“Among Us” entertains wide range of players

The game Among Us made by an American game studio InnerSloth has blown up during the pandemic. Among Us is a social deduction game where “crewmates” are forced to figure out who the “imposters” are before the imposters kill and outnumber them.

Among Us is a strategy yet a casual game that people are able to play with friends or online strangers. Over the course of the last few months, the two-year-old game has skyrocketed into popularity across the nations. 

“For any game to get popular it needs people to play it on social media. So that combined with, I think CallMeCarson’s group, was one of the first ones to play it too,” sophomore Noah Phillis said. “It’s also a casual game, which is really important. It came about right after Fall Guys got popular too, which is a casual game, but that didn’t sustain popularity because it’s a mini game collection.”

Fellow student Sophia Woods agreed. “It’s a game with a simple premise that everyone can understand, but also within that premise there’s a lot of different tasks you can learn and complete, which I think really draws people in.”

Among Us has managed to stay relevant for a while now, but the question is if that popularity is able to last. Grace Cornish said, “Games just become popular because it’s super fun or whatever, or because a bunch of YouTubers are playing it, so then you’re just like, ‘Oh my, God, I’m watching YouTubers playing it, I’ll play it too.’ It ends up being super fun, but eventually with all games, another game is going to become popular or they’re just going to get bored of it.”

Of course, no games are perfect, and Among Us does have its quirks. A few of the major bugs in the game are players being randomly dropped from games, and if a player changes their in game color many times, their chance of being an imposter skyrockets or the game will make a player the imposter every round. The developers are working on fixing the game and updating it.

Among Us is so popular that even people in Congress are playing it. US.. Representatives  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar played Among Us with popular Twitch streamers in mid-October and 400,000 people watched as Ocasio-Cortez played on her very own Twitch account as she streamed the game. 

This move by Ocasio-Cortez and Omar inspired Iowan Democrats to stream and play Among Us too. Democratic activist Olivia Habinck posted on Twitter asking for Iowa politicians to host their own game as a joke, but the politicians were interested.

Both the stream by Ocasio-Cortez and the Iowa politicians are still up on Twitch for viewers to watch the first on Ocasio-Cortez’s own verified Twitch channel AOC and the latter on CosmicZaak.