How do you get better at social games like The Traitors?And why this year's finale has been given a new gameplay twist.Image credit: BBC / Studio Lambert / Eurogamer Feature by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Jan. 15, 2025 This article is intended for viewers up to date with The Traitors UK, though does not reveal the identities of any players who have left the game.Three years into the UK version of The Traitors, it can sometimes feel like the show's Faithful have learned nothing. Seemingly-obvious Traitors are still going under the radar, while innocent Faithful are being banished for innocuous reasons. Shouldn't repeated play of social games - or the ability to view others playing them in previous years, at least - be starting to prompt a more strategic response?Well yes and no - and this year's series has indeed seen some Faithful using knowledge of the format to their advantage. But in a constantly-changing meta and under high pressure, progress is slow.Last year, I spoke with The Traitors UK season one contestant Ivan Brett - author of several gaming books and host of the It's Just A Game podcast - for his thoughts on whether a knowledge of game design can give you an edge in social game scenarios. This year, I wanted to check back in and find out if this season's flock of Faithful could really have been doing anything different. Can you really get better at social games through practice? And how does the new finale twist change the game?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Nine video games that tried (and will hopefully fail) to predict 2025.Watch on YouTube"People are getting more knowledgeable about the game, more familiar with the twists and players are shifting with the meta," Brett says as I speak to him via video call. "You saw quite quickly when shields were given out in episode four, players understood that they could spread their protection [by keeping who holds them a secret] to make the Traitors work a bit harder to murder. There's an ability to protect more people, and potentially trap a Traitor too. That's been done a few times, and it would be genius if it hadn't been done already, but we want to see players playing at an optimal level with the resources provided. This just makes it more interesting when people start to come up with new strategies.""Nobody is going to kill the person they have a rivalry with. In fact, it's really good to leave that person in."Still, there are moments where players aren't thinking strategically, Brett acknowledges, pointing to the recurring discussions where players are implicated in the murder of someone with whom they "had beef". "No Traitor who's seen the show is going to try and do a murder that pins it on themselves," Brett says. It's too obvious a move, too easily traced back to the perpetrator, and wastes the opportunity to murder someone more unexpected - something which then also throws Faithful off the scent. "Nobody is going to kill the person they have a rivalry with," he continues. "In fact, it's really good to leave that person in the show, as seen in season one, with Wilf leaving Maddie in."But while players are becoming familiar with those kinds of ideas, people will not get better at reading social cues, Brett believes. "That's never going to change," he says. "Social reads are just flawed, and people are not going to become better at hunting Traitors, because what you're using is just the clues within the show." So, how can you play better? It's difficult, Brett says, as social games like The Traitors don't offer a strong persistent rulebook of what's "best"."You can play optimally, but the only way to even measure how well a game is played is against the meta game at that current point," Brett says, "and that will change every year based on what was successful last year. You only have to look at the pre-show interviews to see that absolutely everyone tried to model themselves on [last year's winner] Harry, which means that whatever Harry did, they'll try and do. Except for those who are smart enough to say, 'whatever Harry does, I won't do'. That's the shifting meta. No matter what the predominant thing is, the best play is in some way determined by what's come before, either sticking to it or changing from it, diverting from it."Despite twists, familiarity of the format can help at least with knowing the kinds of things to mentally prepare for. I wondered, in episode one, how many of the players volunteering to leave the train really believed they were quitting the show, having seen two players depart in season one only to return later on."The ability to predict the kind of twists that come means people are not shocked by it or affected by it emotionally as we were in season one.""An understanding and even the ability to predict the kind of twists that will come means people are not shocked by it or affected by it as emotionally as we were in season one," Brett acknowledges, "and are instead able to process it in a more analytical sense and go, 'Well, how do I benefit from this? How do I extract the most value from this situation?' That is happening in this series for some players."This year it's been fascinating to see players wrestle with the reality that The Traitors is, at its heart, a selfish game - as so many social games are - even if each episode sees the cast work together for the common goal of adding more money to the ultimate prize fund. Tasks this year have included more elements for personal gain - shields to protect from murder, but also