The Mafia (Werewolf) Game

Mafia, also known as Werewolf is a social deduction game you probably know. The reason you might not immediately recognize the name is because it has several different names used by different countries, and it is called “Vampir-Köylü” in Türkiye and most of the time a variant of “Mafia” or “Werewolf” in other countries.

What is Mafia?

Mafia is a social deduction game created by Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow State University in 1986. Davidoff invented the game while trying to teach high school students about psychology. He wanted a way to teach these students psychology in a lighter and more entertaining way, which resulted in him creating Mafia. Slowly yet surely, Mafia spread around the world and the idea of having werewolves instead of mafiosi (Mafiosi is the plural of mafioso, which is a single member of a mafia), was born by Andrew Plotkin who argued that werewolves had a larger cultural impact and fit the theme of the game better. Over the years many variants of Mafia arose such as board games, video games and even a movie.

How to Play Mafia

Mafia is made up by two teams: the villagers and the mafiosi. The goal of both teams is to eliminate the other. The game consists of a day and night cycle. During the night, the mafiosi select one person to kill and the death of the villager is announced when it becomes day. During the day, everyone talks and chooses someone to vote out of the game. The game ends if all mafiosi are eliminated or the amount of villagers and mafiosi are equal. Additionally, the game is overseen by a moderator. The moderator chooses the mafiosi, counts the votes and regulates the day and night cycle. The game can also be played with cards, although this is not very common.

This is the basic gameplay of Mafia, however there are many variations that change many parts of the game. These include the addition of extra roles like a doctor or a cop, whether the person eliminated reveals their role, how many mafiosi are chosen, if the mafiosi have to eliminate all villagers or not and if a vote has to happen during the day.

Game Theory of Mafia

The core concept of Mafia is a conflict between an informed minority, the mafiosi, and an uninformed majority, the villagers. Mafia was actually created to show that an informed minority almost always wins against an uninformed majority. In actual games however, it is seen that the villagers win more often than the mafiosi. There are few reason for this. One of them is that when people lie for a continuous period of time, their ability to lie diminishes. Their ability to fake reactions against deaths or accusations also lessens. Another reason is as people get more experienced at the game, they get better at telling apart lies from truths. If you play with people you know, you might have an easier time seeing subtle clues that give away their goals and motivations.

Many articles have been published to calculate the odds of winning in Mafia, which shows how complex the math can be for such a simple game that we all have probably played or seen being played at a point in time.  There are other intriguing games like The Prisoner’s Dilemma in the branch of game theory, which isn’t just about games, it’s about what decisions are optimal when there are multiple factors at play and it impacts everything from politics to economics. Although I have only covered Mafia, anything about game theory is fascinating and I recommend anyone interested to research more. Thank you for reading!