Why gamers relish lying to their friends
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I turned over the card I’d been dealt and my heart sank. I was the chameleon. Again. Over the next 15 minutes, I would have to lie through my teeth to my best friends, pretending I knew the film that they were talking about. My objective was to blend in. Theirs was to root out the imposter in their midst. Throughout the ensuing conversation, I did my best to dissemble, mislead and bluff, but suspicion soon fell upon me. My friend Matthew turned and asked point-blank whether I was the chameleon. I looked into his eyes — my best friend of almost 20 years — and lied: “I’m not the chameleon. I promise.” He wasn’t buying it. He knew my lying face too well, the way my voice gets squeaky when I’m stressed. I was unmasked and lost the round.
The Chameleon is a tabletop game which was the unexpected highlight of my recent holiday. It is part of a recent proliferation of “social deduction games” which include the parlour game Werewolf and last year’s video game phenomenon Among Us. These games divide players into two factions: a group of innocents, and a smaller team of imposters who must sabotage the others while remaining incognito. The core gameplay is lying to your friends, which induces paranoia, anxiety and mistrust — unpleasant emotions even within the context of a game. So why is it that I, and countless genre fans worldwide, can’t get enough?
Antecedents of social deduction games stretch back a century: murder mystery parties, Wink Murder and its sophisticated cousin Murder in the Dark, played by New York culturati such as Dorothy Parker, Joseph Mankiewicz and Harpo Marx in the 1920s. The genre’s foundations were formalised in 1986 when Dimitry Davidoff of Moscow State University’s psychology department created Mafia. In this game, a group is divided into citizens and covert mafiosi, progressing through a day/night cycle of murders, debates and accusations, competing to be the last ones standing. It was recast as Werewolf in the late 1990s and became a party game staple, beloved for its ability to expose social dynamics and for the rhetorical pyrotechnics of its tense final rounds. Games following in its footsteps include The Chameleon, seasoned gamer favourite The Resistance and Secret Hitler, which divides players into liberals and fascists in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.
After a few video games that cleaved too faithfully to the parlour game format of Mafia, social deduction exploded on to screens with Among Us, set on a spaceship where crewmates have been infiltrated by a shape-shifting monster inspired by the classic horror film The Thing. First released in 2018, it became a runaway success on Twitch in the pandemic year, offering humour and connection in an isolated time.
The popularity of Among Us has faded since that huge rush, but its success inspired Fortnite to create not one but two temporary game modes aping its mechanics, most recently the Impostors mode launched last week. There is also Gnosia, an anime take which is entirely single-player, and Dread Hunger, which transplants the action to the Arctic in the 19th century. Even Zoom is getting in on the action: its first batch of games intended to liven up work meetings includes something called Werewolf with Friends.
The core appeals of this genre are characteristics rarely found in other games. Skill is derived not from reflexes or knowledge of a rule book but instead from observation, eloquence and reading social cues. The process of deduction is dramatic and ripe for collaboration, surprise and sharp stings of humour at the reveal. There is a thrill in hiding in plain sight, and also perhaps pleasure in the act of deception. Games allow us to experiment with such darker impulses in a safe environment with no real-world consequences — though the scrutiny, hostility and heart-wrenching cries of betrayal my cousins bring to family rounds of Werewolf have on occasion led a few weary uncles to retire while the night is still young.
These games are intensely social, forcing us to communicate rather than isolating us. Games often ask us to co-operate and compete, but few make interpersonal dynamics the very subject of play. Mafia started as a psychology experiment, and in many ways it still feels like one.
While you can play Among Us online with strangers, social deduction games come into their element when played with close friends. The fear that your loved ones are lying to your face creates a more complex emotional terrain than most games can conjure, and herein lies the thrill. Then finally, mercifully, the game ends and our relationships go back to normal. You learn to trust again, and perhaps appreciate each other’s kindness and honesty a touch more. These are your friends, after all. Why would they ever lie to you?