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What is Social Deduction
The word ‘deduction’ might bring to mind investigative mysteries and the infamous Sherlock Holmes stories. Deduction is the act of coming to a conclusion based on logical reasoning. Social deduction is best known as a category of board games and video games in which it seems ‘deduction’ sometimes goes out the window. These games are immensely popular, especially since COVID-19 affected the globe, and are based on the idea that there are two groups of players, one good and one bad. The good must try to deduce the identity of the ‘bad’ players as a team and eliminate them or expose their evil identities.
Popular Social Deduction Games
Sound familiar? Maybe you are thinking about the mega-popular game that gained huge traction when the world went into lockdown in 2020: Among Us. It follows the same logic laid out above. Most members are innocent crewmembers that must try to identify the imposters through reasoning while the imposters must divert attention from themselves to survive and evade being sus(picious). But Among Us is far from the first of its kind.
Social deduction games have been popular for a long time and are largely traced back to Dimitry Davidoff, the creator of the game Mafia. Davidoff created the game in 1986 as a psychology student at Moscow University.¹ The game works on the exact same principle; there is a group of innocent civilians that are being ‘killed off’ by a few mafia members at night.² During the day, the players must discuss amongst themselves to decide who is part of the mafia and attempt to catch them before the next ‘night’ while the mafia members, hidden amongst the group, must evade capture.
Mafia is primarily an in-person party game but there are also many online games that have gained popularity like Among Us and board games that have been converted to online games like Werewolf, Secret Hitler, and Coup.³ Whatever the format is, it seems that social deduction games are on the rise and a big part of these games is for players to figure out which one of their friends is a liar.
