Things Parents Should Know About Mom ang Us Video Game
You've heard your kids talking about the murder-mystery game Among Us, and you have questions. Fortunately, our simple guide has the answers.
If you have a bored middle-aged or teenager at home, you've probably heard them talking about playing video games with their friends online. It's been available to play since 2018, but Among Us gained popularity this year as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people under lockdown to connect with friends online rather than in person.
Since late summer, the many memes and gaming streams among us have attracted 60 million daily users online and more than 100 million downloads of the mobile app. In mid-October, the U.S. Congressmen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar also hosted a Twitch stream as a way to encourage young people to register to vote in the 2020 election, bringing more attention to the online party game.
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This probably makes parents wonder: Is it appropriate for children to play with us? Is there anything you need to worry about your children watching or learning? Whether your kids are asking permission to play or they've been playing for a while, this guide has answers to all the questions parents might have about this popular online murder-mystery game.
What is between us?
Male is an online multiplayer game from the developers at Inner Sloth, in which players work together to fix their crumbling spaceship while figuring out who the traitors are. It's called a social deduction game, meaning the game-play focuses on a conflict between two teams: an informed minority and an uninformed majority. Although it sounds complicated, it is an elementary concept.
At the start of each game, you're randomly assigned the role of either a bad guy (aka rogue) or a good guy (aka crewmate). Rogues know which role each player is assigned (i.e., they know who the other bad guys are), but crewmates are none the wiser. For the cheaters to win, they must kill all the crewmates without getting caught. If the crewmates want to win, they must find out who the cheaters are and vote them off the ship, or finish repairing the ship by doing small tasks (which are simple mini-games) before the cheaters kill everyone.
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Players are only allowed to talk to each other during emergency meetings, which happen after finding and reporting the body of a killed crewmate, or after someone presses the emergency meeting button (each player can only press the button once per game, depending on your settings). At the meeting, the players discuss what they have seen and vote to send the suspect player out or proceed without elimination. However, cheaters will try their best to convince other players that they are one of the good guys, so players must use logic to avoid being cheated and make the right choices. Sounds like fun, right?
There are three different maps to explore, and each game is only 10-15 minutes long, so if you die or get voted out, it won't be long before you're playing again.
Are we violent?
You may hear the word “assassination” and “killing” and decide that this game is not suitable for your child. But in reality, most of this game is relatively tame. There is no blood in the game, and when one player finds the “corpse” of another player, the cartoon art style makes it look more like a colorful honey-roasted ham than a corpse.
Furthermore, worth noting are some shocking kill animations that occur when you get killed by one of the rogues. These show very violent scenes like being stabbed with a knife or a sharp alien tongue, your character's neck being broken, and being shot with a gun. While these are pretty gruesome, each scene is only on-screen for about two seconds, and they aren't shown frequently. Kill animations are only put on screen for a crewmate being killed, so even though you're likely to be a crewmate most of the time, you won't see more than one animation per game (if that). If you're a cheater, you won't see the kill animations. Instead, when you kill—easier said than done depending on your skill level—the victim's character simply turns into a “honey-roasted ham” and falls to the ground.
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