Engagement Based Matchmaking is a Ponzi scheme of time and effort
$70 isn't the only cost... (ominous subtitle drives engagement?)
To be clear, I’m talking about video games.
In this case, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022). It’s a $70 dollar game. Other games also use this type of matchmaking system, but I am writing primarily in reference to MW2.
Since MW2 is a multiplayer game, the server has to put a bunch of players into a match for the game to happen. The game starts, people do the shooting, the game ends, and the server tosses everyone back out into the menu.
There needs to be some order as to who is put in a game with who. Obviously we are two decades removed from the days when playing a shooting game on a controller was a new idea and everyone was more or less equally bad at games. The skill range that a modern title has to account for includes the 10 year old opening his new xbox for Christmas and the esports streamer whose job involves exclusively playing a single game for 10 or more hours a day. These two types of people probably shouldn’t be playing together if the objective is for either of them to have fun.
(For a major release multiplayer FPS,) You can’t really toss your entire playerbase into a single category and pull them out randomly for a match. You have to have a way of sorting which players get matched with each other so that as many players as possible are having fun.
SBMM and Sweating
One way to do that is Skill Based Matchmaking and Competitive modes. You assign points and rankings based on how players do in a game and keep track of their performance within a given time period. Players that do well are assigned higher ranks, and are matched with players of (theoretically) equivalent skill. Better players usually end up playing better players, and worse players usually end up playing worse players. There’s somewhat consistent challenge, and there is a tangible indication of skill improvement from the game.
The issue is that playing seriously is exhausting, so competitive players will need a non-competitive (or casual) mode to relax. There’s also a large amount of players who just want to have fun anyway, and will never leave the casual modes. The casual mode itself usually doesn’t have the same matchmaking algorithm as the competitive modes, so there’s still the issue of very good players curb-stomping mediocre players. A common strategy of players of middling skill is to play exclusively competitive modes because there is some guarantee of not getting pounded into dust by a high rank player that randomly decided to hop into casual. The ranked matches are still more exhausting than casual, but it’s better than losing to something entirely out of your control.
(Also splitting a playerbase between casual and competitive increases time required to find a match, requires more people to keep track of both modes, etc. There’s incentive for a company selling a game for money to not want to deal with multiple populations that play different modes with different rules, etc. There are pros and cons to pushing competitive as a major element of your game and there are a lot of cases where it works).
Engagement Based Matchmaking
This is the one MW2 (and MW2019) uses. Instead of tracking the performance of players in the competitive modes over the long term, Engagement Based Matchmaking (EBMM going forward) only tracks the players’ performance in the most recent matches. If you do well in a particular match, you get sent up to play significantly harder opponents. If you do particularly bad in a match, you get sent down to play significantly easier opponents. The distinction between this and SBMM is that since SBMM tracks performance over a long period and is intended as an indicator of competence at the game, raising rank requires consistently good performance. In EBMM, getting a good game is almost guaranteed to make the next one harder. You lose in the harder match? Back to easy matches. Its artificial difficulty by means of other players.
This is bad for the player for a number of reasons.
It’s easy to game. If you want to have a game where you do really really well, you just have to play deliberately badly for a couple matches. Then you, a real adult with a real day job, can curb stomp 10 year olds who just downloaded the game and post your match on youtube to brag.
You can’t turn it off. There is no competitive in MW2. EBMM is the casual mode. If you get lucky and do well in a match, you are guaranteed to get mauled by tryhards jumping around corners who are obviously better than you in terms of raw skill (and who probably lost intentionally so they would end up in a match with someone like you in it).
The game really, really, doesn’t care about you. Do you play games to try your best and get better? EBMM won’t put you in matches where you’re playing people of equivalent skill. You either wont be challenged by the weaker opponents or not stand a chance against the stronger ones. Even if you were a masochist and wanted to be matched against stronger players consistently until you got to their skill level, EBMM won’t let you do that. As soon as you do badly once it’s back to playing against children.
The Ponzi Scheme part. MW2 has the numbers down. It’s figured out that to get players to keep playing, everyone needs to win at least a few times a gaming session. Win too many, and you might get bored. Always lose, and you might get disheartened and quit. EBMM is made specifically to hand out a couple wins a day to everyone who plays. First, they take your time and effort to give an easy game to someone else, and then they take someone else's time to give an easy game to you. Everybody loses and everybody wins and the illusion of real competition remains intact. That way, you’re inspired to log in every day and check the cosmetics store and the battle pass and maybe spend money.
Who Cares, Loser
I’m not trying to make a moral argument here. Part of the issue is that players derive value from feeling dominant over others and like the idea that the digital guy they killed is a real person. This only works because the average player doesn’t care about individual excellence or challenging themselves with tough opponents. People are having fun when they play this game after all, even if it’s just because the announcer said they did a good job winning.
But you might care. You paid $70 for this game, a product with a box on store shelves, where the intended experience involves your time being used to service someone else’s gameplay. You’re paying for the right to be someone else’s fun.
There is no solution that involves other people (IMO)
Yeah, I think traditional format team based multiplayer with strangers is on its way out. You can’t have fun and relax reliably anymore. People are too good at games and are totally on board with optimizing the fun out of a game as long as they win. It’s not fun to lose to cheese and its a drag on every game with an obvious optimal strategy (so every game). Most people aren’t athletes. Most people don’t want to be forced to do everything they have to in order to win. But average people think they like the idea of competition so the PvP genre sells. They like it even if they mostly lose, and even if the game has to waste your time to make them feel better.