For this critical play, I chose to try out Spyfall with some members from a club I am leading. This game was designed by Alexandr Ushan and was originally published by Hobby World in 2014, and English versions of the game were distributed by other publishers. This game is categorized under Bluffing in the assignment description. It is also a tabletop card game mainly aimed at teens and adults (13+ of age) who enjoy playing the role of detectives or deceiving others. In this game, every player except the assigned spy knows a secret location. The spy’s role is to try to figure out what this secret location is without exposing that they are the spy by listening carefully and answering questions directed at them while also asking other players questions—this is where the aesthetics, for me, lay as some form of detective work. Since this game fully relied on people’s conversational dynamics, social cues, and suspecting each other, it brought out my most logical side mixed with some desire for chaos. To dive in, Spyfall made me notice that my communication style in this type of game starts off as being observant of all sounds and facial expressions. I leaned towards trying to be strategic by combining my prior knowledge of who these members in my club were normally like. For example, let’s call this member Player Y. Player Y is usually someone I see as honest and doesn’t really lie (but they lie well when they do.) During our last voting when people thought player Y was the spy, she was laughing. I was able to deduce that her laughter this time was an honest laugh while answering because if she were the spy, she would look a bit more nervous and either she would laugh differently or be more awkward. Now, I want to dive into an actual rendition of one of the rounds we played where I was the spy.
To note explicitly, some of the key mechanics of the game include hidden roles, hidden information, and turn-based questions. In this round, I was assigned to be the spy, and I started off this round with no information at all. Because of this, I prompted someone else to start the questioning while taking on the role of an active listener while pretending to be in deep thought to ask a question that will hint that I know the location. During my turn, I realized that some players were already suspicious of another player. So, I decided to turn the game around a bit by questioning someone else—highlighting my desire for chaos. At the same time, this move gained me the trust of that suspected player. As the game went on longer, people became more frustrated and more lively. Remembering what players have previously said, I noticed that even though they were innocent, they started to become inconsistent in their logical flows. I took the opportunity of those moments to pin harder the blame on those players. With each question asked, I also already had a guess in mind “Police Station.” However, I refused to end the game just like that because I didn’t want it to end that early, and I wanted my actual target of this game to be the one to be voted as the spy. By the end, we all ended up voting my target out, and it turned out I was the actual spy, and I also knew the location. My habit of careful words, logical observations, and chaotic accusations became more visible with spyfall than other games like Among Us or Mafia since I had no one on my team and there are no other superfluous aspects/ add-ons.
A clever design decision of this game, for me, was that any sentences said by someone can reveal some form of useful information, even if it feels like an irrelevant sentence. However, what I think is a possible flaw of this game is that since it is fully based on conversations, this could disadvantage shy or quiet people whether they are the spy or not. If I were to change this game, I would include a deck of questions to be shuffled and distributed to everyone, so that the game would be based more on deductive reasoning rather than social dynamics of the conversation (as an optional beginner mode.)
Regarding the ethics of lying, I believe that within the confines of the game, there is nothing wrong with lying. However, this is only because the lies players give in this game does not cause harm to anyone beyond the confines of the game. As good a spy I am in these types of games, I hate lying (and can be bad at it) in real life as it goes against my upbringing and religion. However, I think that lying within games is different because it is an act implicitly approved by everyone playing—every player has permission to lie. So, I think the difference lies in consensual lying, so it’s not morally wrong.
