That’s Sus

What makes a game go viral?

Quick Poll: Number Crunch: 4.6 Million

What’s your favorite type of video game? The game “Among Us” had more than 4.6
million followers on the Twitch streaming
● Sports games. I like to put myself into the platform as of November 2020.
role of my favorite athletes.
● Survival games. I like the thrill of trying to
outsmart others in a game.
● Fantasy games. I like to explore fantastical
worlds.
● Low-stakes games. I like to play games
that are cute and fun, not stressful.
● I’m not that into video games.

Background

Dressed in a brown spacesuit, you race around Mira HQ to calibrate engines and empty the
trash when all of a sudden you encounter... the imposter!

That’s just one possible scenario you may encounter in the online game “Among Us,” which has
taken the video gaming world by storm. Its space-themed gameplay asks the players, known
“crewmates,” to complete tasks and work together to uncover the identity of the murderous
alien imposter who is hiding among the team. The crewmates have to identify the imposter
before the fiend slowly picks them off one by one. “Among Us” was first released in June 2018,
but suddenly gained popularity in 2020, with more than 86 million downloads by September
2020.

“A few weeks ago I went from not hearing anything about it to hearing everything about it
everywhere,” Judah Rice, 16-year-old a high school student in Texas, told The New York Times.
“People are texting about it, I know people who are on dedicated Discord servers and Among
Us group chats. I have friends who get together all the time and play it.”

The basic concept of “Among Us” has been featured in countless games, but its origins go back
to 1986 with Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow University, according to NPR. He
created the card game “Mafia” in order to “mess with a bunch of high school students he was
tutoring,” writes Jason Sheehan. “It is a deduction game, a psychology game. You read the
room, ask your questions, make your accusations and see how each player reacts. Only a
majority vote of players can indict a murderer and, at least in the early going, most of those
votes are wrong.” This same spirit runs through the modern, mobile “Among Us” with
crewmates and imposters.

Social media has also buoyed the game’s popularity, according to 17-year-old Nicole Draper.
“The hype keeps growing because everyone is playing it,” Draper, who posts “Among Us” on her
Instagram meme page. “My TikTok For You page is flooded with Among Us memes. People are
making parodies and voice-overs of Among Us scenes. It grew bigger than any other game.”

The game is particularly entertaining for audiences who miss the excitement and
unpredictability of being with friends in person due to the coronavirus pandemic. “The game is
about deception and the personalities of people playing,” said Nathan Grayson, a writer for the
gaming website Kotaku. “It brings back the spirit of being around your friends. It’s designed for
streamers to play off one another and they can also have streams where all of them are
streaming on separate channels with their audiences speculating on chat about which person
is an impostor.”

What do you think? What makes a game go viral?

Research Links

Everyone’s Playing Among Us

Article: The New York Times explores what has made “Among Us” explode in popularity in 2020.

'Among Us,' It's Every Little Space Sausage For Themselves

Column: For NPR, writer Jason Sheehan takes readers into the experience of playing “Among Us.”

Among Us Isn’t Just Blowing Up on Twitch — it’s Dominating Mobile Gaming

Article: The Verge explains how “Among Us” has become especially popular as a mobile app.

AOC Helps Set Twitch Record for ‘Among Us,’ the Viral Game Developed by a Tiny Seattle-Area
Studio
Article: GeekWire explores how New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez live streamed on Twitch
to play “Among Us” to encourage people to vote in the U.S. presidential election.

Reflection options

Option 1: What did you notice? What is the most surprising, the most interesting, or the most
important thing you learned today? Talk about it. Explain what made it so remarkable.

Option 2: The Three C’s You probably started today with an opinion about what you read. How
was your thinking affected by your reading today? Was your thinking confirmed, changed, or
challenged? Choose one of the three C’s and explain why.

Option 3: Connect it How is what you read today related to your world and the world you value?

Option 4: Back to the text The “Background” section above ends with several questions. Choose
one or two and offer a thorough answer, including information gathered from the Research
Links.