Among Us is a popular online social deduction game created by the American game studio Innersloth. It can be played for $0-5 on mobile and PC (Windows-only), allowing for a wide audience due to a low barrier to entry. However, based on my experience and the maturity of players in the chat, it appears to be mostly 10 to 14-year-olds.
In a group of fifteen, there are three “impostors” whose goal is to kill people while going undetected. The rest are “crewmates,” whose goals are to complete their short, assigned tasks and deduce who the impostors are via chat discussion.
Through this game, I found that I much prefer being a detective to being a liar. Similar to when playing Mafia, I was stressed when I had to lie as an impostor. Whenever this screen appeared at the start of a game, I released a tight chest.
Each game starts with a dramatic reveal of your role (crewmate or impostor), including suspenseful music, likely suspenseful because people have different preferred roles. The mechanic of randomized roles forces both good and bad liars into an imposter role, which adds challenge and depth because you have to both deceive and deduce, and improving skills in one lends itself to the other. While it is more thrilling to successfully kill someone and convince everyone it was someone else, I personally found more peace and joy in completing my tasks and watching the mystery unfold in front of me. I feel this extends to my real-life character as well, as lying gives me more anxiety than satisfaction.
Both possible roles use fellowship and narrative as the forms of fun because you need to solve the mystery based on observations and decide who to trust. In Mafia, a similar social deduction game, I tend to take more of a leadership role during discussion. However, my overwhelm with this game’s culture and pace made me much more passive. The open chat and open online room mechanics lend themselves to an exclusive, harsh community because those trying to form an identity (adolescent males) try to place themselves firmly in the in-group by pushing others out. I saw “learn the game or leave,” reflecting a competitive, impatient player culture. The open chat mechanic forms in-group vocabulary like “SS” (shapeshift) and “teaming” (external communication outside the game chat, often considered cheating). Even not knowing the exact map room names (below) led to an immediate “Cyan is a noob, boot them.” The boot player mechanic could be improved, as the host has too much singular power. Perhaps consensus or majority would be less frustrating for new players.
Due to the culture, speed was of the essence. The mechanics of timed voting rounds and a scrolling open chat encouraged people to make accusations quickly, and most of the time, people (like BonnieBlue below, who was not an imposter) had time for only one quick response before being voted out. After a few games, I joined whatever bandwagon passed by, which improved my survival rate. I became a follower of those more experienced, reinforcing the culture that initially forced me out. This game showed that when my confidence is beaten down, I try to avoid punches and fly under the radar.
Perhaps beginners could opt for beginner-friendly marked rooms to avoid the new player vote-out frustration. I appeared to be leveling up after each game, so perhaps this is secretly built into the game, but that wasn’t made clear, and it wasn’t effective enough for me to feel welcome in my first rounds.
In Among Us, my communication style tended toward caution, speed, and conformity under social pressure. Compared to Mafia, the game lends itself to rapid judgment and crowd behavior instead of sustained argumentation. In this unfamiliar space, I strayed from my usual leadership role and fell toward following consensus.
Being an impostor requires deception and lying to sway consensus. While lying is generally considered morally wrong in real life, it is justified in Among Us because it exists within a “magic circle” where actions are separated from real-world consequences. Deception doesn’t harm anyone outside the game, as losing only affects the outcome of a temporary match. The game is also fully consensual, as players knowingly enter a system where lying is not only encouraged but required for the game to work. Those who don’t want to lie can simply refuse to play. But telling the truth as an impostor would reduce the experience for others, since deception is what makes the game function. In a game, lying becomes a way to collaborate with a team and create fun via tension within a magic circle, not a moral wrongdoing.
