About 4 years ago, Among Us had the whole world in a chokehold. Everyone from adults to children were playing it. During a time of global pandemic and panic, people found a way to come together and have fun with the game. I remember being a first year student on campus during this time and I would see group of students in their masks in a small little circle playing Among Us and trying to figure out who the imposter was between them. On TikTok, there were various videos and clips of famous streamers playing the game and viewers being enticed by it. Through all this enthusiasm about the game, I somehow managed to never find a way to play. Many of my friends would plan the time and day to play in our group chats, but I could never find it in me to play the game.
I never played the game…until last week. When we played the game in class, I was not even sure what I was supposed to do. I knew the game required the utmost confidentiality from the imposter; and from everyone else, based on the clips I had watched, I knew the plan was to work together and try as much as possible to be transparent about what their tasks were in the game. To my surprise, I was of course an imposter in my first ever game. I did not know what to do or what was expected of me. There were fake tasks that I was given to do by the game so I could convince everyone else when a player got killed that I was actually doing a task, and not committing murder (in game of course). However, this was my first game…I did not know how to even do these tasks. To make matters worse, I did not know how to kill other characters. I would just follow them around trying to see if some button would pop up when I got close enough to allow me to kill. As one may suspect after reading this, I was swiftly voted out by other players. I was never doing a task, and I was always following people so it did not take long for other players to find me suspicious even if they never saw me kill. Therefore, the game made me wonder two things: why was the game so loved, and what made a good imposter?
As for the second question, I got my answer immediately in the following game we played. Luckily another player was the imposter and I was one of the characters that had to do a task. At this point I had figured out how to do my tasks. As a result, I was swiftly moving around doing what the game had assigned to me and asking other players what they were doing as well. During this time, the imposter was moving around subtly killing two of the players in the game yet none of us knew until a meeting was held. During the meeting when we had to vote, there was no anonymous decision that could be made as everyone had been visible during the game, and the only people that knew the truth were already dead. It occurred to me that to be a good imposter, one must not only kill, but also perform the fake tasks often enough that your whereabouts could be confirmed by others. Additionally, as the imposter you have to talk and try to add to the conversation that everyone else was having when trying to discover who the imposter is. If you are quiet, it makes others feel as though you have something to hide. After the first meeting was over, I was followed for about five seconds and before I could get a word out, I was killed. I figured out who the imposter was and realized it was someone I would have never guessed. The person that was the imposter was certainly chatting during the game but not enough to where you would suspect them of overcompensating so they are not detected. Yet they were not quiet enough to where you would suspect them of hiding something. They talked just enough to go under the radar and they never followed anyone for too long to where the victim could get out a word before being killed. Seeing the imposter in the second game in action reminded me of movies where the villain or criminal commit crimes and yet somehow get away with it because they do not draw attention to themselves. No one ever suspects them of the crime and even if they are suspected, they are never caught because they have some type of alibi that can be confirmed. For example, “Primal Fear” or “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. In “Primal Fear”, even though Edward Norton was literally on trial for murder, he had convinced people of his alibi to the point where they were convinced someone else did the crime.
Now as for the first question, why was the game loved so much…I suppose it is the reason why every detective game or crime game is loved. There is suspense. Suspense takes people on an emotional rollercoaster and these emotions can be thrilling. In Among Us, you do not know who the imposter is and everyone is trying to prove it is not them. Someone can literally be next to you doing a task and five seconds later, they kill you. You just never know and that suspense of not knowing and the mental gymnastics of trying to get the person right before everyone is killed or before the game is over makes the game that much more thrilling. Similarly, when we watch a movie, we try to guess who the killer is and we try to figure out the motive that each character could have that would lead to them committing the crime. Even though we know that we will get the answer at the end of the movie, we still do our best to figure it out anyway because the process of figuring it out is the fun.
Intermittent Mechanism 