'About Us' is a surprisingly decent esport.

Strategy
'About Us' is a surprisingly decent esport.

Lying matches are all the rage right now. Last night, the Faze Clan brought together a large group of streamers to host an invite tournament for Among Us. Despite a few technical glitches (remotely flipping between Twitch streams is hard to make seamless), it went pretty well.

Among Us is not an esports-friendly game like CS:GO or League of Legends. There is strategy there, and there is clever play, but it is impossible to control who the imposters are. The majority of the game is random, and if it wasn't random, it wouldn't be possible.

If you've never played Along Us, here's why: in each round, two players are randomly chosen to be imposters. The imposters must kill as many fellow crew members as possible without being detected. Meanwhile, each crewmember tries to complete a checklist of tasks. If the number of living crewmates equals the number of living imposters, the imposters win. The crewmates win if they vote to execute the impostor during the emergency meeting (but may accidentally execute a legitimate crewmate) or if they all complete their tasks.

To address randomness and make "Among Us" a competition between individuals, a point system was devised. Since it is quite difficult to win a round being an imposter, the imposter gets 5 points for a win and the crewmate gets 4 points for a win. The imposter also loses 1 point for each kill, the crewmate loses 2 points for voting to execute the imposter, and 1 point for wrongly voting for another crewmate.

Everyone on the winning crew or imposter team gets a point for winning, even if they are dead. However, other points can only be earned while they are alive. While dead, they cannot kill or vote, which affects the metagame. It was interesting to watch one imposter chase a crewmate around, realize that he wasn't going to catch him and that it had become obvious that he was an imposter, and kill another crewmate in front of multiple witnesses in order to gain points before being voted out.

In the long run, everyone is in competition with other crewmembers, even fellow crewmembers, who are not necessarily your friends. For example, they might trick you into voting fraudulently so that you lose points. You can't trust anyone.

So it didn't always turn out to be exciting. Fellow crew members tended to play conservatively, stacking up and moving in large packs. As a result, the imposters often can't do anything in the early stages, and in "among-ass" style, it is sass just to wander away from the mob. Still, there was more than enough tension and bickering to keep the whole thing entertaining, and there were occasional professional-level plays. Take, for example, Jerry Peanut's smooth imposter play.

He would break away from his stacked crew mates, score a point on a kill, and double back fast enough to convince the rest of the crew that he was not involved. The imposter's teammate was voted out after that play, and although he did not win that round, it was still a good move that gave him a point and an opportunity to gain more.

Ultimately, streamer Yetiapocalypse won.

You can watch hours of the tournament on Twitch, and while I don't see a great future for Among Us esports, it was fun to watch for an hour, and that's all I want from a Twitch stream, a chance to see the best of the best, and a chance to see the best of the best.

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