There’s nothing quite like lying to your
friends. Getting the people who know you best to believe
something that is entirely untrue is a surprisingly entertaining challenge. To be clear, I’m not an advocate for dishonesty,
at least not in normal circumstances, and that’s why I love hidden role games or as
a friend of mine calls them: “trust-likes.” I’ve dropped countless hours in titles like
Secret Hitler, Avalon, and my most recent obsession, Among Us. While each of these games have plenty of differences,
all of them center around asymmetrical gameplay where some players are assigned to complete
a task and the rest have to disrupt that task. What I love about these kinds of games is
that they give me the chance to do something I would never feel comfortable doing in my
real life: lie unmercilessly to people I care about. The games ask players to take all the trust
and goodwill they’ve built with other people, and use it against them. Playing them is brutal, hilarious, and endlessly
fascinating. From a gameplay perspective, hidden role games
provide a challenge that you can’t really get anywhere else. With a lot of titles that have asymmetrical
gameplay, players can dedicate freely to the role that they’re assigned, but that isn’t
really the case for hidden role games. To be successful at both roles, players need
to maintain a delicate balance where they aren’t too obviously one role or the other
throughout every play session. So with Among Us, players are assigned one
of two roles: crew or impostor. The crew’s objective is to fix up the ship
and try to figure out who the impostors are so that they can vote them out, and the impostor’s
is to sabotage everything and kill the crew. The two roles call for players to act in dramatically
different ways, but if other players notice this difference, it becomes very obvious who
the impostor is, and this is where the real challenge kicks in: finding a consistent approach
that works when playing both as a crew member and an impostor. It is hard to find that sweet spot, and there
isn’t an objectively perfect approach; it changes depending on the player and who they’re
playing with. Some people can get away with stuff that others
can’t just based on their personality, and a group made up of mostly loud and chaotic
types will need an entirely different approach than one primarily filled with reserved and
analytical players. What’s important though is finding a consistent
way to play in any given session and sticking with it. The focus is more about winning the night
than individual games. Throughout my years of playing various trust-likes,
I’ve experimented a fair bit to find the approach that nets me the most wins. I’ve been the analytical player who lays
out all of the information with the appearance of neutrality so that when I am the bad guy,
I can subtly manipulate facts to best work for me; I’ve been the source of chaos who
sows confusion amongst the ranks regardless of my role so that when I do something suspicious,
people won’t be sure if I’m evil or just stupid. What I’ve found to work best though is to
play in a way where people are always a little bit suspicious of me but not so much so where
I make things too confusing. So in Among Us, I’ll make sudden movements
towards other players to make them think I might be contemplating killing them, and I
won’t do tasks that could clear me in front of other people so that I have plausible deniability
when I can’t do it as an impostor. This makes it so when I play in a way that
doesn't align with what a perfect crew member would do, I can throw out the defense, “well,
I always play this way.” It tends not to work so much in early games,
but after playing with the same group for a long period of time, it becomes a stronger
and stronger defense. Of course, while being consistent is important,
adapting one’s approach as time goes on is as well. Like for a while, I regularly responded to
accusations against me with some variation of the phrase “why me?” and when I did
that, people only became more suspicious of me, even when I wasn’t the impostor. So, despite it being something I was consistent
with, it made me too suspicious. Now I respond in a different way that doesn’t
get me thrown out the airlock as much. Keyword as much, I still get thrown out a
lot. An important part of the game is learning
how to not get caught in the sights of someone’s gut feeling, because while there are ways
to gather concrete information in Among Us and other hidden role games, for the most
part, everyone is operating on assumptions, and if they find anything that looks like
information, they’ll grasp for it. This makes it very important to not only learn
how to manage one’s own assumptions but also those of other people. And this is when the simple concept of deceiving
friends starts to devolve into an episode Death Note. When playing, I am constantly trying to break
down the actions of every other player to gather some bit of information to take and
run with. It’s a constant loop of considering what
any given player is capable of, what other players think that player is capable of, and
what other players think I am capable of. Hell, even right now, in just making this
video, I feel like I’m still playing the game by putting certain information out there
