Double Jump Gaming News

The Popularity of Deceit and Deception in Gaming

Article by: Steven Gyenes

Deception. It's an act that involves deceiving another individual group through lies or trickery. Often to one's own benefit.

When it comes to betrayal and deception, no one desires to experience it in real life. It can change one’s view of another, destroy friendships and relationships. Ultimately these events can also change you mentally. No good comes from it.

So what has made such an act, popular with video games and tabletop games?

Deception games have been around since 1987. When Dimitry Davidoff, an undergraduate in Moscow, created the game. Werewolf, also known as Mafia. Is what began the start of a popular party game genre that involves deceiving your friends or randoms inperson or online.Many games have flourished with this style of game. Ranging from Table top games, video games,and even dice.

These deception/hidden role games have seen many faces of popularity with various mediums, settings/genre, and its content. These games can also vary by their difficulty and playstyle. Typically there is something for everyone.

These games have been around for quite some time, but they didn't really kick off until Among Us in 2020 when we got hit by the Global Pandemic. There is a reason for this. During the Pandemic, the social and normality of our lives were cut off abruptly, so to speak. Mandates were made for public safety and it was generally considered not safe to go to public areas and if you needed to, wear a mask and maintain a distance of six feet apart from one another.

This did massive damage to everyone's social lives, and while social apps for communicating were prevalent, it does not really remove the loneliness for some people. Talking is enough for many,but it's not as fun so to speak. Now socializing with friends or others around the world becomes a key point to the game and it all becomes very fun. Spinning lies, weaving false truths. This is all done in good faith in order to have fun.

With every game there are always those who take it too far or too seriously, but if you find yourself a good set of friends to play with, then having a couple of rounds with them will usually make for a fun time.

However, why is it that lying to your friends and getting a kick out of their anguish when they realize your betrayal makes you smile? Do you enjoy their paranoia? Do we inherently enjoy deception if we are the ones doing it? There are many reasons and it's not like there is a scientific answer. So simply put;

The Games are fun and are easily accessible to anyone and they improve or make social connections in the manner of having fun. Even though your friend stabbed you in the back after tricking you to thinking they were good, its a game. Games are meant to be fun (Despite the people on their fifteenth red bull/monster at 2 am tell you)

Today I will be talking about some famous examples of these deception and hidden role games. How their popularity and influences reaches out to create social connections with a group of individuals that could become friends or meet up once again to play.

The First of these is the Classic: Mafia

The Classic that Started it all.

Mafia is a game that can be played with or without cards. Each card represents a role drawn at random to the players. The Citizen roles must successfully vote out and execute the Mafia, while the Mafia member(s) must try to kill the townsfolk and be the only survivors.

Depending on your group, there are different variations that can be added using the cards. These could be different roles or different rulesets. Some people even add drinking consequences if you die in the round. There are several variations to play online in a tabletop sort of manner.

Town of Salem

Watching your friend ramble as a madman while on a rope has never been funnier

Town of Salem is an Online Multiplayer browser game that was released back in 2014. The game takes place in the timeframe of the Salem Witch Trials. Players have virtual characters and can utilize text chats to communicate (or party chats with your friends.) The game contains numerous roles for players to use, some are stronger than others. Town of Salem fulfilled my boring Highschool days as I played during Study Period. The game slowly began to introduce additional cosmetics with pets, methods of death, and player skin. The original browser game is still active however Town of Salem Two was released last year and is free to play. This is a game that you and a group of friends can engage in while utilizing various roles and custom rules.

Among Us

Evil lurks in the corner of Reactor

Despite releasing in 2018, two years later when the world entered the Covid-19 Pandemic, the game exploded in popularity as friends sought ways to socialize with their friends while playing a game together. The game follows the similar pattern of their being an evil imposter that kills the crewmates. The imposter can sabotage the ship and the crew must complete tasks that are mini games to save their ship. Complete all the tasks or vote out the imposter and the crew wins. The game has reached such popularity that the dev team has added more content updates, cosmetics, and the community has many mods to enhance the games experience. This game's own Cinderella story would soon spark the increasing popularity of the deception game Genre for many years to come.

