Cover Image Credit: Natikop (DeviantART)
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…
