Audience Engagement: Among Us
There are imposters among us. We must run through our base and complete our tasks before they can kill us! Or it may come to facing them to vote them out of the base! This idea and core mechanics behind Among Us are ones that have existed in many games, both digital and not, for a long time. We can see the same general premise in group games such as Mafia or video games such as Town of Salem. However, Among Us also manages to accomplish a high level of player engagement and interactivity and has recently pulled in a tremendous player base. In this article I will be discussing how this game has nailed the 4 levels of interactivity to captivate its audience.
I will begin with quickly discussing what the game is about. In its core loop, the crewmates must complete tasks, deduce the imposters identity, and vote while the imposters must sabotage the ship, kill crewmembers, and hide both physically and through speech. To facilitate this loop the game offers core mechanics such as a base, by default a ship, with many named rooms which contain tasks to be completed. The players, while staying silent, can run through these rooms as crewmates to interact with these tasks or as imposters who cannot. An imposter can kill a crewmate after a cooldown is complete and the crewmates can call a meeting by either finding a body or hitting the emergency button somewhere central on the map. Once in a meeting, players can talk unless they are dead, and crewmates must deduce who the hidden imposters are while the imposters must lie to throw suspicion onto others. If a decision is made, one person is voted off the ship and the game continues until either imposters win by killing almost everyone or crewmates win by either finding all imposters or completing their tasks.
These simple mechanics are accompanied by also simple, yet charming aesthetics to support complex player dynamics. The limits to strategy and dynamics are only limited by the players who are engaging with the game and each other. This is the main reason Among Us successfully manages to captivate its audience through cognitive, functional, explicit, and beyond-the-object interactivity.
The most evident form of interactivity in Among Us is the cognitive category. Whether the player is an imposter or crewmate, they must constantly make decisions and participate alongside the system. At its core, the game forces the player to constantly juggle their thoughts and emotions. Crewmates must complete tasks which may require puzzle solving, especially the first time they are encountered. More importantly, I found myself completely engaged with noting down locations. Who was last seen in what section? Where have I gone and what have I done so far? This alongside remembering who the crewmate may have been alongside when a murder happened fully engages the players mind. Meanwhile, the imposters complete the same cognitive exercises to deny their responsibility on top of having to lie, believable, to the other players. All of this leads to massive intellectual us by the players as they try to win.
To add to the stress and interactivity, players need to keep track of all this information as they also physically interact with the game. There are many buttons to click when playing this game. There are tasks to solve by moving pieces around the screen and a map can be opened to plan a route or to sabotage the base as the imposter. Through interacting with different items, the player may be able to see through security cameras or read sensor logs to deduce where others were, and the imposter can additionally travel through vents to move around undetected. All these interactions with buttons, items, and devices within the game are the mark of successfully engaging the player with explicit interactivity.
While familiarizing myself with the cognitive and explicit interactivity of this game, I began to realize how Among Us is designed to facilitate this engagement through functional interactivity. Often, I found myself losing sight of other players visually as I opened the map to learn locations which then covered the entirety of the screen. Once I noticed this intentional design, I also noticed a problem many friends voiced as we continued to play. When we were in the process of completing tasks as crewmates, vents and entryways to rooms were usually covered by said task. The game, through the design of its interface, was blocking most of our vision so that we had to choose between sight of potential imposters or the task itself. Thus, it is evident Among Us uses its design of interface and convoluted map layouts intentionally to increase its capability to captivate the players though utilitarian participation.
As the player fights through the interface and takes actions to make decisions, Among Us introduces the need for the players to interact directly through text or speech. This culminates in players engaging in complex arguments and detective work. Through the core design of conversation, the games interactivity culminates in unique experiences as different players and player groups strategize differently each time. The experience Among Us offers to players is the most important contributor to the beyond-the-object interactivity. I personally have experienced this as I have shared videos or images of the game with my friends and family. Players, as all humans, like to share their unique experiences. Through playing the game they make personal stories of excitement, anger, or laughter. These are highly sociable stories which urges players to share outside of the confines of the game.
Through the many shared experiences of the game, it is evident all 4 levels of interactivity work together with the player to create a dynamic process in which the game and player engage with each other. Players learn to juggle the interface of the game to gain information and make decisions within the game. The game conveys these decisions to the other players and through this cycle everyone uses their cognitive abilities to play the game and therefore create experiences which they can share. Through this cyclical pattern of interactivity, Among Us successfully captivates players and ensures their fun experience playing the game. Now excuse me as I use this review to waste the crewmates time while I try to pin my imposter wrongdoings on the red crewmate in the last second!
