Among Us is a wildly popular game where a group of crewmates are sent off to finish their tasks on a spaceship, while two imposters try to sabotage them. While being an imposter is undeniably fun, being a crewmate is so much better. Not only are you able to avoid the anxiety that comes with being the imposter, you get more perks and you’re able to experience unity with other crewmates.

When you’re a crewmate, you aren’t subject to the stress that imposters face, and instead, you can rally your fellow crewmates together for the win. As the imposter, the entire game is on your back. You have to be on edge, constantly looking around and scouting out for locations to kill people. Even if you try venting, a feature that allows only imposters to quickly travel across the map, you might find yourself red-handed. There might be people on security watching you enter but not leave a location. When there’s less people, it gets even more tough. While the imposter is losing and trying to figure out how to kill when everyone’s grouped up, you’re able to organize the crewmates’ strategy. You get to hang around in groups or find a buddy, and you can finish your last few tasks together, and soon, you’ll win just by filling the task bar. The imposter can’t do anything if that happens. 

Statistically, you should have an easier time winning, especially if the imposters frame themselves. In a regular game, usually there are eight crewmates and two imposters. When you’re playing as an imposter, it can either be a breeze or a pain. You might be paired up with an experienced imposter or an absolute noob. If your partner imposter dies in the first round, you have to do all the heavy lifting. When your partner gets voted off, don’t expect for them to stick around and help sabotage. Instead, you won’t get any support at all. If you’re ever the dead imposter, there’s only so much you can do to help, with all the waiting for the buttons to refresh. For people who like being challenged in games though, you can still get the same feeling as a crewmate. It takes a different skill to convince people and strategize and use the numbers to your advantage.

If you are a crewmate and your fellow crewmates vote you out, it’s satisfying when they see you are not the imposter. As a ghost, you also get to access the ghost chat and a front row seat to the chaos going on in the main chat. Ghosts get to root people on or collectively share in grief when crewmates start accusing the wrong person. Another ghost perk? You can haunt! When you’re playing on a public server, the walking pace is often mind-numbingly slow, but as a ghost, you get to float through walls and have the choice of haunting imposters or your fellow crewmates. 

Although it might initially seem boring as a crewmate, you get to experience everything an imposter does, but with a stronger sense of unity. Plus, if your superego cringes every time you lie, you would have a clear moral conscience during games when your imposter. Quoting our wise friend Lady Macbeth, “’Tis safer to be that which we destroy [t]han by destruction dwell in doubtful joy”—it’s better to be the dead crewmate than the anxious imposter (Shakespeare 3.2.7-9).

Playing Among Us, you are given one out of two roles: Crewmate or Impostor. While being a Crewmate allows you to do several tasks and work with others to win the game, the real fun comes when you’re one of the two impostors that sets the game in action.

First and foremost, impostors get to have all the fun. Unlike crewmates, they have many more roles in the game than just finishing tasks and voting people out. They get to vent, kill whoever they want, and strategically get people kicked out. Being a crewmate is definitely easier, due to its generally simpler gameplay. However, who wants to play an easy game when you can play a thrilling one? Instead of just fixing wires in electrical with the fear of getting killed, imposters get to be the ones plotting out this kill in the vents.. Being on the edge and trying not to get caught during a kill is part of the thrill that makes being impostor really fun. Using strategy and planning gets you more involved in the game as well, rather than just doing tasks and trying not to get killed as a crewmate. 

Despite the more strategic gameplay required of the imposter in order to win games, a good imposter will be able to easily get around fooling crewmates into helping them win the game. Imposters generally have more control over the game versus crewmates that can only sit back and watch as everyone gets killed one by one. Figuring out who the impostor is also a pretty difficult task because all ten players in the game are suspects. And if the players end up ejecting too many non-impostors, the impostors end up winning, which is what usually happens. 

Even when you die as an impostor, you have the chance to help your fellow impostor win the game by sabotaging the spaceship. However, when you’re a crewmate, you don’t get to participate as much since all you can do is complete tasks and hope to win. You don’t have the power to vote people out or talk in the chat which would be advantageous to fellow crewmates. 

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like the pressure and displeasure of working with nine other individuals in order to win the game, then impostor is the best role for you. You, instead, team up with only one person, who is your fellow impostor. This way, there aren’t any gaps in communication. When you’re in a room together you can kill somebody and get away with it. There’s also the advantage of double kills. You and your fellow impostor can kill one person each at the same time, making you win the game easily. This is way more fun and exciting than constantly fearing that the person you’re teamed up with is the impostor and might kill you. Communication and teamwork is way simpler when done with one person versus nine others.

Overall, being the impostor is more exciting and less bland than being a crewmate, who constantly fears getting killed by an impostor. However easy being a crewmate might be, being an impostor is more fun, which is no wonder as to why people immediately leave public lobbies once they don’t immediately get imposter.