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THE MATHEMATICS OF Home / Blog

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GAME BALANCE Balance

Blog Jan

13
2022

Maths is the fundamental language of games: Strip away the audio, the visuals and the story
and you’re left with only numbers. This is true of every game, big or small. The numerical
exchanges in Yahtzee or poker may be well surfaced, but the maths at play in a game like
Fortnite is far less obvious.

Yet Fornite’s designers consider thousands of different values: how many players should be
in a match? How big should the map be? How quickly should the storm move in? How
frequently should each weapon rarity drop? How do we set clip size, reload time and rate of
fire for each weapon? How much damage should a bullet cause? How many life points
should a player have?

Mathematics are the wheels and cogs that make any game work: behind the scenes,
numbers are changing every second. In fact, it’s helpful to think of your game as a machine
in which players exchange resources in pursuit of a win. For example, Hearthstone has you
exchange mana and cards to reduce your opponent’s life, whereas in Half-Life you exchange
ammo to down enemies in order preserve your own HP.

It’s our job as game designers to make exchanging resources evoke an emotion in our
players. Taking a knight with a pawn in Chess is exciting, but being low on ammo and health
in Resident Evil evokes anxiety. Fortunately, we have a wealth of research to help us: from

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Gestalt psychology’s definition of the pattern-seeking mind to the behavioural economics

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If you are the ideal game designer then you’ll have a PhD in mathematics (as well as
psychology), but for all practical purposes all you need are curiosity and an understanding of
where to start. This in-depth article will give you those jumping off points by explaining some
essential concepts to add to your designer’s toolbox. Initially it will cover Curves and
Probability, before we move on to look at Economics and Match Making.

Throughout, our focus will be on the nuts and bolts of balance rather than academic
complexity. As such, this article is far from a complete reference on the meeting of maths
and game design, but if you learn and practise the tools in both parts, I guarantee that you’ll
become a more insightful and confident game designer. So, let’s get started!

Curves
What? Curves are the various shaped lines that represent the relationship between

two values when plotted on a graph. For example, the speed of a car accelerating

from a stop over time is represented by a logarithmic curve.

Why? In any game studio you’ll see whiteboards covered in curves. That’s

because curves are a quick and clear way to describe the relationship

between values that can be easily understood and applied.

Curves are the slang term game designers use to describe a line two values make when
plotted on a graph. You can also think about curves as mathematical functions: algebraic
formulas that relate two (or more) varying quantities.

That description might seem a bit bewildering, but let’s look at the simplest possible curve
(which really isn’t curved at all): linear. When saying two values have a linear relationship it
means that one increases proportionally to the other creating a straight line when plotted
(see below).

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figure 1: The simplest linear curve is y=x

We can also think of a linear curve as a mathematical function:

Where m is the the steepness of the graph and c is where the curve will intercept the y axis.

If we said to a programmer “levels grow linearly with XP”, she already knows that each level
requires the same amount of XP plus how to create the relationship in code. This makes
talking in curves a super helpful way to get your ideas across.

However, linear curves generally suck: they rarely appear in nature, they’re predictable and
games that use them can feel grindy. So let’s instead look at two much more exciting and
useful curves: Exponential and Logarithmic.

The Exponential Curve

You’ll find exponential relationships everywhere in nature: from the acceleration of a falling
object to the population increase of plants and animals. An exponential curve is
characterised by a constantly increasing rate of growth.

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Figure 2: An exponential curve

The mathematical function for an exponential curve is:

Where b is the base and defines how quickly the curve grows.

Exponential relationships are as frequent in games as they are in nature because they feel
kick-ass rewarding: a player’s expectation is constantly exceeded by this feeling of rapid
acceleration. Have you ever lost hours to an incremental game? If so, you’ve been suckered
in by this little curve making you feel like your resources are growing quicker and quicker
over time. That’s hard to step away from.

However, there are clear downsides to the use of exponentials. Uncapped exponential costs
or gains in games are hard to comprehend, as numbers get so big they lose all sense of
relativity. Designers often combat this by resetting players (prestige mechanics) or switching
to a more reasonable linear progression at some point.

