Hello guys, I'm currently making an online multiplayer game, it'll be 1vs1 at first. I've reading about matchmaking and I wonder how some brand new indie games do to have a player's base at beginning so the server is never empty. I have been thinking if is ethical use bots as fake players and that way there'll be always someone to match in? sorry my english is not my native lenguage.

In my personal opinion, as long as the game is clear when I'm playing against a bot instead of another player, it's fine.

Some games even go so far as to let you specifically choose when to play against bots; this is a very popular choice in many games, so I'd suggest that as a possible approach too.

If you're interested in building a player base early, "early access" programs, betas, and so on are all useful for getting players before you officially release.

Thanks for the reply, I'm thinking about this and maybe I will need to do that tell the player when is matched against bot. I like your idea of early access and beta I didn't  thought about that I 'll dig in that idea 

We are using bots if there are not enough users.

Players have pvp rating. So, we are trying to find players with similar rating. If we don't find, we fill the rest with bots. I think, it's a normal practice.

2 hours ago, Suvitruf said:

We are using bots if there are not enough users.

Players have pvp rating. So, we are trying to find players with similar rating. If we don't find, we fill the rest with bots. I think, it's a normal practice.

Nice that is what I want to do , tell me, you are telling to your players they will be match with a bot or your players think they are against real persons?

43 minutes ago, Carlos Alvarez said:

Nice that is what I want to do , tell me, you are telling to your players they will be match with a bot or your players think they are against real persons?

We don't tell them. Some player guess that it's bot, but most of them not =D

Nice that's exactly what we want to do, can u tell me how many players your game have daily?

1 minute ago, Carlos Alvarez said:

Nice that's exactly what we want to do, can u tell me how many players your game have daily?

Not much, we have just launched ~10k WAU.

Nice, thanks for your comments that make me take the decision, we'll do the same thing with bots

Just now, Carlos Alvarez said:

Nice, thanks for your comments that make me take the decision, we'll do the same thing with bots

Np. Good luck with your game (: