I love traditional social deduction games, I just wish they could be more accessible and be more than just "How well do you fit into this new culture of people?" like I've had experienced many times when playing the less-mechanical focused ones.

tl;dr: Social deduction complicated, video soon.

The answer might simply mean pivoting to real time social deduction games like the likes of Among Us. Having the focus be on hiding information and the social aspect being based purely on in-game behaviours, however I do not know how I feel about that sort of conclusion.

Safe to say, obviously, it's a niche within a niche anyway. Social deduction games thrive as party game experiences, but I do wonder if there's a way to build social deduction games which avoid the social politics problem whilst having more social elements past just "what info do you have?"

However, I think the main difference with social deduction games is it feels like they thrive on outsider culture, which is fine if maintained in a casual/party sense. In a competitive setting though this seems to fall apart. It no longer becomes "how convincing is your case" and "I like you."

Currently working on a social deduction game which is specifically why I am curious about this. Obviously competitive games inherently will have elements of toxicity as the desire to win becomes the biggest component and everything else subsides. This happens in all sorts of competitive games.