Refereed article in conference proceedings (A4)
Beyond Skill-Based Rating Systems: Analyzing and Evaluating Player Performance
List of Authors: Aleksi Visti, Tapani N. Joelsson, Jouni Smed
Editors: Markku Turunen, Heli Väätäjä, Janne Paavilainen and Thomas Olsson
Conference name: Academic MindTrek
Publication year: 2017
Book title *: Academic MindTrek - Proceedings of the 21st International Academic Mindtrek Conference
Title of series: Annual Academic Mindtrek Conference
Start page: 8
End page: 16
Number of pages: 9
ISBN: 978-1-4503-5426-4
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3131085.3131096
Being competitive is a core element of human nature
and rating systems are a great tool for satisfying the need of ranking players
for the skills they demonstrate. But the games of today have left rating
systems behind in their evolution, making it more and more unlikely that
individual players are evaluated fairly for their performances. The goal of
this study is to gain a deep understanding of different variations of rating
systems and the environments they are used in, and to use that information to
build and test a new feature for rating players. Using a skill-based rating
system known as TrueSkill as a reference point, a dataset is gathered with the
help of volunteers. The resulting implementation is based on idea of rewarding
those individuals who performed well in a game but were on the losing side of
the match. With this change to the rating system, we believe that it makes it
worth for performing well even in situations that seem unwinnable, resulting
less quitting from online team matches, and overall better player enjoyment.
Based on the findings, we introduce an experimental performance analyzation
system that tracks individual performances within a team setting.