A social deduction game is a game in which players attempt to uncover each other's hidden role or team allegiance.[1] Commonly, these games are played with teams, with one team being considered "good" and another being "bad".[2] During gameplay, players can use logic and deductive reasoning to try to deduce one another's roles, while other players can bluff to keep players from suspecting them.
Examples of social deduction games include Mafia, in which only the mafia know who is mafia and what the mafia players' roles are; Bang!, in which only the sheriff's role is known to everyone; and Secret Hitler, in which only the fascists know who the fascists are, except for the player who plays as Hitler.[3] Other social deduction games include The Resistance, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Spyfall.
One important element of strategy in some social deduction games is determining how long to stick to one's story in the light of information obtained from other players.[8] A Monte Carlo tree search has been suggested for making decisions in social deduction games.[9]
De Mol (1998), Belgian reality game show franchise where one contestant is secretly a Mole. The series has been adapted internationally in various countries, including in the Netherlands under the title Wie is de Mol?, in Poland as Agent, and in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom as The Mole.
Trapped! (2007), a British children's show where one contestant is secretly a Saboteur
The Hustler (2021), US quiz show where one contestant is secretly given the answers in advance
^Engelstein, Geoffrey; Shalev, Isaac (2020). Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis Group. p. 220. ISBN978-1-138-36549-0.
^Farber, Matthew (2020). Global Perspectives on Gameful and Playful Teaching and Learning. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. p. 6. ISBN9781799820154.
^Cowling, Peter I.; Whitehouse, Daniel; Powley, Edward J. (2015-08-02). "Emergent bluffing and inference with Monte Carlo Tree Search". 2015 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG). pp. 114–121. doi:10.1109/CIG.2015.7317927. ISBN978-1-4799-8622-4. S2CID15461414.