This game boasted some very difficult aspects, mainly in the form of the social component. When I was first exposed to this game, it was in the setting of about 20 people that had never met each other and were not very comfortable with each other yet. This caused a lot of issues in how some of the major points of the game were supposed to be revealed. If some folks had roles, such as the seer or the seer’s apprentice, two incredibly useful characters for the human side, they might have been less inclined to speak up, either because they were bashful around the large crowd of people or lacked trust in these new people. In turn, it was quite frustrating watching the werewolves get through many of the humans without the humans being able to take out any of the werewolves. This communication barrier surely affected the characters, but there was also the aspect of having a hard time for people to come to a meaningful verdict when choosing which human to kill at the end of the day. This was because people, again, might not have been able choose an option that someone that they didn’t even know had picked, thinking their own idea of who to kill was better. This lead to a long time choosing the person to kill every day, while also choosing a person that might have not been the best choice. Perhaps these complaints were not even part of the mechanics of the game itself, however, the social aspects seemed to be greatly intertwined these mechanics and I’d argue, became more important in some cases.

              This game has quite a bit to do with leadership, mostly in the case of the selection process of who to kill during the day (the one that the humans choose to kill). There are many people that have many different opinions on who they think is the one that should be killed, but swaying the other players of the game to believe that they are right is the difficult portion of this. As a result, one must have a convincing argument, more so than the other players, to sway them over to killing the person that they believe most should be killed. Once one has swayed even one other player, the decision becomes very easy for almost everyone. Following the first follower and the leader, especially if the leader has a vert convincing argument, is plenty for others to follow that leader. In a way, the werewolves have to have their own little leadership game when they decide to kill a human at night. There were only three of them in the game that we played, but one person still has to sway the other two to follow what they want to do, silently at that.               

I’d never heard of this game before, but lo and behold, the Saturday after playing it, I go to my friend’s house for a large, enjoyable group gathering and my friend has bought a box of Ultimate Werewolf. And it was a huge hit when we played, the group being about the same amount of people as when we played in class. This time, we had all known each other for awhile and the game flowed so smoothly for the most part. We’d actually never played a game like this together as a group, but it totally makes sense that my friends would enjoy this kind of game. We enjoyed games in which there was a large amount of social interaction to achieve a goal and werewolf had these qualities all the way through the game. Even in games like Mario Party, a fairly socially lacking game, my friends would try to team up and use their social influence to get ahead as much as possible. For these reasons, I would suspect that my friends would like the game and I have this example to prove it too 😊