I was playing a birthday match1 today with jecat, and after one of the games where I was the Spy and thought I was highlit the entire game but in fact was lowlit, we got to talking about often this happens, even in elite games. In fact, the Spy often thinks the Sniper knows (or strongly suspects) who he or she is, and so Spies often find themselves playing conservatively even though they know from experience that when they’re Sniper, it’s very hard for them to figure out who’s the Spy; you usually feel pretty snowed under with information.

I got to thinking about it, and this Spy world-view, where you always think you’re the center of attention, even though there’s an entire party going on around you filled with people doing their party things, seems really narcissistic, or egocentric, or solipsistic…I’m not sure which, maybe all three? Fighting that assumption that you’ve already been made and forging ahead is one of the core biases to overcome as the Spy. You see it at all levels of play from newbies to elites, which I find very interesting.

This is all related to one of my core aesthetic goals of the game, namely forcing consequential decisions with partial information, which I’ve always thought of as primarily occurring on the Sniper side, but it really does happen on both sides. As the Spy, you have to decide to do something (accomplish missions), and then what to do (which mission), even though you don’t really know if you’re a suspect or not. How you go about this “doing” is obviously very important, but just the act of overcoming your confirmation bias and starting at all is something you can feel when playing.2 This is one of the parts of the game that I’m most happy with, because I think this concept of embracing uncertainty and making decisions even when you’re not sure is very au courant, in that most big decisions in modern life are made with only partial information, but you still have to make them to the best of your ability.

Here’s an edited clip of the stream with parts of this game and the discussion after it:

If you want to see the whole stream, it’s here.

In the stream chat, varanas had a nice quote on this topic:

Sometimes when I think I’m done for I’ll just start taking crazy risks because I think I have nothing to lose. I think it’s best to assume that if you’re not dead then there’s still everything to play for.

Given how often the person who thinks they’re doomed ends up winning, I have to agree.

1. usually round numbered games like 1000, 5000, but in this case, 12 games around his 2222th game, since we missed his 2000 [↩]
2. This idea of games making these thought processes explicit is covered nicely in Frank Lantz’s GDC talk, Hearts and Minds. [↩]