Why I’ve quit Brawl Stars

I’ve quit Brawl Stars after 10 months of intensive playing. Not because I was forced to, but because I want to. So, here’s the problem: Brawl Stars is addictive. No, I do not mean that in a purely negative way. I mean that in an unethical, vicious way. Yes, it served me well. I enjoyed the playing; it was fun. It was a lived experience. The world around me was illuminated by the parallel universe of Brawl Stars. My friends, the online community; they felt the same way too.

But, time leads to change. Though I’ve subconsciously known Brawl Stars’, and perhaps more appropriately, Supercell’s, dirty tricks, I’m giving up now. I’m letting go of the hours accumulated playing the game. The sweat, but also the joy. Because, sometimes, all I need is peace. A little quiet, for self-reflection.

So, back to problem with Brawl Stars, and why I’ve quit.

Firstly, I don’t want to be trolled by a mega-million corporation. The cartoonish art of the game stands in stark contrast with Brawl Stars’ motives. And, to be really honest, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Games are like this: Behind a glimmering surface, true intentions show. Euphemistically, in the gaming world, this is known as retention. Truthfully, this is known as manipulation. And this manipulation manifests itself, in the most supreme way—we drown amidst a continuous flashing of colours and cacophony of sound. We lose our buoyancy. We hand over ourselves to the developers.

In this case, I handed myself over to supercell.

For the most part, Brawl Stars is not an e-sport. It will never be. Why, and why does this matter? The problem is that Brawl Stars does not reward skill. In games, even the trivial ones, such as Chrome Dino, skill is rewarded. And continuous skill leads to delight, in the greatest sense; delight that is a small lesson in seeing the world as something good. How about Brawl Stars?

• Terrible matchmaking
• Toxic behaviour (like teaming, emotes)
• Buggy UX

Terrible matchmaking

Why terrible matchmaking? Brawl Stars’ matchmaking philosophy is this: “Bah, don’t bother about the person’s power level, experience, just make sure the brawler is within the trophy range.” To me, that is absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes, Brawl Stars doesn’t even honour the last part with underdog, their smart, but unfortunately ineffective strategy at matchmaking. Perhaps that’s understandable. But what about total trophy level? Brawl Stars loves this metric during matchmaking. However, there are two flaws. To illustrate the first flaw, here’s an unlikely—but nonetheless compelling—hypothesis. Imagine two players: Both are at a 1000 trophy level. But here’s the catch:

• Player A has 20 brawlers, each at 50 trophies. 20×50🏆=100🏆
• Player B has 2 brawlers, each at 500 trophies. 2×500🏆=1000🏆

See the difference? Then we have another flaw: Total trophy count does not necessarily reflect the player’s skill. You could have played 1000 matches to gain a 100 trophies, or you could have achieved the same with just 10 matches, with 10 consecutive Rank 1 Solo Showdown wins.

Toxic behaviour

I feel that I’ve grown out the age group of Brawl Stars. A game should be universal, not just in location, but also in age. The problem really isn’t that Brawl Stars is preventing me from playing—it’s the players, the community—which is preventing me from doing so. Take a look at a small sampling of so-called toxic pins in the game:

Now, imagine seeing this in every game you play. Isn’t that humiliating? Seeing this once or twice is fine, but that constant abuse and their associated connotations. It’s annoying at best, and abusive at worst. This also happens in the chat:

Oh, and this:

Ugh. Seriously? I could give a few dozen more examples from the community, including my own, but that’s enough evidence. Think: How would a first-time player react to something like this? In my opnion, I feel like I simply don’t belong to the community; I don’t want to voluntarily suffer from a bunch of 9-year-olds. I know Brawl Stars isn’t the only one suffering from this problem. League of Legends has also suffered something similar. Yes, the Brawl Stars developers can implement strict censorship software, but it can only go so far. There are many loopholes in the game, particularly in inappropriate mapmaker content. There’s virtually no way you can detect inappropriate words in a map. It’s like a bot trying to solve a Captcha test. At the end of the day, it depends on the community. Sure, the community is passionate and vibrant on platforms (namely Reddit), but the bad eggs ruin the experience. I’m not here to be victimised, I just want to play.

Buggy UX

Brawl Stars suffers from a horrible UX. From the time when brawlers became “black” to the day when Star Powers could not be selected, Brawl Stars players—especially the experienced—would concede that the Brawl Stars user experience is terribly buggy. You can find daily posts on Reddit documenting various bugs. Sure, some bugs are fun, but once there are two many, the experience is entirely unpleasurable. It’s hard for me to judge the developers. I doubt they have manpower issues as with any burgeoning, billion-dollar gaming behemoth. I, too, doubt that the developers are lousy. What I suspect, rather, is that Brawl Stars is pushing their developers to implement new features so much, that the game itself cannot keep up.

For all these reasons, I’m quitting Brawl Stars. I do not know if I’ll regret this decision in the near future. But as for now, it’s time for a break. A good and long break.