Amongst the thousands of Steam titles released each year,
one special game achieves a super-star status – a game which every gamer and
their dog seems to be playing. Sure, these stand-alone adventures will never reach the consistent
player counts that Counter-Strike and PUBG achieve each day, but they’ll give
them a run for their money for a couple of months at least.
At present, Among Us is in that stardom spot, a cutesy
social-deduction game with the not-so-cute objective of discovering a serial
killer who’s murdering the entire crew. Released in November 2018, Among Us found
little success on release, only averaging around 80 active players for
the entirety of 2019. It wasn’t until this year where the game found
its stride, peaking at a whopping 438,524 players in September.
Now, titles that gain unexpected popularity are not uncommon (e.g. Flappy Bird, Pokémon Go, and Fortnite), but
these successes came soon after the games’ release dates. A forgotten and
essentially dead game suddenly finding attention out-of-the-blue is an entirely
new phenomenon.
So, what makes Among Us different? Why did it not find this
success back in November 2018? How did this small indie game with a
three-person development team capture the hearts of players globally? And why
is it easier than ever to resurrect dead and forgotten games today?