Are statistics killing the fun in on-line gaming?

If you’ve played any sports games on-line (namely NHL games for the Xbox 360), you are aware of the nasty, irreversible DNF% (did not finish percentage). This is a statistic kept in order to warn other players of your tendency to quit a game during play.

Gamers who have put countless hours into popular first-person shooters such as Halo 3, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare are also aware of the statistics they’ve earned. Any veteran gamer can easily judge someone’s skill based on their spreadsheet. Kills, deaths, wins, and loses are all there. In one string of bad luck, you can go from a kill/death ratio of 1.25 to 0.80—throwing your prospects of being dubbed a “good player” out the window.

I think that all these stats can hurt the experience of a casual gamer.

Many people who have large DNF percentages are statistical cowards—they are afraid of having a losing record. But, for example, some players might quit NHL 09 games on-line because other gamers use glitches to score or profanity to annoy. They’ll also see their DNF percentages rise. This will lead to other gamers avoiding these players, as I tend to do.

There is a large number of on-line gamers who play for fun, for enjoyment, or—dare I say it—to kill time. These players could not care less about their stats or levels, which (if poor) make other gamers avoid these players as teammates and opponents.

My question is simple: Are stats, like the DNF%, killing the fun in on-line games?