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The Logarithmic Curve

Like exponential relationships, logarithms appear frequently in nature. For example,
logarithmic spirals are found in the shell of the deep sea dweller the nautilus. This isn’t
surprising, as a logarithmic curve can be considered the inverse of an exponential one.

Figure 3: An logarithmic curve

The mathematical function for a logarithmic curve is:

Where b is the base and acts much in the same way as the base of the exponential curve.

Logarithmic relationships appear in games where there is a rapid growth followed by

diminishing returns. One example is slow car catchup in a racing game: your speed boost
has a logarithmic relationship to your distance from first place. In other words, as you’re far
away from the race leader you have a speed advantage that moves you up the ranks. But as
you close in to first your advantage rapidly diminishes. This kind of relationship results in

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much more exciting races where first place is always in contention – if you’ve ever played
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The strength logarithmic relationships have over exponential ones is also the relationship’s
weakness: the diminishing returns of a logarithmic progression can be discouraging.
Something that was once highly rewarding is now less so. For example, as you overtake
other cars, your slow car advantage drops.

Very often we see logarithmic relationships in between XP and player level in RPGs: the first
few levels are quick to gain but progressively they become more grindy. Assuming a flat XP
gain then a logarithmic XP vs level relationship is the inverse of a level vs XP required, which
is in fact exponential. Below is an example:

Player Level XP Required

1 4

2 5

3 6

4 7

5 9

6 11

7 14

8 18

9 24

10 33

Table 1: Player Level vs XP Required

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Figure 4: Player Level vs XP Required is an exponential relationship

Player XP Player Level

1 0

4 1

5 2

6 3

7 4

9 5

11 6

14 7

18 8

24 9

33 10

Table 2: Player XP vs Player Level

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Figure 5: XP vs player level is a logarithmic relationship

Often when we see an exponential or a logarithmic relationship in a game, we can expect

their inverse to be found in some other relationship: When XP required per level is
exponential then we know our level growth will be logarithmic.

Other Curves
Other Uses of Curves

Curves can be used for more than just planning progression or explaining concepts in
design.

They’re also used to interpret player behaviour. Looking at analytics software, you’ll
have access

to hundreds of graphs about how players have been using your game. Recognising
the shapes

of the curves will allow you to quickly understand the underlying relationships they
represent.

This will give you a powerful mental model of how your game is played and whether it
correlates

with your intentions when designing it.

Exponential and logarithmic aren’t the only curves you’ll find in games. You can also expect
to see:

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Step: This curve has repeated jumps in values which gives the appearance of a set of
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Sawtooth: A repeating pattern of linear increases followed by instant decreases that looks
like teeth on a saw blade.
Square: A repeating pattern represents a tick tock between two values that creates the
look of an archers’ parapet.
Parabola: A symmetrical curve that can be thought of as a large dip. When rotated 180o
the curve represents the path of a thrown projectile (or a jumping platform sprite).
Bell: Often found representing distributions of values, a bell curve looks like side view of a
bell or rise and drop of a roller coaster track.
Sinusoidal: Sine curves appear frequently in nature from the tops of pond ripples to sound
waves. A sine looks like a perfect wiggly line and can be used to “ease in” and “ease out”
between two values repeatedly.
Sigmoid: Sigmoid looks like an exponential curve moving into a logarithmic one, creating
an S shape.

You may find when designing that you want to use different parts of curves to get your
desired result. You can do this with a piecewise function that lets you define different
functions for specific intervals. A piecewise function would allow you, for example, to build a
curve that starts exponential but becomes linear before values get too high.

You can also set about modifying functions to achieve different curve varieties. For example,
you can modify a sine function with modulus (y = |sinx|), so that y is an absolute value (i.e.
always positive), thus creating a curve that looks like the path of a ping pong ball skipping
over a table.

Additionally, you can experiment with the product or sum of different functions to see what
results you get. The sum of a linear function and a sine function (y = x + 2sinx) might be a
good model for difficulty progression.

Be it how XP relates to levels or how your character should jump, curves are everywhere
inside your games. So thinking in curves lets you build up a powerful mental model that not
only will help you design and balance, but also give you what you need to communicate your
ideas.

Try this: The best way to learn is to experiment. Open up a spreadsheet or head to
desmos.com and start building and modifying functions.

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What happens if you plot the following two functions together?

