Skill-Based Matchmaking Is an Economics Problem, Not a Math Problem
Yet, the industry keeps treating it like an engineering puzzle: tune the constraints, loosen the tiers, hide the MMR, expose the MMR... The only thing less stable than the industry's approach to it is the experience you get without SBMM. While it's painfully obvious SBMM is retention boosting, it's economy design that will remove its rough edges, not more mathematical tuning.
The Call of Duty matchmaking white paper makes this painfully clear. Using skill as a factor lifted end-of-match rank and improved retention for ~80 to 90% of players. Of course, SBMM increases retention versus random matching; there is no serious counterpoint left on that axis. A small minority of players benefit without SBMM because they can stomp the casuals. Another case of Reddit's vocal minorities shouting down the silent majorities!
The tension sits elsewhere. As Feras Musmar points out in Shooter Monthly #2, fairness is not fun. A system that perfectly equalizes outcomes and quietly pushes everyone toward a 50% win rate drains emotional payoff from play. The problem is not the algorithm; it is the absence of any economic structure that shapes what a win or loss means under different conditions.
The complexity rises quickly once the sophistication of modern multiplayer games is taken into account. Battlefield is an excellent illustration of this. Battlefield's kill distribution has a very high Gini coefficient of inequality, meaning a thin slice of players absorbs most of the kills, while the majority absorb most of the dying. This is not a failure of SBMM; rather, it is a geometric constraint of needing to fill 64 or 128-player servers in a reasonable time.
The first emerging answer is found in Clash Royale and Marvel Snap. Bots break the zero-sum structure and give players controlled, confidence-restoring wins. While unlabeled bots are unethical, it's also readily apparent that this solution dominates an A/B test. The risk is that it reduces trust in the system.
The second solution is system's design: build an economic model that absorbs unevenness and celebrates rather than pretending the matchmaker can eliminate it. Command and Conquer Rivals is a good example of what this looks like: challenge battles protected lower-level players from losing medals and paid out double if they upset a stronger opponent. The matching system stayed the same, but the payout table changed the emotional meaning of the match.
If we want SBMM to feel better, we cannot tune our way there. Matchmaking math already performs its core task: preventing the ecosystem from collapsing into a shark tank. The real work now belongs to economy designers. They have to build systems that compensate players for risk, reward outlier success, and give uneven matches a story worth telling. This is an economics problem, not a math problem.