the need to sacrifice money or other players' ability to get shields in order to benefit. And then there was the clown task, where players struggled with the concept of being lied to by their fellow contestants."Dan was the first to say 'I'm acting selfishly, I'm really sorry that I had to do this, but in the end it's not a team game,'" Brett notes. "We all figured out it wasn't a team game [in season one], but it took a bit of time for some people. The fact Dan first says that back in episode three and is confident enough that he won't get banished just for being selfish, shows a development in the strategy and in the overall understanding of the game." Up to a point, anyway."I like it because British reality TV is miles behind other countries - Australia, New Zealand, America most notably - in allowing this kind of villainy to be celebrated," Brett muses. "The Traitors has, whether you like it or not, brought the British public's understanding of what's permissible as a heroic action forward. Before, on Big Brother, anything strategic was treated as villainy. America has 47 series of Survivor, a much more strategic version of Big Brother. The formats generally work in the same way, but you're always constantly trying to outdo each other and out-think each other and use subterfuge and villainy in that way. And that's great." The Traitors UK's season three cast. | Image credit: BBC / Studio LambertSpeaking of which, one big twist to The Traitors' format this year will take place in its finale, where producers have decided to make a big strategic change. Now, anyone who leaves in the last episode will not declare to other players whether they were a Traitor or Faithful, so remaining players can no longer factor that information into their decision on whether to continue voting players off, or to end the game and risk a Traitor still being present.The only real drama in a finale is - are there one or two Traitors left?"The prevailing outcome is that you keep banishing players until you've got what you believe to be your last Traitor out," Brett says. "Going into the final episode, you know there still has to be either one or two Traitors left, unless you've done really badly. But even if you've done well, it will still be one or two because when Traitors do get down to one they're forced to recruit by ultimatum. So the only real drama in a finale is - are there one or two Traitors left? And therefore players can keep banishing until they've got two people left, leading to the reveal simply being whether only one or both of those players have won. And they've done this before."Around the world, more than a dozen seasons of The Traitors format have aired. Here in the UK, you can watch multiple editions of The Traitors US and Australia on iPlayer. So while we're technically just in our third iteration of the show, a chunk of the UK audience will have already seen half a dozen different endgames play out. And the number of endgames this format has is limited, without changes."If [endgames] become a pattern they become boring, and it is so important to stick the landing of each series that they can't take that risk - more than any other show," Brett says. "No one remembers the ending of Love Island, or even the final week of Big Brother. It's almost always irrelevant. The Traitors always puts a lot of pressure on the players still, but you've got to keep making it interesting for viewers at home."So, how will this year's finale play out? Unfortunately, in Brett's opinion, the change tips the scales further towards a Traitors victory. "By removing any verification that you've got rid of them, Faithful will never have a good enough reason to end the game," he says. "I can't see how this benefits the Faithfuls in any way. Let's say a power group of three or four get to the end and trust each other, and choose to win the game. If there's a Traitor in that group, that Traitor will win. Or it could lead to Faithfuls saying 'Well, now that we're not finding out if a Traitor is there or not, in order to make the numbers better, we'll just keep on banishing until there's two of us'." That doesn't lead to good TV either, he adds, as it will come without any players revealing others as Traitors."I can't see how this benefits the Faithfuls in any way.""Some of the best moments are those reveals," Brett says, "and so this is a twist that comes at the expense of taking away some of those brilliant unboxings. It's not an unboxing for viewers, because we already know the players' roles. But it's more about watching the players respond." Instead, it's likely we'll see different kinds of reveal moments - ones we haven't seen before - such as a Faithful wrestle over whether to end the game without that knowledge of having already caught several. "If we can watch that happening live, that's really interesting," Brett says. "I'm excited to see it, I just think it probably spells a lot of Traitor wins until something else changes to balance it."There are ways still to balance things further, he believes, such as ending the Traitors' ability to recruit sooner. But this opens up the possibility of players ridding the game of all Traitors before the finale begins - leading to a truly weird endgame full of paranoia where all remaining players are already Faithful. "Again, you can't have that too many times either," Brett says. But the future remains unwritten, and next year's meta will only be decided after this year's finale airs. Who knows - maybe next year's crop will have it all sussed?