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Probability
What Is It? Probability is the mathematical definition of how likely something is to happen.
For example, how often a dice will land on a six.

Why Is It Important? Most games are non-deterministic, meaning that there are random
events that impact the course of play. These random events add excitement, but if they
happen too frequently (or too infrequently) they will ruin a player’s experience.

Games are full of random elements, from weapon drops to dice rolls. But just because
they’re random doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t quantify them. In fact, good game
balance relies not just on the chance of an event but the value of it and all of its
permutations. Very rare but highly valuable events can put a game out of whack as quickly as
an event that’s too common.

Let’s start by looking at the simplest example of a probability: a coin flip. On a given flip, what
is the probability (or chance) a coin will land head up? As there are two outcomes (heads and
tails) which are both as likely, we can say the chance is 50%, or 0.5 or 1/2. All of which say
the same thing: we expect heads to land on half of all coin tosses and so tails to land on the
other half.

What now if someone makes you a wager: you toss a £1 coin, and if it comes up heads they
keep your coin, if it comes up tails they give you another £1 coin. Is that a fair bet? In half the
tosses we expect to lose a pound and in the other half we gain a pound. The below table
shows how we can calculate an average winning by multiplying the chance with the benefit
to give us a contribution (the value we can expect from that outcome). When summed, our
contributions give us our average expected winnings.

Outcome Chance Winnings Average Winnings Contribution

Heads 0.5 -£1 -£0.50

Tails 0.5 £1 £0.5

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Average Winnings 0
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Table 3: Winnings table for coin toss wagering.

We can see that this bet is fair because nobody comes out ahead on average. However, this
doesn’t mean that every toss we make will result in £0 winnings, but over many tosses we’d
expect to see regression to the mean. Regression to the mean is the phenomena where the
more often the same random event happens the more likely that the outcome will match the
average.

We can plot the same coin toss wager as a probability tree over three tosses:

Figure 6: Probability tree for three coin tosses

A probability tree maps the probability space — that’s to say all potential outcomes of a
series of linked random events. Over our three coin tosses, we can see there are eight
outcomes and each is as likely as the other to occur, so we can say any given outcome has a
1/8 (or 0.125 or 12.5% chance) of occurring. Another way we can calculate the ultimate
outcomes’ chances is with the product of each event’s probability:

Or:

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We can see that for the three tosses we never reach our calculated average outcome of £0,
because there’s no way to give and take £1 three times to reach £0. Instead, we see a range
of outcomes with winnings from -£3 to £3, but not all winnings are as likely happen.

We can link all of the coin toss outcomes by their winnings into events. Events are sets of
outcomes that have their own probability — in our example, we can say that -£3 is an event
comprised of one outcome and so 1/8 (0.125) probability, whereas the £1 event has two
outcomes and a probability of 2/8 (0.25).

As our coin toss probability space grows with more tosses the number of winnings events
increases, but the extreme outcomes become less and less probable. For example, it’s
possible for us to flip the coin twenty times, land only heads and end up with -£20 but it is
highly unlikely. We can calculate the probability of a -£20 run as:

Let’s now look at a common game scenario: You would like to give players 500 gold every
day. You could simple add 500 gold to their balance, but wouldn’t it be more exciting if they
opened a chest that had a random amount inside? Let’s look at how you might balance that
using a loot table:

Reward Chance Gold Average Gold Contribution

Common 0.7 100 70

Uncommon 0.2 150 30

Rare 0.075 2,000 150

Epic 0.025 10,000 250

Average gold per day 500

Table 4: A loot table calculating average gold winnings based on a random reward

A loot table is a list of rewards from which only one is chosen based on a “roll” (a random
number generated in code) which is checked against the probability. Our above loot table

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makes use of the same average winnings contribution from our coin toss example which can
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This process is the basis of balancing most random events in games. All we need is the
chance and the outcome of each event to create an average outcome. From this, we can
balance our values such that events happen frequently enough (and no more) and are
rewarding enough (and no more) to be exciting without breaking anything. We can easily
scale up the method to build loot tables with thousands of items or balance complex combat
procs (programmed random occurrences) for multiple classes.

