Social Deduction

This game was not designed as a game. In 1986, Dmitry Davidov of the psychology department at Moscow University devised Mafia to study how a group behaves when a secret-holding minority sits inside a majority that holds no secret. A psychology experiment became a game exactly as it was. In 1997, Andrew Plotkin recast the theme as werewolves -- his judgment was that a hidden enemy who looks ordinary but bares its fangs at night lands harder, culturally, as a werewolf than as a mobster. Then in 2018, Among Us moved it onto a screen, inside a spaceship. Its creator, Marcus Bromander, has said he played Mafia as a child. A format that came from outside games and became a game -- the clearest single thread of border-crossing on this map.