Among Us is taking the world by storm, but it’s just ‘Space Werewolf’ to gamers in China
- Among Us helps US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez create one of the most-watched Twitch streams in history
- Developed by InnerSloth, the PC and mobile game follows a format that is better known among Chinese gamers as Werewolf
Among Us is one of America’s latest obsessions. But in China, there is nothing especially novel about the breakout indie video game, except for its name.
As influencers and politicians discover the hot new multiplayer game for the first time, Chinese players are reacting with a collective yawn. When hundreds of thousands of viewers on Tuesday tuned into the first Twitch stream of US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playing Among Us, the novelty appeared lost on gamers in China.
“So Among Us is actually just Werewolf,” one Weibo user wrote.
Werewolf was the gaming phenomenon that took over China about three years ago, spawning a chain of mobile games and celebrity shows. Just like Among Us, it is a variation of a party game called Mafia, which was created by a Russian psychology professor in 1986.
The game was given a werewolf theme in the late 1990s, which gave rise to various popular card games like The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, a French variant that launched in 2001.
In their most basic form, these games pit players against each other by assigning them one of two roles. One side is trying to “kill” while the other side needs to root out the murderers before it is too late. The challenge? None of the players know for sure which side the others are on. The fun lies in the guessing and attempts at mind reading.
In Among Us, set aboard a spaceship, the “impostors” are killers and the “crewmates” are innocent. In Werewolf, an identical battle plays out between “werewolves” and “villagers”.