However, as your game gets bigger and lots of random events have an impact on multiple
systems, then you’ll become less certain about a player’s path. In this case, there’s another
tool we can use: Monte Carlo simulations. Monte Carlo simulations can be made in a
spreadsheet using scripting or with modified game code; either way, the basic premise is
always the same: simulate the game being played, including random events, multiple times
and analyse the outcomes by looking at averages and ranges.

Monte Carlo simulations, although a lot of work to make, are super helpful when your game
gets complex and playthroughs take a lot of time. Running some kind of script that simulates
a playthrough lets you quickly modify values and see their impact within minutes. These
simulations can also let you catch edge cases, like a player getting a super rare drop early
and racing through the game.

Keep in mind when working with chance in your games that humans are not naturally good at
thinking in probability, so don’t worry if you struggled to follow some of this section on your
first read. This probability irrationality leads to all kinds of interesting behaviours, such as
superstition and belief in luck, but most importantly, the right rewards and probability ratios
can lead to very strong compulsions to play. This makes mastery probability a super
powerful game design tool.

Try this: For our gold reward example (see Table 4) we could say that the outcome is
rather “spikey”. Spikey random events are ones where the outcomes have high variance
and so create a value graph with lots of spikes.

Build a spreadsheet and rebalance the loot table so that the reward variance is reduced
from 100x (100 gold to 10,000 gold) to 10x keeping the average gold per day the same.

Which loot table do you think players would prefer and why?

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A Recap – What We’ve Learned

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so Far
Up to this point we’ve added two very useful tools to our game design belt: Curves and
Probability. Within the Curves section we looked at how mathematical formulas can give a
relationship to two values that when plotted on a graph give specific shapes; While during the
Probability section we looked at how chance and outcome can allow us to think about
average outcomes which are helpful for balancing.

These two topics make up a large portion of the low level design you will encounter in your
career making games. Below, meanwhile, we’re going to expand your toolkit with two more
concepts: Economics and Match Making. Economics will equip you with some ways to think
about the flow and interaction of currencies and items in your games, while matchmaking
will give easy ways to bring the right players together.

Economics
What Is It? Economics is a large field of study covering how and why the production,

consumption and transfer of items occur. For example, the UK’s economy is defined

by the complex flow of money between corporations, households and the

government.

Why Is It Important? As games become more complex with currencies being created,

used and transferred they are effectively becoming their own economies.

Understanding a few economic theories help you to understand and curate game
resources better.

Over the last decade economic theories have be increasingly applied to the complex value
exchanges within games, becoming an invaluable tool for designers. Back in 2012 Valve,
seeing the value of economic theory, hired Yanis Varoufakis as Economist-in-Residence.
Varoufakis later went on to become Greece’s finance minister, attempting to save the country
from bankruptcy.

Economics is the use of maths to understand the production, exchange and consumption of
a good, and is as effective a tool for Greece’s national debt as Team Fortress 2’s hats. So
let’s start by looking at the simplest expression of economics in games: The creation and
destruction of in-game resources.

Taps, Sinks and Pinch

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A game’s economy is the flow of resources between its systems and players. When talking
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there are two Blog TapsMobile
helpful concepts: Top
and sinks Grossing
. A tap Contact
is point of creation of
a resource: In League of Legends, for example, the player receives gold at a rate dependent
on the map and any items they are carrying, making the map and items gold taps. Meanwhile
a sink is a place where the resource is destroyed: League of Legends players spends their
gold in the shop, so the shop the game’s singular gold sink.

Figure 7: Taps and sinks

The analogy of tap and sink is an interesting one because it allows us to build a mental
picture of a resources flow; If the tap is generating the resource quicker than the sink can
remove it then an excess builds. Any resource that is in excess becomes effectively
worthless to the player and they stop interacting with the tap. If you’ve ever used an infinite
health hack in a game you’ll know boring a game becomes once health is abundant.

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Figure 8: The sink has overflown and the player has turned off the tap (e.g. stopped interacting with that
mechanic)

However, the inverse can also be true: When there is too little resource coming from a tap
then there is little motivation for a player to interactive with it. The correct balance between a
tap and a sink is known as a pinch point.

In economics a pinch point is the level of supply of a commodity at which demand is

maximised due to consumers becoming concerned about the supply. In games we can think
about this as the point where the supply shows the utility of a resource but is scarce enough
to have players continue to seek it.

