Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  TrueSkill: Matchmaking Made Easy for Xbox Live (19 Nov 2005) 'We call a match 'uninteresting' if the chances of winning for the participating players are very unbalanced,' Herbrich says. 'Very few people enjoy playing a match they cannot win or cannot lose. The trick is to use the hypothetical chance of drawing with someone else. If you are likely to draw with another player, then that player is a good match for you.' In addition to skill ranking and matchmaking, TrueSkill can recognize the skills of players for potential publication. 'Some games,' Graepel says, 'also will display skill leader boards that give you a good idea of how skilled you are in comparison to your friends.' And there is no real way to 'game' the system to obtain rankings higher than warranted. 'The only way that players can inflate their rankings,' Herbrich notes, 'is to manipulate the game outcomes reported to Xbox Live. We cannot guarantee that people will not find ways to cheat, but exploitations of the ranking system itself should be a thing of the past.' Article URL: http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=1361 Read 145 more articles from Microsoft sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Creating Simple Software in a Geek-driven Culture          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy