of this game, we can consider what the role of lying is in this game and in the world, which I would argue is not a wrong action. In Knapp et al.’s book Lying and Deception in Human Interaction, lying is not necessarily morally wrong in all circumstances, in fact Knapp says the truth is often bent in small white lies, such as “polite but not quite honest” sayings in everyday life (Knapp, 6). Therefore, we cannot give a binary definition of “all lies are bad” and “truth is always good” in the world, and much less in games. Furthermore, games are special because they allow us to “practice the human experience” (What Games Are and Aren’t Reading). What we are practicing is not only how to articulate details from a different perspective but also learn to detect deception in a low-stakes environment. I think lying is not a skill but rather an application and we decide when to apply lying based on our morals, society, and culture. These aspects of our lives are less likely to be shaped by a game but rather by our world. The game world is constructed through norms and because we are aware we might be intentionally deceived, I think this makes it more acceptable than in the real world.
