Information Cascades in Among Us
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052715/guide-understanding-information-cascades.asp
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/sep/29/among-us-the-ultimate-party-game-of-the-covid-era
Among Us, a virtual PC and mobile game, has had exponential growth in their number of players since the start of the pandemic. It has become profoundly successful with over 85 million players in just the last couple of months. An Among Us game is set up with ten players, nine of which are crewmates and one is an imposter, and each is randomly assigned a specific color and role. The aim of the game, as a crewmate, is to complete all the necessary tasks in order to keep the spaceship running smoothly and efficiently, but the imposter works to destroy all work done by crewmates while finding ways to murder them without being caught. As crewmates start to appear dead, people begin to call meetings where all players discuss who they think may be the imposter and begin to vote them off the ship. If the imposter is voted off, then the crewmates win the game, but if the imposter is able to destroy the ship or kill all crewmates before he/she is exposed, then he/she wins. As an avid Among Us player, I have come across some cheaters who use information cascades to their advantage.
Information cascades are quite easily developed through the lack of verbal communication amongst individuals part of the cascade and due to the lack of genuine information. Information cascades can be completely based on false information, but cascades can also be extremely fragile; they can be overturned with just the addition of new, genuine information. In this game, or even in general, people tend to do better when people make independent decisions with information they have obtained themselves, but it is easy to begin to make choices based on other people/players choices. I have witnessed, in a round played with random strangers, that some players may join with one or two of their friends. If one of the players from that group becomes the imposter, who will be assigned the color Red in this case, they get their other friends (who, in this case, are assigned crewmates Green and Purple) to aid them in covering up their murders through information cascades. For example, if the imposter decides to kill a specific player, Blue in this case, the imposter’s friend, Green, will most likely report the corpse and call for a meeting. During the meeting, the imposter and his friends will cover up the murder by beginning to say that they saw another random player, who we can say is Yellow, commit the crime, even though he/she did not. Since the imposter’s friend, Green, is the one who reported the body, he/she, in the eyes of the other players, may be seen as the most informed player on the topic of “Who killed Blue?”. Since Green is placing the blame on Yellow for the muder, both the imposter (Red) and the other friend (Purple) will back up Green’s claim by saying they were also witnesses. Since the rest of the players are less informed as to who killed Blue, they are more likely to follow what the imposter and his/her friends are saying, hence, a cascade will begin. All players will begin to believe that Yellow is the imposter because of a lack of newly added genuine information and a false ideal that a large group of people cannot be wrong (Herd behavior). This would most likely result in Yellow being voted off. This usually continues the whole game until the imposter, and his cheating friends, win the game.
Obviously, if new, genuine information from other players is released, such as multiple players witnessing the imposter and his friends covering up a murder, then the cascade can be easily overturned. Unfortunately, that is usually not the case if the imposter and his friends are very cognizant of their actions. So, if you are reading this and you consider yourself an avid Among Us player, please stop using information cascades as a dominant strategy to increase your payoff by winning the round, as it ruins the experience for all other players.