A great
Try this: Find the sinks and taps in a game you like and build a spreadsheet

example
to model them. At what rate do each of the sinks and taps work at?

of this is
Is the pinch point effective? How could it be improved?
any game
with a
rocket launcher: Rocket launchers are nearly always the most destructive, powerful and fun
weapons to use, but in finding the pinch point on ammo designers show the utility of rockets
while stopping short of satiating your appetite for destruction. This ammo pinching keeps
players motivated to play as they seek those allusive rockets.

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However, it’s possible that a pinch point in a game isn’t static. Instead it may move as all the
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Inflation
In economics inflation is described as the increase in cost of goods and services, often
driven by an increase in resources, such as cash, within the system. Inflation in games can
occur throughout a playthrough, via the introduction of new content or as a result of
emerging economic efficiencies coupled with player-to-player trading (such as gold farming).

There are some big benefits to intentional inflation within a game: As players progress they
feel rewarded by increased taps. Incremental games make great use of intentional inflation
by building sinks that increase the taps exponentially (see part 1 for more details), constantly
rewarding the player.

But incremental game makers also increase the sinks so as to balance the expanding flow of
resources: This stepping of increased taps and sinks manages to have the player feel their
demand is being met while the goalposts shift proportionally, ultimately creating a moving
pinch point.

Let’s look at a hypothetical gold mining incremental game where the player buys and equips
items that increases the rate at which they can mine gold (see table 1 below).

Gold Generation (Gold Per Buy Effort (Seconds Mining to Upgrade

Item
Second) Cost to Item)

Hands 2 – –

Spoon 3 200 100

Pickaxe 5 300 100

Shovel 10 500 100

Jackham
30 1,000 100
mer

Digger 150 3,000 100

Table 5: The cost and gold generation rate of equipment

By inflating taps and sinks proportionally you’re able to effectively manage inflation to require
the same level of effort, which in our example is 100 seconds of play. However, you can also
modify the rates of tap and sink growth to create a different effort growth. In table 2 the tap
and sink grow non-linearly creating an increasing rate of effort, which is more common.

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Gold Generation (Gold Per Buy Effort (Seconds Mining to Upgrade

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Second) Cost to Item)

Hands 2 – –

Spoon 3 200 100

Pickaxe 5 400 133

Shovel 10 1,000 200

Jackham
30 2,800 280
mer

Digger 150 9,200 307

Table 6: An exponential effort growth

Yet it’s rare that any game has one resource, one sink and one tap: The majority of games
feature multiple resources that can be converted between each other, creating complex
economies that are interesting for players to manage and challenging for designers to build.
How then can we begin to design such an economy?

Anchor Values & Conversion

The exchange of gems to time in Clash of Clans is based on a piecewise function
(see part 1),

where longer timers are per second cheaper than shorter equivalents. See Wolfgang

Graebner’s Gamasutra article Clash of Clans Time Monetization Formulas

Demystified

for a great explanation.

An anchor value is some resource from which you can build other resources through one or
more conversions.

For example, in Clash of Clans players starts with mines and pumps that generate gold and
elixir second by second, so the initial exchange is realworld time for resources. This gold and
elixir is exchanged for construction or troop training which also requires time. Therefor gold,
elixir, troops and buildings in Clash of Clans are the product of time. Elixir, gold, buildings and
troops are the foundation of the entire game’s economy and so time is Clash of Clans’
anchor value.

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But what does an anchor value allow us to do? Anchors are the yardstick of balancing and
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Supercell’s Contact
designers
working on Clash of Clans’ they were able to plan how quickly players would get through
content and, as in-app purchasable gems allow timer skips, know how much money they
could expect from top end players. In other words, anchors are the base on which we build
our economies.

If as a designer you get your anchor values wrong the impact can be devastating, resulting in
under or overpowered mechanic. In effect, any mechanic that is overpowered (or OP) is one
in which the exchange is far more effective than comparative offers. OP mechanics can
shrink the diversity of strategy making good games repetitive and dull, but are come as a
natural part of find the fuzzy edges of exchanges.

Try this: Find a game you like with an historical OP mechanic. What exchange of value
is making

this mechanic OP? How would you fix it? If you can’t find something, then check out
some speed

running to see how players exploit mechanics.

