The Real MVP: Quantifying Individual Performances in Multiplayer Online Games

Online multiplayer games are getting increasingly popular and complex at the same time, while acknowledging adequate individual contributions to the success or failure of a session remains a formidable challenge. Yet, explainable and tangible insights are a necessity for players’ self-improvement, understanding one’s own performance can diminish frustration and toxicity, and properly quantifying proficiency yields promising potential in overcoming balancing as well as matchmaking issues. Motivated by this series of use cases, we set out to conduct an ecologically valid co-design study with players of the MMORPG Guild Wars 2, implement visualizations and measures drawing from a rich endgame dataset, and derive simple but intricate guidelines to consider when quantifying individual player performance.