The intense psychological battleground of a popular reality competition series demands more than just charisma or luck. For one recent finalist, years spent in the digital arenas of social deduction video games provided the crucial training to navigate suspicion and survive.
The show, a televised adaptation of party games like “Mafia,” places contestants in a high-stakes environment of hidden roles and constant paranoia. While many participants rely on intuition or personality, Jade Scott entered the competition with a gamer’s mindset. Her background wasn’t in traditional reality TV but in collaborative online games where identifying a hidden saboteur is the core objective.
“My entry point was building and exploring in games like Minecraft as a teenager,” Scott explains. “But it was the strategic depth of competitive team-based games that really shaped how I think.” She cites titles where players must complete objectives while secretly rooting out betrayers within their group—a direct parallel to the televised format.
This experience proved invaluable. From the outset, Scott adopted a deliberate strategy, consciously drawing a measured amount of early suspicion onto herself as a tactical shield, a move informed by understanding game mechanics. “I appreciated the greater challenge of solving the puzzle from the ‘good’ side,” she notes, though she admits the sheer volume of accusations she faced was unexpectedly intense.
The transition from screen to social interaction was stark. “In games, you have the interface, the voice chat—a layer between you and others,” Scott reflects. “In the competition, you are completely exposed. Every glance and conversation is raw material for judgment.” Despite this pressure, her gaming-honed skills in logical self-defence became her greatest asset during confrontations. She learned to dismantle accusations with calm reasoning rather than emotional pleas.
Her method extended to meticulous observation and note-taking, techniques familiar to any dedicated strategy player. She developed systems to track alliances and suspicions, visually mapping social connections between contestants. “I’d stare at my charts, and the obvious blind spots only became clear in hindsight,” she says, acknowledging that the very effort of self-preservation can obscure the bigger picture.
Since the competition ended, Scott has shifted her gaming focus to solitary, exploration-based puzzles, a welcome respite from social scrutiny. Yet, the experience yielded an unexpected professional benefit. As a PhD candidate, she feels newly equipped for one of academia’s most daunting rites: the thesis defence. “Sitting before examiners to argue and defend your work—it’s not so different from defending yourself at that table,” she observes. “The competition taught me how to stand my ground, logically and calmly.”
Her story underscores a broader point: the skills cultivated in virtual worlds—critical thinking, strategic communication, and psychological resilience—increasingly translate into tangible advantages in real-world high-pressure scenarios.