Among Us makes for a surprisingly decent esport

Competitive lying is a thing now. Last night, Faze Clan put on an Among Us invitational tournament with a bunch of streamers, and despite some light technical jankiness (remotely flipping between Twitch streams is a tough thing to make seamless), it worked pretty well.

Among Us doesn’t exactly lend itself to esports in the way games like CS:GO and League of Legends do. There’s strategy to it, and there are clever plays, but it’s impossible to control who the imposters are. A major part of the game is random, then, and has to be random for it to work. 

If you haven’t played Among Us, here’s why that’s the case: In each round, two players are randomly selected to be imposters, while the other players are all regular crewmates. The imposters must attempt to kill as many crewmates as they can without being found out. Meanwhile, each crewmate attempts to complete a checklist of tasks. The imposters win if the number of living crewmates is equal to the number of living imposters. The crewmates win if they vote to execute both imposters during emergency meetings (though they might accidentally execute regular crewmates), or if they all complete their tasks.

(Image credit: Faze Clan)

To address the randomness and make Among Us a competition between individuals, a points system was devised. It’s much harder to win a round in which you’re an imposter, so they get five points for a win, while crewmates get four points for a win. Imposters also get one point per kill, while crewmates get two points when they vote to execute an imposter, and lose one point when they mistakenly vote for another crewmember.

source: gamezpot.com