Among Us

Among Us
Subculture
Status	Submission
Origin	Innersloth
Year	2018
Type	Video Game

Among Us is an online multiplayer murder mystery video game developed by American games studio Innersloth. The game involves 4-10 players (crewmates) attempting to identify and eliminate the randomly selected imposters, who must kill everyone before the crewmates complete their tasks. It is similar to the games such as popular hidden role games like Mafia and Town of Salem. Among Us exploded in popularity in July and August 2020 after several popular Twitch streamers began playing it.

Development

Amogus was developed by Innersloth and released in late 2018. On October 28, they posted the release trailer on YouTube (shown below). The game released that day.

File:Amogus Steam Release Trailer

Fandom

The subreddit for the game grew from 27,000 subscribers on September 3 to 194,000 subs on September 17. From late June to mid September 2020, Among Us amassed over 1.1 million followers on Twitch from streamers playing the game and increasing its popularity. The game went from an average of 460 Twitch viewers in June to more than 53,000 average viewers in August. In the same period, it went from 600 average players on Steam to 25,000 average players. Among Us reached 1.5 million concurrent players on September 5.

Initial popularity

Among Us received attention after Brazilian YouTuber Godenot uploaded a Let's Play of the game on May 24, 2019 that gained over 550,000 views in fifteen months. He uploaded additional Let's Plays of the game, with the most viewed uploaded on May 31 garnering over 2.2 million views (shown below, top). On June 14, Egyptian YouTuber EstubeGaming uploaded a video playing the game that received more than 3.3 million views (shown below, bottom).

In August and September 2019, several Arabic-speaking and Brazilian YouTubers uploaded Let's Play videos of Among Us that have received millions of views, including BanderitaX, AboFloh, LipaoGamer, and Rima. On September 20, Brazilian animator Coelho uploaded an animated sketch of Among Us that garnered over 5.7 million views in eleven months (shown below, top). Arabic-speaking YouTuber oCMz أوسمز collaborated with Saudi YouTuber BanderitaX in a video that gained over 7.7 million views (shown below, bottom).

Second Wave

From late 2019 to mid-2020, several English-speaking streamers and YouTubers helped to popularize Among Us with their audiences, most notably British YouTuber and streamer Kaif. On December 23, 2019, Kaif began streaming Among Us, gaining 750 average viewers throughout his first stream. On January 8, 2020, Kaif uploaded an Among Us gameplay video to YouTube that received over 1.8 million views in almost nine months (shown below, top). Kaif continued streaming Among Us on Twitch and uploading edited gameplay videos to YouTube, raking in millions of views. Following Kaif, on March 18, YouTuber NoBeans uploaded his first Among Us video, garnering over 250,000 views in less than six months (shown below, middle). Swedish YouTuber Teos began streaming the game on Twitch on April 22. His first YouTube upload of the game on May 2 has gained over 550,000 views (shown below, bottom).

Swedish streamer and former professional Dota 2 player AdmiralBulldog started streaming Among Us on May 7. In early July, many Korean streamers started playing the game, with it peaking at 33,000 viewers on July 9.

On July 15, Twitch streamer Sodapoppin streamed Among Us at the recommendation of Twitch employee Pluto. Other streamers such as Pokelawls, Andy Milonakis, and xQc joined him. After this, streamers like xQc, Disguised Toast, Mizkif, Rubius, and Ludwig Ahgren began playing the game in August 2020, causing the popularity of Among Us to skyrocket. Notably, xQc was the most viewed Among Us Twitch streamer from mid July to mid September with over 10 million watch hours.