Project Winter

The Blizzard is only a mild threat compared to your friend with an axe

Released in 2019, Project Winter not only has the crew and survivors pit against each other in a stranded cold mountain. The environment is also set out to kill both teams with exceptionally cold maps, hunger,hazardous areas, and animals. The survivors must complete certain tasks to get to safety while making sure they stay warm and the traitors must kill them with simple weaponry or special gadgets they can find. The maps for this game are quite big, easy to get lost in and easy to kill. To make things even more interesting, the game has proximity chat which can help you plan ambushes or know schemes if you can safely eavesdrop on them. Unfortunately the game has fallen down in popularity to have exceptionally low player counts making random games online absurdly difficult to find which arguably must be addressed if this game desires any further longevity.

Goose, Goose, Duck

Birds of a Feather, Toot Together.

Goose,Goose,Duck offers more than Among Us does in terms of roles. The players must find the evil ducks and ensure their objectives are done following mini games. Goose, Goose, Duck also has proximity chat, which can add onto the experience for players. Some unique roles like the Pigeon, who is a secondary antagonist, must infect all the survivors with a disease. The Vulture must eat a certain amount of dead bodies to win as well. Like Among Us this game is best played with friends for a chill evening of deception.

Lockdown Protocol

Among Us, but you have a proper human body.

Another social deduction game with obvious Among Us inspirations. You're in space, there are some evil crew members, and there are objectives. Unlike Among Us however is the lack of ability to vote. In this game if you suspect an evil individual your best goal is to kill them before they kill you. You can also kill yourself by accident with a limited Stamina bar for running or other Stamina based actions. The game features proximity chat as well. Lockdown Protocol is a game you must play with friends, the Random experience is often not good as it becomes a kill fest.

First Class Trouble

Those Might be the Personoids you’re looking for.

On a space cruise ship. (I hope we get a better name for that.) The rich patrons suddenly find themselves attacked by Personoids who want them dead or sucked into the vacuum of space. Unlike most deception games with individual objectives, players must actually work together to progress puzzles and find objects that complete objects so they can escape the ship. After every floor there is voting and the game can be played with proximity voice chat should you desire. But while you need to work together to complete objectives so too must the Personoids work together to kill you. So traveling in groups could be your salvation or your doom.

Dale & Dawson: Stationary Supplies

Suffer the in game 9-5 worklife

Never would I have thought being backstabbed metaphorically in the office would become a game. This game has a unique set of rules and roles. To summarize there is a single Manager who must work with their specialists to complete tasks versus the slackers that..well slack off. The Manager is the only person who can vote/fire people. Successful fire the slackers and you win. The game is quite interactive and in depth with proximity voice, in game emails, in game phone calls. It's interesting to say the least, but falls under the usual category of being better with your friends.

Deceit 2

Where once was a friend, now lurks a horrifying monster

Mixing Horror and Deception. Deceit 2 is a sequel that pits monsters against some psych ward/ hospital patients. These Monsters are known as the "Infected" and they have unique powers to aid their objective: "Kill".

The innocent must complete tasks and escape, they aren't without some various gadgets like a Camera to blind, a gun to shoot, bandages to heal. There are in fact many items that aid Innocent and Infected. The game features proximity chat with a few items that silence speakers. You also have the ability to shoot and vote out players. Using the gun you can knock out a player and vote them out for an increased chance to potentially even the odds. However with such a gun, supposed allies and enemies can take you out. Who can you safely trust in these times?

Liar's Bar

Trust no one, Not even yourself.

At the time of writing this is a newly released game about deception. Everyone is a liar and everyone is out to kill you. The game objective is simple: survive and don't get caught lying. With a game of cards or dice players must discern if the player has lied or not. It's risky, for if they tell the truth you have to risk Russian Roulette on your own head. If you catch them lying they must play Russian Roulette as well. The game is fun for a few rounds but can get repetitive. With a recent update adding voice chat, this one of the few games it's fun to mess with randoms. At the time of this writing, the game is still in early access and releasing updates.

Death Note: Killer Within

The Anime I'm surprised got a game.

Bandai Nameco has released a Death Note game. The series itself is a popular batttle of deception between people known as L and Kira. Players can be assigned four different roles; L, Kira, The Investigators, and Kira’s Helper. Kira and Kira’s helper have a single objective; Kill L. During gameplay these two are able to steal investigator ID’s swap the Death Note with each other, and kill the investigators in secret outside of meetings. L and The investigators must arrest Kira, if they do so they win. However, L must also protect himself as if he dies, they lose the game. While the investigators collect close to get closer to the truth, L can order certain investigations and add surveilance cameras to the area. Its a race against time to Arrest Kira or Kill L.