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Dark Pattern Games

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Re: Dark Pattern Games

#21

Post by stackghost »

keerthiko wrote: post #16

The premise of this site seems to be that anything designed to make the game "addictive" is a dark pattern — this is contradictory to the concept of "dark pattern" in products in general, which I would define as "when an interface biases users towards action that is more in the interest of the business controlling the interface than the user's goals for using the software ." When someone plays a game, the user's goal…

Yes, not everything here is a dark pattern. The one that stood out to me was "Wait To Play"[0].

In the before times, there was a browser-only MMO called Urban Dead[1] which had a cap on the number of actions any player could take in a single 24-hour period. This was to avoid giving undue influence/advantage to players who could play more during the day and disadvantaging people who e.g. had to work during the day and could only play in the evenings. I played a lot of UD in its heyday and thought it worked really well.

That said,

>A "true dark pattern" would be sneaking things like push notification permissions, tracking permissions, recurring subscription agreements, etc. under an interface that looks similar to something the user doesn't read carefully and tries to get past out of habit, such as an interstitial ad with a "skip" button — but with a below-the-fold toggle button defaulted to "agree" and a "Confirm" button styled to look like the "skip" button at first glance.

There are lots of "true dark patterns" that are not deceptive UI elements. Loot boxes that require expensive keys comes to mind. Same with brutal grinds that can only be bypassed by pay-to-win booster items.

[0] https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/30/wait-to-play.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Dead

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#22

Post by swi »

Chris Wilson released a video on this topic yesterday - "Dark Patterns: Are Your Games Playing You?". He has an interesting perspective having been the lead of Path of Exile. A free to play, decade long, popular, action role playing game.

While opinions vary on the correct use of these patterns, the video is a helpful and easy to digest, reminder of them. The video description contains additional links.

---

"Dark Patterns: Are Your Games Playing You?" - https://youtu.be/OCkO8mNK3Gg

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#23

Post by Greed »

efnx wrote: post #14
deadbabe wrote: post #5

Any game with any in-app purchase at all already feels unhealthy, even if its just a trial unlock. The healthiest games are consistently ones where you pay one large amount upfront, and then are never bothered about money again, because there is nothing else to buy. The developers are so confident you will enjoy it they don't bother with free trial offers. If you really don't like it, you just return for a full refun…

How would you feel about a free game spending one frame per second mining a cryptocurrency? This would be as an alternative to a one-time purchase (and as an alternative to ads). So, you could play a full game for free, indefinitely, and have a small portion of compute do mining, and at any time you could pay a one time fee (purchase) to turn off mining forever. (Edit: added stuff in parens)

This comment makes me feel so sad. I lack the words to describe what critical essence this question is missing, but technology used to mean a hacker ethos of just doing things because they seemed cool and worth doing and even just the ask of this feels parasitic by comparison. Sign of the times.

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#24

Post by charcircuit »

thrwaway55 wrote: post #17

This site feels like this it's made by people that misunderstand games and genres and can't stand the concept of live service games which surprise takes money to run. Saw one where powercreep is considered unhealthy ...if you played a competitive card game without power creep you'd quit because the first meta would be the only meta. Controlled power creep is healthy for game longevity.

I think what they would want to see is the cards all be free. That way powercreep does not make a purchase less valuable, does not make people gamble for cards they want, and not give an advantage to people who want to spend more money to get good cards.

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#25

Post by AlotOfReading »

efnx wrote: post #14
deadbabe wrote: post #5

Any game with any in-app purchase at all already feels unhealthy, even if its just a trial unlock. The healthiest games are consistently ones where you pay one large amount upfront, and then are never bothered about money again, because there is nothing else to buy. The developers are so confident you will enjoy it they don't bother with free trial offers. If you really don't like it, you just return for a full refun…

How would you feel about a free game spending one frame per second mining a cryptocurrency? This would be as an alternative to a one-time purchase (and as an alternative to ads). So, you could play a full game for free, indefinitely, and have a small portion of compute do mining, and at any time you could pay a one time fee (purchase) to turn off mining forever. (Edit: added stuff in parens)

I feel the same way about crypto as I do about those herbal supplements at gas stations. It's not that they're inherently problematic, but everyone involved turns out to be scammers consistently enough that automatic distrust is a fantastic rule of thumb.

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#26

Post by thrwaway55 »

charcircuit wrote: post #24
thrwaway55 wrote: post #17

This site feels like this it's made by people that misunderstand games and genres and can't stand the concept of live service games which surprise takes money to run. Saw one where powercreep is considered unhealthy ...if you played a competitive card game without power creep you'd quit because the first meta would be the only meta. Controlled power creep is healthy for game longevity.

I think what they would want to see is the cards all be free. That way powercreep does not make a purchase less valuable, does not make people gamble for cards they want, and not give an advantage to people who want to spend more money to get good cards.

I agree that is what it would take to get a high score on their site but I think it's an unrealistic expectation to suggest that the developer should be on the hook indefinitely for content. Each card game set is functionally a new game with some costs amortized thanks to it's previous sets.

We have seen the forever sticker price in mega hit indies ala Stardew Valley or Terraria but I don't think that is really healthy to expect for gaming as a whole and is more that small teams hit a home run.

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#27

Post by charlie-83 »

This feels useful even if the software don't directly tranlate to how "predatory" the game is and if scores can't be compared between games.

Sure, being unable to pause the game isn't necessarily the developer being evil, but it's good to have a website that tells you about it before you buy the game.

I think you just need to interpret a game having a low score as there being some parts of the game that you might want to know about before buying/playing rather than "this game is evil".

In the same way that, when a film is rated 18, I can check whether that means it's going to scar me for life or if it shows a nipple for 2 seconds.

Re: Dark Pattern Games

#29

Post by deadbabe »

acheron wrote: post #8
deadbabe wrote: post #5

Any game with any in-app purchase at all already feels unhealthy, even if its just a trial unlock. The healthiest games are consistently ones where you pay one large amount upfront, and then are never bothered about money again, because there is nothing else to buy. The developers are so confident you will enjoy it they don't bother with free trial offers. If you really don't like it, you just return for a full refun…

Nah that’s going too far. 90s shareware was sold exactly that way — free trial and pay if you want more — and there were plenty of great creative games in that category.

This isn’t the 90s, they can watch a video now and see if they like it.
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