{"id":260513,"date":"2026-01-27T18:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260513\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T18:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:59:10","slug":"i-didnt-have-anything-to-prove-what-traitors-finalist-jade-scott-learned-about-survival-from-video-games-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260513\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I didn\u2019t have anything to prove\u2019: what Traitors finalist Jade Scott learned about survival from video games | Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest series of The Traitors<\/a>, which ended last week on a nail-biting finale, featured some of the usual characters \u2013 from guileless extroverts to wannabe Columbos endlessly observing fellow contestants for the slightest flicker of treachery. But one faithful stood out for her quiet determination, despite a ceaseless onslaught of suspicion and accusation. That person was Jade Scott, and I wasn\u2019t at all surprised when, quite early on in the series, she revealed she was a keen gamer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMinecraft was my way in, when I was 15,\u201d she says. \u201cI made loads of friends at school playing that.\u201d From this innocent introduction, however, she moved on to darker titles: the first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and the multiplayer battle-arena game Dota. \u201cThat\u2019s where my interest in strategy gaming really kicked in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The Traitors is, after all, a game in a way that other reality TV shows aren\u2019t. It\u2019s heavily inspired by the parlour game variously known as werewolf or mafia, in which participants use social deduction skills to identify a murderer in their midst. Indeed, the original version of the show, the Dutch series De Verraders, emerged after the first Covid lockdown, during which hundreds of thousands of people had discovered the multiplayer online game Among Us, in which a group of players have to carry out menial tasks on a spaceship while working out which of them is a killer. So a video game player would have an advantage in The Traitors, right?<\/p>\n

Survival adventure \u2026 Project Winter. Photograph: Other Ocean Interactive<\/p>\n

In the year up to appearing on the show Scott had been playing two indie games based around social deduction: the survival adventure Project Winter and the office satire, Dale & Dawson Stationery Supplies. Both require groups of players to carry out a range of tasks in a high-tension environment, while a select few are there to sabotage progress. The honest workers must discover and unmask the miscreants before it\u2019s too late. She was, effectively, in training to be a faithful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to go in as a faithful,\u201d she confirms. \u201cMy opinion has changed on this since leaving the castle, but I always thought the game was way harder for the faithfuls and I like playing games on a harder setting. As a faithful you\u2019re trying to solve who the traitors are, but as a traitor, I thought you lost out on that puzzle-solving aspect. My strategy was to go in and immediately garner some suspicion, because that way you\u2019re protected from murder \u2026 I just didn\u2019t realise how much suspicion I would get!\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Scott was a constant target of accusations and suspicion. It was difficult. With gaming, you sit behind a screen, and communicating via Discord, so you just start talking and build friendly relationships with people, but with The Traitors, you have nothing to hide behind. It was a very different environment in which to think about strategy and how I communicate with people.\u201d<\/p>\n

So did the tactics she\u2019d learned playing games such as Project Winter and Dale & Dawson immediately fall apart? \u201cI was quite good at defending myself at the roundtable,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of that came out of the practice I got with social deception games. The second you approach the table with some logic and reasoning, and say, \u2018I understand why you think that, but I have done nothing to suggest it\u2019, they have nothing to argue with. I also didn\u2019t feel I had anything to prove to anyone \u2013 I think, when you\u2019re on the defensive, it makes it worse if you go around and try to mingle. I was thinking, if I go up and speak to this person does it just look like I\u2019m trying to get in their good books?\u201d<\/p>\n

Constant target \u2026 Jade Scott (third from left, top) at the roundtable in The Traitors. Photograph: BBC\/Studio Lambert\/Euan Cherry\/PA<\/p>\n

One aspect Scott definitely took from playing strategy sims was observing the mechanics of the game and making notes. \u201cI had different formats,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery day I had a sort of traffic light system of how I felt about each person. Green indicated who I thought was a faithful, although you\u2019re never 100 per cent sure \u2013 and inevitably those people would just get murdered! Red was who I was more convinced was a traitor at that point. I also wrote everyone\u2019s names on a piece of paper and then I\u2019d draw lines between them, based on who I saw having conversations \u2013 a bit like those cork boards TV detectives use, with the red lines between photos. I\u2019ve alluded to this previously, but I\u2019d stare and stare at that page and the only contestants I hadn\u2019t drawn lines between were Rachel and Stephen. I was so busy working out ways to defend myself \u2026 you just miss the obvious, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Since leaving The Traitors castle, Scott says she hasn\u2019t played a social deduction game \u2013 perhaps she\u2019s done with fielding other people\u2019s suspicions. Now she\u2019s moved on to games such as Outer Wilds and Blue Prince, which pitch you against strange puzzling environments rather than other human beings. There\u2019s been another interesting effect of her time on The Traitors, though. Currently studying for a PhD, she thinks her experiences at the sharp end of the roundtable have been extremely useful for one particular aspect. \u201cSomething I\u2019ve been really apprehensive about, and I think a lot of PhD students are the same, is the viva,\u201d she says. \u201cYou literally sit in a room with examiners and have to defend your thesis. Well, I\u2019ve really learned how to defend myself and argue a point!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest series of The Traitors, which ended last week on a nail-biting finale, featured some of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-260513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}