Hi!
For this critical play, I experimented with a social deduction game called “Secret Hitler”. In this game, players are forced to decide which out of the other players are secret fascists, and which are liberals.
—Rules n Mechs—
Let’s do a quick rundown of the mechanics:
- The president is a role that rotates clockwise around the table
- President picks a chancellor, and players get to choose whether or not to veto for the next person to be president immediately
- President draws three policy cards which could be liberal or fascist, discards one, and hands it to the chancellor who also discards one and places the remaining card on either the liberal or fascist board
- One secret Hitler and a few fascists attempt to put down 6 fascist policies (Hitler wins if he’s elected chancellor while three fascist policies are in place)
- Liberals try to place 5 liberal policies
- first to their goal wins
- putting down fascist policies enables new systems (president gets to eliminate players, peek at next few policies, etc.)
The game coerces players within this group to analyze each other’s actions, reactions, statements, and expressions in order to identify the “bad guys” among them.
—Communications—
In terms of the game’s effect on communication within the group, it did a fantastic job highlighting leadership and cooperation within the player body. The rotating structure of the game allowed us to closely examine each individual separately and form unspoken (or spoken) alliances with each other, as well as encouraging some of us to take the initiative and come up with a plan to ensure victory.
—Decision Making—
During the actual game, the fascists had to find some way to collaborate and communicate with each other, all while being unable to exchange words directly. Fascist players must match the confidence and reasoning of the regular players in order to avoid suspicion, while the liberal players must be outspoken about their doubts towards someone in order to gain support and build an argument. However, liberal players are also forced to acknowledge that nothing anyone else says are guaranteed to be true, and that even players who have previously supported the liberal team might just be trying to win trust or gain favors. What ends up happening is a lot of “well, we don’t know that,” and “I’m not too sure…”.
—Group Roles—
As such, the mechanics of the game end up creating some notable roles within the group. The most outspoken players become (and these are just words that best describe them) either ‘proscecutors’ or ‘reasoners’. The first players to take action are the ‘proscecutors’, pointing out suspicious activity and being the first to accuse others. ‘Reasoners’, on the other hand, are the players who try to mediate the situation and assess evidence and past events in order to help build either an accusation or a defense for another player or themselves. They also tend to come up with solutions to force out liberal policies, or make up a story to defend fascist comerades. The quieter players become ‘observers’. ‘Observers’ are simply players who mostly stay silent throughout the game, acting quietly and allowing the fights to pass over them. And then, of course, there are players who genuinely do whatever the heck they want. These players tend to be fascists who haven’t learned the game yet (like me).
—Ethics—
Lying is bad, right? Usually, the answer would be yes. But this is inside a game! So, does doing typically unethical things within a game also count as unethical behaviour?
Here’s the interesting thing: from a player’s perspective, even after knowing another person was guilty of deceiving me, I felt no grudge against them, nor did I feel like they had become untrustworthy all of a sudden. On the contrary, I actually felt like we became more familiar with each other. Why is that?
I believe that it’s because the lies told within the game are not intented to be permanent, and all players involved know this. In real life, one of the most worrying things about being lied to is not knowing whether the person who told you that lie was ever going to reveal the truth to you. In a bluffing game, however, all the players expect the truth to be unveiled at the end. As such, there doesn’t feel to be a consequence to lying, nor does it make a significantly negative impact on the person being deceived.
