The Government of India will soon designate three Self-Regulatory Bodies (SRBs) for the online gaming industry. While this will bring online gaming under a formal regulatory structure for the first time, the SRBs will now need to take up the hard task of adjudicating the most contentious issues in the space — including whether a particular online game is a game of skill or chance. This distinction is important because games of skill are allowed in India, while games of chance are not. The SRBs will need to develop granular objective criteria to decide in which category an online game falls.
While much of the conversation around this issue has expectedly focused on the monetary aspect of the game — whether it is gambling or not — this is not the only criterion to determine the issue. As important for SRBs to consider, though often overlooked in India, is the question of whether the players’ individual skill levels determine gameplay.
Let us take a hypothetical scenario to understand this. Say in a game of online rummy, a novice has been matched against a player with several years of experience. It can safely be assumed that with rummy being a game of skill, the experienced player will be considerably more skilled in the game than the novice. In this scenario, the experienced player will always be expected to win over the novice. This system would be inherently unfair, and the preponderance of probability would tend towards chance rather than skill as the outcome of the game is directly dependent on who you are paired against. Such an inherently flawed player matching system would also adversely affect player experience reducing engagement with the game. After all, who wants to keep playing a game where they only lose? It is necessary, therefore, for developers to ensure they take steps to mitigate the possibility of such a scenario. But how can they do this? The answer is Skill-Based Match Making (SBMM).
SBMM is a matchmaking system for online games in which players of similar skill levels are matched against each other. SBMM has been around since at least 2004 and is widely used in a variety of popular games including Call of Duty, Halo, and League of Legends. Each game has its unique SBMM system that uses proprietary algorithms and ranking systems to decide a player’s skill level. All SBMM systems however are fundamentally similar to or take inspiration from Elo rankings used in chess and other major competitive sports like tennis.
There are three obvious advantages to incorporating SBMM in an online game’s mechanics.
First, playing against others who have similar skill levels or are marginally better helps players improve their skills in a systematic manner, providing a steady avenue to move up ranks and skill levels. If a novice is trounced by a more seasoned player repeatedly, it is unlikely they will improve significantly. Second, SBMM helps create more competitive matches. Games with players of similar skills are likely to be closer and more entertaining. Several studies have shown that having a well-designed SBMM system considerably improves player satisfaction, increasing player engagement and retention. Third, importantly, SBMM makes the gameplay inherently fair. By pitting players of similar skill levels against each other, SBMM removes any element of chance that might creep in, ensuring the outcome of the game is dependent more on the players’ skills only, and not on who they are paired against.
It is unclear if Real Money Games (RMGs) and gaming platforms in India use SBMM while assigning players to games. Anecdotal evidence suggests that players are included in specific game rooms based on the size of their money contribution, not on the basis of skill. This means that players who are willing to stake Rs 100 are grouped together, irrespective of their individual skill levels. Such an approach will negatively affect the game experience of players, especially new ones, increasing player churn and creating one-sided games with seasoned players dominating relatively new or less skilled ones. It is particularly important in RMGs, where most players are casual gamers, and wins and losses are reflected as financial outcomes, that platforms and developers integrate SBMM to prevent undue harm to newer players. Gaming platforms might have a perverse incentive not to include SBMM, as this allows them to retain “whales” — the top crop of players who typically stake more than the average player, and therefore have an outsized impact on the platforms’ bottom line — by offering them new or inexperienced players as easy winnings. SBMM would ensure that no platform indulges in such behaviour.
The exact nature of the SBMM system to be employed would depend on the game, and what metrics developers favour. It could be as simple as looking at the win-loss ratio of a player to something more complex that also looks at the number of games played, money won, etc. It is also not necessary for developers to create an SBMM system from scratch for each of their games, especially in the context of RMGs, where one SBMM system could easily work for multiple games. However, it is absolutely vital for SRBs to insist on an SBMM system while verifying online games to ensure that such games are in fact games of skill.
The writer is Managing Partner, Evam Law & Policy
