Social Deduction (feat. Mafia de Cuba)
October 20, 2020 | ≈ 1377 words | Mafia de Cuba
Thoughts on Social Deduction
Ok so basically I needed a way to talk about Among Us since I think it’s a perfect social deduction game but it’s not a board game so I tricked my friends into playing Mafia de Cuba so I can talk about social deduction so let’s break it down, shall we?
So despite my efforts people still can’t remember that Among Us is a social deduction game (might as well call it a Mafia-clone); so what actually is a social deduction game? Well if you know English and know what the words, social and deduction are, then congrats, you have learned the meaning of the term.
For everyone else: a deduction game is a type of game where each turn you figure out more stuff to narrow down a final answer, and then on your turn you shout “I can solve the puzzle.” Each person playing has their own brain bank of words they know, and cross reference the board with their brain and try to figure it out before the other players. Classic examples include: Guess Who, Wheel of Fortune, or Sudoku.
A social deduction game is a subtype of the above, but the information is coupled tightly with the players. Instead of each turn information being revealed from the game itself, the information is about the players, which is also tightly coupled with the players’ brain banks. This makes social deduction almost a completely different genre. Whereas the first was about making deductions using logical reasoning to make deductions about the game, the latter has players making deductions about the players based on the players’ brain banks, which to be honest sounds kind of ass.
But it’s not.
So in regular deduction games, sharing knowledge is just throwing the game. It’s something that you never do. But in social deduction games, at least the good ones, playing the game is sharing knowledge. The game forces players to do something, and that something is information other people can gather to make deductions. If your game does not have a way for players gain information from other players playing the game, you have made a shitty social deduction game (aka Secret Hitler).
It is a specific sharing of knowledge that makes these games very clever. In the social deduction games I like, there is still actual deduction to be done based on the actions of other players, and the goal of these deductions is two things:
1) Deduce the motivation of the player 2) Deduce the state of mind that make their actions most likely
And the crucial part of many of these games (which some games take for granted aka Secret Hitler) is that players may not physically show secret information, but they may vocally reveal this information. What I mean is, players can say whatever information they want. This makes social deduction games either pretty cool or dogshit. Here’s a short story:
So I was playing Mafia de Cuba and it was clear that the person to my right didn’t give a shit about any of the rules that I just explained to him, but usually has fun and is entertaining as long as I don’t give him shit for trolling so I let it rest. So when I passed the secret box around and it got all the way around to him (I was the Godfather that round), he was supposed to remember how many of my gems were still in the box and how many poker chips were still in the box. The goal was for me to figure out who secretly took what out of my box by asking people what they saw and what they took. Obviously if you stole gems, you would not say that you did, instead you have the option of lying and saying you took a poker chip with the label that said you were a loyal henchman. In this case, I asked the guy to my right what was in the box and his literal words were “A shitload of gems.” I cross-referenced the box, which currently held exactly 0 gems, and I proceeded to explain that it is the goal of the Godfather to eliminate anyone who stole gems, and it is in your best interest not to reveal directly that you did. And then I shot him and got back half my gems.
The moral of the story is that if players aren’t actually figuring out how to win, these games pretty much don’t work. The enormous, unsolvable issue with this is that you have to teach the actual strategy of the game, and there is secret information in the game, and no normal human being has ever wanted to reveal secret information. This makes playing these games with new players very annoying for me personally, but people have found a way to learn somehow (masochism) so I guess it works out.
So why do I actually like these games?
Well, a social deduction game is a test of how well you can short circuit people’s brains, and it turns out it is very satisfying figuring out exactly how to do this.
It is the same sort of feeling I’d imagine people get when they give a joke and expect a laugh.
This can lead to weird situations.
In social deduction games, people are all offering their information in hopes that the group can collaboratively solve the puzzle. It is in your best interest to offer your own pertinent information to efficiently solve the puzzle; however if you have already solved the puzzle but the evidence isn’t palatable to the group, then it is in your best interest to forge believable evidence to short circuit your team’s logic into winning.
The only reason this works is because most good social deduction games have an aspect of imperfect information. There is an amount of probability that goes into making decisions, and you are dependent on other people’s information. This is very important, otherwise you would be playing a very dull game where everyone knows everything at all points and moves are made very carefully with mistakes being rare. This kills the game.
Essentially what I’m trying to say is being a god gamer and figuring out paths to short-circuit win is fun. I will lie about what I saw if I know someone will believe me if that means our team wins.
Thoughts on actual games
So I rambled for a bit about social deduction games so here are some objective facts:
- Among Us is a perfect social deduction game
- Mafia de Cuba kinda sucks
Mafia de Cuba takes social deduction and puts it through a food processor and unfortunately you are playing the game that is currently spinning furiously in the processor instead of the smooth, pasty aftermath. It gives players an interesting proposition: You can make the game as complicated or simple as you want. It gives every player the option of keeping the game barebones by joining 1 of the 2 factions. But if you want, you can become a double agent, or a triple agent, or just a regular agent, but changes to a triple agent. Just having so many agents makes the game hard to read clearly, and hard to develop a language to learn the game. It’s ugly and egregiously complex and I guess given enough time it would eventually be fun to play.
Among Us is a beautiful, elegant game of deception. It is so perfectly creates emergent social behaviors and causes players to organically learn exactly what to look for when searching for clues. It takes concepts of time and space and challenges your mind to make assumptions and assign probabilities. There is so many ways for a player to express their skill in the game while still playing to win. It gives so much agency to how players want to create tactics or strategies, and allows for so many variations while still holding true of the tenants of great social deduction games.
It’s a great genre for exploring different ways to have fun playing a game, and unfortunately it will always be a genre gives an excuse for people to be emotional terrorists.
What a tweest!