A lame duck in a competitive game is a player (or team) that cannot possibly win, but nevertheless remains in the game. Being the lame duck is usually not fun. Yet, the frequency of lame ducks and the experience of being the lame duck in a game can differ dramatically. In this piece, I will argue that the mechanic of leveling in a competitive game amplifies the negative experience of a lame duck, using League of Legends (LoL) and Team Fortress 2 (TF2) as two contrasting examples. I should begin by acknowledging that in a strict sense, there are no lame ducks in either LoL or TF2. Until the game ends, there always remains the possibility of player drops, disconnects, or some other deus ex machina. That said, anyone who has played these games will know that there are plenty of times when the chance of victory has shrunk close to zero long before the game or round is over. Your team is just feeding or fodder for the enemy, and if there no penalties for doing so, you would rather quit the game than keep playing.
Despite the fact that LoL lets you surrender anytime after 20 minutes, there are a couple of reasons that the lame duck situation is much better in TF2. When your team is far enough behind in LoL, there is almost nothing that can be done to recover---and this is by design. The “snowballing” effect of a team or player that gets ahead in gold, equipment, and experience is intended to translate directly into team superiority and eventual victory. This is great fun if you have the advantage, but not fun at all if you fall behind. Once the team is behind, even a skilled will have a difficult time contributing anything positive.
In TF2 there are a few snowballing mechanics---e.g., shorter re-spawn times, nearer spawn points, or control of key defensive points---but players or teams in the lead are no less killable then they were at the start of the game. This makes it much more likely that a trailing team can still rally and mount a comeback (or at least a counter-push). So while it is still good to have the advantage in TF2, the punishment for a trailing team is less severe. A skilled player on a losing team will still get kills, capture points, and feel that they are contributing.
TF2 is also designed to foster “last stand” scenarios, where the lame duck team has an opportunity to fortify their final control point and really make the dominant team work for their victory. Most TF2 players will have played a thrilling finish to what may have otherwise been a one-sided match: The final point is under assault, turrets are firing like crazy, sticky bombs and rockets are exploding everywhere, as you rush from the spawn to try and stand on the point before the capture bar is completed. These are some of the game's greatest moments!
This kind of furious last stand can happen in LoL, but it is rare. It is possible for one team to destroy their opponents’ nexus turrets, but nevertheless fail to take down the nexus. The other team then respawns, wins a team fight at their nexus, pushes back, kills Baron, etc. However, the plausibility of this scenario in LoL actually assumes that it was not a lame duck to begin with. Any team that can successfully repel a nexus assault must still be close in gold and experience. Indeed, the end of a long LoL game---after all the players are at max level and have purchased their final items---is no longer about leveling and snowballing. It becomes a lot more like TF2. So long as a LoL team can (with sufficient strategy and teamwork) hold their nexus and kill the enemy champions, there is still an incentive to keep playing---not simply to troll the enemy team and prolong the inevitable, but because playing and winning a team fight is one of the most fun parts about LoL.
Which brings me to the material point: Leveling in a competitive game amplifies the negative experiences of being the lame duck. Or to put it another way: When your attacks or abilities or whatever choices you might make to try and improve your position in a game lose consequence, because you are underleveled and underpowered, the fun and incentive to play is severely reduced. Eliminating the entire possibility of a lame duck scenario would require some extreme rubber-banding. Therefore, the preferable design strategy for promoting and maintaining fun player experiences in a competitive game---for the losing side as much as the winning side---is to eliminate (or at least mitigate) the effects of leveling and snowballing. This places the emphasis for a team’s superiority on their consistent skillful and coordinated play, not simply their ability to get the early lead and then roll downhill, so to speak.
I’ll close with a funny analogy: Imagine a game of basketball where every time you scored, the other team’s basket was lowered by four inches and your basket was raised by four inches (we can also stipulate a minimum height of 8’ and a maximum of 16’). As long as you trade points and the game is close, this approximates a normal game of basketball. But if the other team builds up a lead, you can no longer dunk or layup. Now your only way to score is rainbow shots of decreasing probability. You are now more likely to fall further behind. This is great fun for the winning team, who can relax and laugh as you throw up wild airballs. But this is not fun at all for the losing team, who may just as well resign.
The fundamental assumption underlying these ideas is that a competitive game should still be fun for the losing side. It should not be as much fun as it is for the winning side, but still fun enough that even when you are the lame duck (or something close to it), you would much rather finish the game than simply quit.
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