Revive Dead Games with Multi-Game Matchmaking

Lately, I’ve been playing as much Duelists of Eden as I can before it dies.  Duelists has wildly unique mechanics for a fighting game, such as drawing attacks from a deck of cards and locking movement to a 4x4 grid.  The game’s concurrent playerbase is already down to a paltry 200, despite launching just last week at the low price of $5.  As with many niche multiplayer games, Duelists will soon experience queue death.  The live matchmaking pool will decline to the point where players are unable to find opponents and will abandon the game.  

Queue death is caused by a simple feedback loop.  A critical mass of players is required to find matches on demand.  As the playerbase declines, on-demand matchmaking wait times grow longer.  Frustrated players quit playing, which further reduces the playerbase and extends queue times.

When on-demand matchmaking deteriorates, players may switch to private matchmaking (aka private lobbies, custom games, in-houses).  However, this further exacerbates the death spiral.  Access to private matchmaking is constrained by having enough friends who are both willing and available to play.  New players are especially deterred, as they may not discover the private matchmaking community, or may be put off by matches with hardcore opponents who are way out of their league.  As the flow of new players stops and the hardcore base gradually erodes away, the game usually dies.  

Games employ various methods to forestall queue death.  By consolidating game modes or loosening matchmaking constraints, games can concentrate players into fewer queues.  Reducing queue time uncertainty also helps, as knowing that you will eventually get a match may encourage you to stay.  Showing active player counts helps users estimate their wait time.  Flight-based matchmaking guarantees a match within 7 minutes which can sustain even tiny games like Awesomenauts with 20 ccu.  Coordinating playtimes can enable populations to reach critical mass for a limited time window.  For example, Magic the Gathering sponsored local game shops to host “Friday Night Magic” which, as the name suggests, created a Schelling point on Friday nights.  Rotating game modes also functionally concentrate players into limited time windows.  

These tactics forestall queue death, but don’t prevent it.  Once the playerbase hits zero, it’s nearly impossible to come back.  A common weakness of the methods described above is that they are game-specific.  After players stop launching your game client, your interventions have no effect.  But what if this wasn’t the case?  

Multi-game Matchmaking

Imagine if you could queue for Divekick (dead game 🪦) and Street Fighter at the same time.  On the off chance somebody else wants to play Divekick, you’ll find a match for your favorite niche game.  But if nobody is around, you can still play Street Fighter and are not stuck waiting.  This is multi-game matchmaking.

Fightcade has already revived dozens of dead games with multi-game matchmaking.  Fightcade is an arcade emulation platform that allows players to join “looking for game” lobbies for hundreds of retro arcade games.  Importantly, players can join multiple game lobbies at the same time, allowing them to signal interest in a niche game while playing a more popular game.  In contrast, most online games’ matchmaking is exclusive, forcing players to choose between Street Fighter and Divekick.  By utilizing multi-game matchmaking, Fightcade has become the hub for popular retro games like Street Fighter III while breathing life back into once-dead arcade classics like King of Fighters ‘98 and Windjammers.

Retro arcade games are a small niche.  Who could do this on a wider scale?  Major game platforms like Steam and Epic come to mind.  Steam could create a plugin for games to integrate and join a platform-wide matchmaking system.  A lower-tech alternative would be a wishlist-like system to allow players to signal interest in playing a particular game.  When another player also signals interest, the two would be notified and join a chat room.

Fortnite’s prolific user-generated content is also full of dead multiplayer maps.  These uncanny ghost towns were designed to be full of players but are unplayable alone.  Multi-game matchmaking could make some abandoned maps playable again, spreading engagement wider through their UGC catalog.  This has the added benefit of distributing revenue share more broadly and encouraging aspiring game designers to create more UGC.

Unfortunately, dead games are unpopular by definition.  There’s not much money to be made, so there’s not much incentive for companies to support them.  But a boy can dream.  In a few years, maybe I’ll still be able to play Duelists and Divekick.