While good game designers plan out their anchor values and comparative exchange rates,
great game designers build exchanges subtly complex enough that the best exchange is so
subjective it keeps players enthralled for many years, just as Clash of Clans has. So avoid
linear exchanges and think about how values can vary with time, turns or other mechanics to
make systems that create deep and varied strategies. Even if you occasionally build
something OP.

Matchmaking
What Is It? Matchmaking is the process of finding any given player a fair opponent,

where fair means all players have an as close as possible chance of winning a match.
Some algorithm, often with one or more tracking variables, are used to place

various opponents together in to a match.

Why Is It Important? Playing a game where you frequently lose to better players

really sucks. So finding good matches between players is essential to good

balance in PvP.

In 1975 psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described a pleasurable mental state, reached

when a given task is not too difficult and not too easy, known as flow. Everyone who plays
games know this feeling and every designer knows how hard it is to achieve this goldilocks

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balance. Therefor, getting players matched to other players who offer the right challenge is
essential. Consulting Services Blog Mobile Top Grossing Contact

But how do we achieve fair matchmaking? It’s an old question in game design, but luckily
there are two main answers:

Tournament: A set of various matching algorithms, from simple to complex, for self-
contained events.
Historic Results: Players are matched to other players based on their historic
performance.

Each of these approaches have their advantages and drawbacks, as well as several different
possible implementations within them. Let’s look at what those are.

Tournament
Tournaments are the oldest and easiest matchmaking system going. They’re great for self-
contained events, especially if you want to find a winner. The simplest tournament structure
is a round robin event where everyone plays everyone else at least once. Some form of
points based on the outcomes will create a final standing. League soccer works this way, but
with the addition of various leagues that teams can be promoted and relegated to.

The major drawback of the round robin is that it dictates the number of matches to be
played. Alternatively the Swiss-system, used in many trading card tournaments and some
sports, matches players based on their current tournament score while avoiding repeat
matches.

Players are randomly paired for their first match, then are paired in the second and beyond
based on their previous results. So winners of the first round will be paired in the second
round, and so on. While rather elegant, the Swiss-system doesn’t handle draws particularly
well, resulting in players being paired up or down. Additionally it can be difficult for players to
follow and due to the short number of rounds can effectively work as a knockout
tournament.

Knockout tournaments have players randomly assigned in pairs with only the winner
progressing to the next round. The final winner is placed first, while the loser is assigned
second place and those who were eliminated in the semi-finals are matched to decide third
place.

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Figure 4: A knockout tournament structure. The winner of each round progresses through to the next

This structure is super simple to understand and the brutal elimination leads to an
everything-on-the-line level of tension. However, as initial pairing is random the best two
players may meet in the first round while other less skillful players get an easy path to the
final. Additionally, being eliminated puts players out on the sidelines, bored and dejected.

However, the major problem for tournaments is that they are based on a tiny snapshot of
time, not factoring historic information of the player, such as the player’s historic skill.

Historic Results
Probably the most popular way of matchmaking in modern games is the Elo rating system.
Elo is a simple piece of maths originally intended to rank chess players with a rating value
which could be used to predict the outcomes of match.

The beauty of the system is that at the end of the match the winning player takes a number
of rating points from the loser based on the rating delta of each. So a lower rated player
beating a higher rated one will gain more rating points than if the higher player wins.
Ultimately this creates a self correcting system where only the best players rise to the top.

Today variations on of the system are used across lots of competitive sports and games
including Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2. However, while simple, the
maths behind Elo isn’t widely understood.
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How Elo Works

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Let’s use a worked example of two players, A and B who are matched, to explore Elo. In Elo
players must start with a number of rating points, which could be any number including zero.
Here we’ll use 1,000. So player A, who is new, has 1,000 points but player B is ranked higher
with 1,100. We can calculate each player’s chance of winning with the following formulas:

Where E is the probability of winning and R is the player’s rating points. From this we can
calculate player A’s chances of winning.

0.36 is the expected result, which is to say she’ll win 36 of 100 matches against player B.
Another way to think of this is 36% chance of winning. The two play and player A is
victorious, so gains some of player B’s points according to the following formula:

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Where K is the K-factor and sets the maximum possible adjustment per game and S is the
Consulting
score (-1 for a loss, Services
1 for a win and 0.5 for a Blog Mobile
draw). Let’s Top Grossing
set a K-factor of 32. Contact

Meanwhile, player B loses the same number of points leaving them at a rating of 1,080. The
players then go on their way to play some more games via a matching algorithm, of which
there are two common approaches:

Pool: Players are placed in a pool while an algorithm seeks the lowest rating delta
(difference between highest and lowest value) in matches. This is best for group games.
Live: Once a player readies up, the game seeks all other ready players and if there is one
within a specified rating rage (for example ±10%) then a match is made. Else they wait
until another player matches them. This is best for one versus one games.

Alongside player Elo ratings these algorithms give you a complete skill-based matchmaking
system. However, before you rush off to implement one it’s worth understanding the
problems of the Elo system.

The Problems of Elo

Elo has some well documented issue:

Confusing Maths: Although the maths is relatively simple, having your average player pull
out a calculator and work the equations is unlikely. This can lead to mistrust.
Ranking Down: When Elo rankings are uncovered to players, in leaderboards for example,
a loss feel doubly punishing as the player ranks down, creating a disincentive for play. In
extreme cases a top player’s best defence of position is to not play.
First Rankings: All starting players are considered of equal skill when in reality there will
be huge disparities. To overcome this issue some games force new players into a series
of sorting matches that use a high K-factor for rapid adjustment.
Group Games: Although a team ranking point average can be created to allow for group
matchmaking, when it comes to adding and removing ranking points the Elo system has

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no specific way of doing so other than evenly. So players who don’t pull their weight are
rewarded in Consulting
the same wayServices
as those who Blog
do. Mobile Top Grossing Contact

All of these problems lead designers to modify Elo in various ways: Some add tournament-
like structures, others factor non-skill values such as troop count, while many seek to fix the
math flaws with further calculations. You will need to look at the pros and cons of different
matchmaking approaches and frankenstein your own to fit your needs.

Try this: What different matchmaking approaches can you find in games you play?

How do they work? If matchmaking is undocumented, attempt to reverse engineer

the system with some informed assumptions.

The importance of a good matchmaking system can’t be overstated; The difference is

players flipping from frustration to boredom and players finding the perfect challenge in
every match to keep them coming back to your game. While you will never get matchmaking
perfect, you can get very close and that’s a challenge well worth pursuing!

Recap
Across these two parts we have investigated some huge mathematical concepts from
curves and probability in the last issue through economics and matchmaking in this issue.
Having read both parts you are now equipped with tools that will allow you to better
understand a game’s inner workings.

The more games you design and apply these concepts the more your mathematical toolbox
will grow: There’s much more depth to each of the subjects we’ve discussed and even more
to the thousands we didn’t. For example, we didn’t touch on the broad areas of behavioural
economics or game theory. Nor did we discuss the best use of spreadsheets or how to go
about creating algorithms to generate enemy character behavior.

If you want to
Try this: Put together your skills from these two articles by designing a

learn more
board game that features the following: The random chance of a dice,

about these
an exponential curve, three resources that can each be exchanged

topics then
through some mechanic and a way of matchmaking players. Then

your local
play it, observe the problems and iterate the design! Keep going until

library will
you’re happy.
have many
books. But if,
like me, you’re more of a visual learner then YouTube is another great resource. You can also
talk with other game designer and analysts about their approaches. Or if your in school why
not ask your maths teacher if one of assignments can be on game design?
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Wherever you get your knowledge from, keep growing it. I’ve been designing games for over
a decade and inConsulting
the process Services
of writing theseBlog
two partsMobile Top both
I’ve realised Grossing
how much IContact
know
and how much there still is to learn.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed read as much as I’ve enjoyed writing. If use any of these techniques
in your game, make sure your get in contact and let me know at will@departmentofplay.net.
I’d love to see your work!

This piece first published in Wireframe magazine as a two-parter.

About the author

Will Luton
Founder at Department of Play | + posts

 Department of Play founder and Chief Product Consultant. Will has

worked at the likes of SEGA and Rovio, took Angry Birds 2 top 50
grossing and is author of Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games
You Give Away.

By Will Luton 13th January 2022

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