Fandom In Context: For 'Among Us' Fans, Impostor Syndrome Is Not A Problem

As Epic Games battles it out with Apple, an impostor infiltrated the gaming world. Among Us is a small, 2-D murder mystery game about multi-colored astronauts trying to repair their spaceship. As of this writing, it is the most popular game on Steam and Twitch, with big names, like xQc, Dr. Lupo and Pokimane, all playing live, and over on YouTube, PewDiePie's been playing it all week. While Fall Guys looked like the cute game du jour this summer, Among Us quietly waited in the wings, built a fanbase and took over the internet. Now, that fanbase is making space for newcomers, weeding out impostors and welcoming aspiring crewmates.

Among Us has more in common with the party game "Mafia" than Minecraft or Fall Guys (even though the characters are obviously reminiscent of the latter). Players are either "impostors," who attempt to sabotage the spaceship and kill the other players, or "crewmates," who attempt to repair the ship and unmask the killer. The object of the game is to find out who "among" the crew is an impostor before the ship explodes, or the impostor kills you, whichever comes first. As crew members die, players deliberate and vote on whom they believe to be the killer. Get it? It's simple, appealing and requires little overhead; it is free on mobile and $4.99 on Steam. Among Us invites a party atmosphere—not the tense campaigning of Call of Duty, Fortnite or other shooters. That means lots of people want to get on board.

The game came out in June 2018 to little fanfare. It took six months to get enough active players to "stay alive 24/7," programmer and business lead Forest Willard told Kotaku. Upon its release, Among Us was just another mobile party game, the type that would usually never find a following on Twitch. It wouldn't even be released on PC until November that year. However, it slowly built an audience, hammering away at the kinks and squashing the bugs.

About a year and a half ago, Redditor FullTimeBellend, a Bosnian high schooler, co-founded the /r/AmongUs subreddit. He picked up the game on a whim from the Google Play Store. "It looked appealing, and I was bored," says FullTimeBellend. Others had a similar experience. Wonton, the founder of the Among Us Discord server, says that a friend recommended the game, and they started a server because they liked it. At the time, the game had no presence on Twitch, no presence on Steam. Now it's number one on both.

Starting in July 2020, Among Us began taking over the internet, ushering in a slew of new memes and a surge in subscribers on Among Us fan forums. "There's been a massive rise in subscribers and active users," says FulltimeBellend. "It really came out of nowhere. Before, I would scroll through all the posts and approve them manually because the subreddit was so small. It felt like a milestone when [the subreddit] hit 1,000, and now, it's so much bigger. It's insane. The official Discord only had about 8,000 people, at the time, and it was by far the biggest one."

me sitting muted in discord while everyone argues about the wrong person who killed me pic.twitter.com/DGQ6h57JCL

— reverse (@reversetfw) September 16, 2020

The surge in users put more work on the mods' plates. For unpaid moderators and admins, the sudden growth requires vigilance, time and delegation. "The growth has been insane," writes rs_obsidan, an /r/AmongUs mod, via private message. "Before [the surge] started, which was around late August, the sub was sitting at maybe ~4,000 members? I remember waking up one day to see that the member count had doubled from the night before."

Fans attribute the surge to popular streamers discovering the game. However, international players got there first. "It was found by someone in Korea," Marcus Bromander, Among Us artist and game designer, told Kotaku. "That helped us get popularity there, and then sometime in the middle of 2019, [a YouTuber] in Brazil played it, and their fanbase picked it up, and it's just been kind of slowing growing from there." That YouTuber was likely Eric Carr, who's been producing Among Us Let's Play videos since June 2019. It would take another year for the game to click with American audiences.

In July 2020, English-speaking streamers began taking a crack at the game. Among Us gives off the same atmosphere as a Jackbox Games session, i.e., lots of screaming, finger-pointing and laughing, which is perfect for people quarantining at home. This also translates really well to Twitch, where reaction and personality are nearly as important as gaming abilities.

"The game exploded in popularity, in my opinion, because of two factors: media attention and the game itself," says Wonton. "Big content creators such as xQc and Carson created content for the game. The unique and fun gameplay of Among Us got thousands of players to recommend it to others and continue playing it. I first noticed the surge on August 10th, when 300 users joined in a single day, a huge increase from the usual 60. We now average 20,000 members a day currently."

That was a big jump in a short amount of time, and it called for more moderation. "All of a sudden, however, posts started flooding the subreddit, and my inbox would consistently get messages regarding some issue or another," rs_obsidan writes. "Since it was becoming increasingly difficult for us to manage the sub, we chose to hold moderator applications. We initially only planned on selecting three moderators, but as the sub grew, we decided to increase that number to five, and finally to eight."

However, the influx of people means that finding a public room became easier. Suralovee, a Twitch streamer and Among Us Discord mod, says she began streaming the game at her viewers' behest. At the start of the surge, she says, there weren't enough players. "The struggle was always that we didn't always have enough people to get a game going," writes Suralovee via email. "Especially due to people's conflicting sleep schedules, with COVID and time zones. As a streamer, being in my server wasn't enough to get a game going. I would wait 20-40 minutes trying to get 10 people in. I learned my lesson not to start my stream until the lobby is full."

She joined the Discord server shortly after when there were 18,000 members. Today, there are more than 150,000, "increasing by the thousands every day," says Suralovee. However, she decided to take on a more prominent role in the group to make it a more positive experience for players. Among Us isn't immune to the problems that plague other gaming communities. When large groups congregate anonymously online, harassment, trolling and bigotry always seem to follow. "Every other day, I would get harassed for being a girl," she writes. "Guys were being disrespectful, racist and toxic, to the point where I felt the need to contact a moderator to see if there's anything we can do. After this recurring so much day after day, I asked if I can just become a moderator in order to help prevent these behaviors from happening." The admin accepted.

There are positives, though. Among Us has been an equalizer between pro streamers and regular gamers. Some pros make private servers, while others, like Sommerset and Faze Destiny, jump into public ones. This willingness to play with fans on this level has helped bridge gaps within the community, says Suralovee. "It really brings the two worlds together as one and integrates the pros and the none pros, which I think is what makes the gaming community so different from other communities. Being verified on social media doesn't make you above others. At the end of the day, we're all just here because we love to play the same games, and anyone can blow up in this community tomorrow."

The surge in popularity hasn't phased these mods, who remain excited by the new players. They want to make an inviting space for their spaceship murder mysteries. "I just want to welcome all the newcomers to the subreddit," says rs_obsidian. "It's been absolutely mindblowing seeing the small subreddit turn into a major hub for all Among Us players, and I'm honored to have been able to participate in the journey along the way. To those of you reading who haven't yet joined the sub, I invite you to become a part of this community and this game." The invitation sounds warm enough. Of course, that's precisely what an impostor would say.