so once the people I play with see this, I can try to use the new assumptions they’ve
made about me to my advantage. I’m in too deep. All of those reasons are why I don’t really
like playing with strangers. I find having some sort of existing connection
with the other people in a match adds a ton of interesting layers that I really enjoy
engaging with. It’s fascinating to play with people I know
and trust, because I get to learn how they act both when they tell the truth and when
they lie. And it's the latter that really is entertaining
to watch. Some do it in a cool and collected way, not
missing a single step or having the slightest waver in their voice. Others approach it with a rising anger, making
it hard for anyone else to get in a word so they have no choice but to think that doing
anything other than what is being yelled at them means they are literally throwing the
game right now. There aren’t many circumstances where people
get to lie to friends and walk away laughing, and that’s what these games provide: a place
to indulge in uncouth behavior without the risk of any real repercussions. The thing that intrigues me most specifically
about Among Us is that I am worse at it than any other hidden role game I’ve ever played. There are so many more moving pieces to it
than the titles that first got me into the genre, and I still don’t know how to balance
everything to be the best crewmember and impostor possible, but I really want to. And this brings up a somewhat uncomfortable
question: should I want to be good at games centered around lying? And the answer is...noooo? Look, yeah, becoming an accomplished liar
is not a great look and anyone who walks away from these games with the thought, “oh,
it is so easy to get away with lying to my friends” should rethink some things, but
also I like to win stuff. It feels really good when I make the right
read on someone, and even better when I trick a person into believing a lie. With that said, these games do run the risk
of friends actually getting mad at eachother. In my experience what typically happens with
trust-likes is that a group plays together a ton, develops a meta that everyone begins
to follow which eventually starts to suck the fun out of things by making what should
be a chaotic experience into a more formulaic one. And when it hits that stage, it's not uncommon
for people to start getting frustrated by how individual rounds are played. I don’t think Among Us is immune to this,
and my group is still pretty new to Among Us, so it is hard to know how long we will
want to keep coming back, but I do think it has the potential for a much longer lifespan
than the other hidden role games I’ve played, and that comes from its customization options. Pretty much everything can be changed whether
that be adjusting kill cooldowns for impostors, shifting the amount of tasks the crew needs
to do, or even hiding the roles of players after they’ve been ejected. Changing any of these options calls for wildly
different playstyles and forces everyone to rethink how to approach a match, and I haven’t
really had that experience with any other trust-like. Sure, board games are technically customizable
but something like the Resistance doesn’t lend itself to the same amount of homebrewed
modes as the option menu in Among Us does. Whenever any sort of staleness does start
happening with a group, the solution to that is almost assuredly somewhere in the options,
and I adore when players are allowed to customize a game to fit their needs instead of having
to change to meet the game’s needs. With Among Us, I hope this will lead to a
long stint of my friends and I being able to lie to each other. Obviously though, at some point we will move
past Among Us, and most likely won’t play any trust-likes for a good while. Our faith in eachother will return from playing
team games and the occasional friendly competition. Until of course the next hidden role game
comes out, and I find myself back in the exciting position of not being able to trust my friends. And with all this talk about things you can’t
rely on, let’s talk about something you can: the bassy rumble of Raycon earbuds. Raycon, who is this video’s sponsor, makes
high quality wireless earbuds that sound as great as other premium brands but start at
about half the price. I don’t like the sound of silence, so I
am pretty much always listening to something, and using raycons have been great for that,
especially on the go. They’re comfortable, they sound good, and
they don’t have any cords to worry about, so they are really easy to just grab and go. Their latest model, the everyday E25 earbuds
are awesome. They have 6 hours of playtime, seamless bluetooth
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they also come in new, fun colors. And if you click the link in the description,
you can get 15% off your order. Raycon makes great earbuds, so if you’re
in the market for a really solid pair, you should check them out. Anyway, thanks again to Raycon for sponsoring
this video. I appreciate you so much for watching. If you like AMong Us, I do have some plans
to stream it on Twitch, so follow me and you can watch it maybe. That's all I got. I hope you have a great day and/or night,
and I will see you in the next one.
