“Among Us” – The game taking over 2020 | Game Theory
References: https://www.androidcentral.com/how-be-best-imposter-among-us
https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/among-us-how-play-impostor-tips-strategy-guide
https://www.inverse.com/gaming/among-us-imposter-tips-how-to-win
https://www.redbull.com/za-en/among-us-popularity
So no matter what your age may be, if you’re a gamer or at least keep up with any type of social trend you sure have heard about “Among Us”. Whether you’ve played it casually with a friend, saw a video online, or even read a newspaper article about it, this game not only has every single mainstream broadcast streaming it, but it has more than 100 million downloads with a concurrent player base of 3.5 million users playing it. If for some reason you haven’t heard about this game, I’m confident you’ll download and play right after reading this post so here it goes:
“Among Us” – is an online science-fiction murder mystery multiplayer game that takes place in space. It can feature up to 10 players (highly recommend playing with 10). Once all the players have loaded in, the group of 10 will be divided into two teams: Crewmates and Imposters. Usually, if you have a full group of 10 people, you’ll have 2 Imposters on the ship, while if you’re playing with lower then 10, it’s ideal to have only 1 Imposter since the game would become extremely hard. Once the game starts, all players are no longer able to communicate with one another. This includes no chatting in-game or talking in a voice call (you’re expected to be muted at all times unless a meeting is called). That’s right, a meeting can be called, and the purpose of this meeting is to figure out who the Imposter(s) is on the ship. If you didn’t catch it before, nobody knows who the Imposter is, and if you’re a Crewmate, your goal is to either vote off the Imposter(s) from the ship to win the game or all 8 of you will need to complete all your tasks on the ship (2 Imposters mean 8 Crewmates) . At the same time, the Imposter(s) goal is to sabotage and essentially backstab Crewmates to prevent them from repairing the ship. If you know someone who has played they’ll either tell you they had a blast playing or they’ve lost friends playing this game. This really is a test of bonds as you have no idea who can be lying to you. Now as deceiving as the game may be, there are certain ways you can determine whether someone is an actual Crewmate or if they are the Imposter trying to deceive you. From the 10 players in the game, if 2 are set to be Imposters, you’ll have a total of 8 Crewmembers. Now although all of these Crewmates will have different tasks on the ship to complete, there is one specific task which is a visual scan located in an area of the map called “Medbay”. This scan is proof that you as a player aren’t the Imposter. Ideally, the Imposter won’t have the ability to perform any actual tasks as his job is to sabotage the ship and take out Crewmates.
Speaking of a part of the map known as “Medbay” Among Us does include a global map that showcases where your current position is at all times. This is super important to know because when a meeting is called this is the only time people will be able to speak. During this time every player has a chance to present there case on what exactly happened, whether they were doing a task, witnessed a Crewmember get attacked or found a corpse. Towards the end of the meeting, everyone including the Imposter(s) will have the chance to either skip there vote or vote to decide if someone is getting voted off. Remember it’s super important to understand that if people are accusing someone else of being the Imposter, it’s in their best interest to have that in-fighting continue and get people voted off the ship. If you didn’t know, getting voted off the ship results in elimination from the match. This is why it’s super important to understand your exact location and be ready to defend yourself if you are accused of being the Imposter.
Now that we have a solid understanding of how Among Us is played, I’d like to bring to everyone’s attention that while this game is mainly for fun and just a game to relax to, it’s extremely strategic, and a game like this embodies Game Theory to the max! As I had mentioned before, Crewmates’ objective is to either repair the ship or figure out who the Imposter is. To pick the Imposter randomly out of a group of 10 people just isn’t going to happen so ideally, everyone’s going to work on completing their individuals tasks while the Imposter is going to be looking at areas to cut individuals off and sabotage the map. He/she doesn’t necessarily need to directly eliminate a player, but he can still create fear and discomfort amongst the members on the ship. For example, ideally as the Imposter, you want to get your first elimination within the first five minutes of the game. This is a dominant strategy to do as well due to the fact that you’ll be able to get a freebie since everyone will be so focused on completing tasks. At the same time, however, if you take one out, you still have another 9 to go, and as long as nobody saw you, it’s impossible for them to pinpoint the blame to you. As the game goes on you’ll come to terms that every player will make more and more decisions as far as which task they do (keep in mind some tasks will take longer to complete than others will). I believe it’s also safe to say that one can understand that the longer the task, the more likely you are to be stabbed in the back if nobody is watching out for you. Another dominant strategy for the Imposter is using the “sabotage” feature to your advantage. If you secure an elimination, now you’ll want to sabotage something on the other side of the map to pull players away from a specific area (likely where the body is). The reason you do this is because if nobody can discover the body then the players won’t know if someone has been eliminated or not. As a Crewmate your response to this sabotage is to head towards the broken part of the ship as you know this will be the safest option. If you’re caught out lurking alone, you are likely to be eliminated by the Imposter. While it’s likely the body will not be found until later, this is the best response you can make in response to the Imposter. Another important fact to note down is the only way Crewmates can understand how many players are left in the game is by calling a meeting. Once a meeting has been called, it will show all the remaining members and who exactly was eliminated.
As the game goes into the later stages if the Imposter has done a good job at tracking movements and understanding who’s doing what, Crewmates are definitely getting suspicious at this point. They may have a hunch or best case scenario, they don’t trust anyone (For the Imposter at least). Ideally since they can’t trust anyone individually a dominant strategy for the Crewmates would be to stack together and the person who leaves the stack (or in other words leaves the group) is ideally the Imposter. Now if the Imposter is smart, his/her response to this would be to sabotage the stack. Well to pull this off, they would have to stay in the stack, but at the same time, it’s possible that as the stack is the moving the Imposter could sabotage a door they are about to walk through and separate the stack, securing another elimination. While it’s very likely the other remaining Crewmembers would figure out who the Imposter is at this point, the Imposter doesn’t have any other choice to make, this is the best possible move he could make to respond to the stacking decision made by the Crewmates. If we were however to take a couple of steps back, the Imposter could’ve prevented this entire situation of the “stack” occurring had they been able to create more distrust within the group. As I mentioned before, this is a strategic game, and from the order of which you do your task to who you decide to stay with, you just never know what’s going to happen. All you know is you have to react to the given situation in front of you and control the pace of the game.
To conclude, decision-making is hard and if Game Theory has taught us anything well it’s that every outcome is influenced by a set of moves or in other words a “combination of player’s strategies”. Among Us teaches us to play extremely logically while constantly thinking about our existing move and what we plan to do next based on what the Imposter does and vice versa. As I had mentioned above, if you haven’t already, this is a must-play game, and it’s super clear as to why it’s taking over in 2020!