By Tara Makhija
When Covid first hit back in early 2020 I remember I would take to Club Penguin to “hang out” with friends during isolation. It got old quick–Club Penguin, while inherently a more social platform, didn’t actually have much you could do with your friends. Really, the most social it got was trying to tip the iceberg or trying to start a minigame at the same time as your friend on the same server in order to get paired with them. And while I know several other people also tried to go back to their roots and end up on the Summit server, the world was itching for a non-gamer-friendly online game good enough to use an excuse to play with their friends.
Among Us had existed for a few years before that point but never quite took off. There was no need, I suppose. Gamers had more gamer-y games to play, Among Us was a little bit too fun, in a tacky, summer camp way. Non-gamers would have had no reason to know it existed. But then all of a sudden people had nothing else to do. I remember signing up for email alerts from ten different websites just trying to buy a Nintendo Switch. I don’t even like video games. But people were just looking for something, be it Tiger King or whipped coffee or some sort of social video game. And so Among Us took off, along with Jackbox games. But Among Us was indubitably the one that went the most viral, probably due to its ease of access.
Unlike Jackbox games, Among Us didn’t require a Steam account or even a specific video game console. Anyone could play it. It was simple to share links with friends. Anyone could learn the rules within the span of a 5 minute game. It had tasks, it had deception, it had social deduction. The game was more fun when you knew the people you played with, because it made the accusations all the more personable. It was lighthearted, which meant that it never really grew old, it just grew ironic.
The structure of the game was simple. You’re a little alien on a spaceship trying to complete certain tasks to make it run. There’s an imposter trying to stop you and kill everyone. They don’t have tasks. By asking people about their tasks and seeing what location they’re at people try to figure out who the imposter is. If you’re the imposter, you also have to keep some basic things in mind. Don’t vent to a separate room (an imposter-only ability) in front of people. Don’t kill someone in a group. Always have an alibi for why you were in a room ready (what tasks are you going to say you were assigned?). Among Us isn’t the best game for truth-tellers.
The reason it succeeded laid in its simplicity. As I mentioned earlier, it was designed to be easy to pick up, it was designed to be easy to access, it was designed to be easy to play regardless of gaming background. But more than just that, the graphics of the game were simple. This is arguably directly tied to its ability to go viral. Among Us quickly made its way across various internet channels. The graphics made it well adapted to meme formats. It even took over Gen Z linguistics, and served as the origin of the shorthand “sus” that people still use regularly, four years later. I remember a friend of mine from high school made us all fuse-bead keychains of our Among Us characters. In freshman year of college, our RH gave us all Among Us stickers. I even made my friend an Among Us friendship bracelet/keychain because even if I never got into it, he was obsessed with it. Among Us became a social phenomenon outside of the game itself. It invaded social media, but also the tactile, which simply never would have been possible to the extent it happened with a game with more complex graphics. Among Us’s simplicity also made it well suited for tactile or pixel-art-esque elements. And its character customization ability made it appeal younger audiences.
Then, older audiences found Among Us integrated into their daily lives more and more too. In my freshman year of college, our house’s weekly study breaks would be Among Us nights. I imagine internship icebreakers could utilize the game too. And soon its network effect amplified it like crazy–you only had to have one friend that had heard of it to end up playing it. And unlike its Mafia-type social deduction counterparts, the game was more fun the less seriously you took it. In a Covid environment, those attributes made it the perfect game.
Among Us took off because of circumstance. While fun, the fact it didn’t gain popularity until two years after its release does indicate a heavy correlation with Covid in its success. Covid also made people more active on social media in attempts to connect with their friends. So its presence in memes and other media-based formats grew because it had a larger audience engaging with it. Its a fun game, and its traits of simplicity and accessibility were key to its success in Covid times and going forward.
Intermittent Mechanism 