Over the past few years, the phrase "SBMM" has quickly entered the lexicon of gaming. It's up there with the likes of "Ray tracing" and "Teraflops" as popular buzzwords among gamers. Except, whereas ray tracing is usually a positive, and more teraflops are always a good thing, SBMM, or Skill-Based Matchmaking, is usually met with negativity.
There's nothing better than tipping over from "always bad" to "occasionally good."
That's because a vocal minority of gamers believe that the presence of SBMM is ruining their enjoyment of online video games, particularly sports titles and first-person shooters. At its core, SBMM connects players of a similar skill level together. In years past, games often used a Connection-Based Matchmaking system, which paired players based on the best possible connection. That often led to instances in which players at the higher end of a skill level were in the same grouping as those at a lower end because of their connections. SBMM eliminates that in an effort to make matchmaking as fair as possible.
In other words, the days of stomping newcomers and low-level players in public lobbies are long gone. The debate over its pros and cons has been at...