Definition: A gaming dark pattern is something that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer.
Learned about it from another lemmy user! it’s a newer website, so not every game has a rating, but it’s already super helpful and I intend to add ratings as I can!
While as an adult I think it’ll probably be helpful to find games that are just games and not trying to bait whales, I feel like it’s even more helpful for parents.
Making sure the game your kids want to play is free of traps like accidental purchases and starting chain emails with invites I think makes it worth its weight in gold.
EDIT: Some folks seem to be concerned with some specific items that it looks for, but I’ve been thinking of it like this:
1 mechanic is a thread, multiple together form a pattern. It’s why they’ll still have a high score even if they have a handful of the items listed.
Like random loot from a boss can be real fun! But when it’s combined with time gates, pay to skip, grinding, and loot boxes… we all know exactly what it is trying to accomplish. They don’t want you to actually redo the dungeon 100 times. They want you to buy 100 loot boxes.
Guilds where you screw over your friends if you don’t play for a couple days because your guild can’t compete and earn the rewards they want if even a single player isn’t playing every single day? Yeah, we know what it’s about. But guilds where it’s all very chill and optional? Completely fine.
Games that throw in secret bots without telling you to make you think you’re good at the game combined with a leader board and infinite treadmill, so you sit there playing the game not wanting to give up your “top spot”? I see you stupid IO games.
But also, information is power to the consumer.
Back in uni, most of these dark patterns were taught as “game design fundamentals”.
Now as I work on my indie games, I avoid using what I learned in uni.
Game design all boils down to “is it fun?” and anything else is bullshit sales tactics.
I wish the site also focused on real games, and not just mobile games.
I think the focus on mobile is due to the fact that very few people would choose to make a fun game on mobile unless they were deliberately chasing money. Indie devs don’t want to use and make customers use an inferior device with more hoops to jump through. Publishing for PC is easy, publishing for Console has a higher bar to clear for quality. Publishing for mobile is more difficult than PC and makes it more difficult to build a quality game, so the majority of mobile games are unrewarding trash so the only incentive to make them is pure monetization.
Also because the install base for mobile devices is just about everyone everywhere, and yes, a fair amount of people, particularly young people, would much rather play something on their phone than a PC or even console.
The difference in potential customer base is orders of magnitude larger.
What games do you make? If you’re actively working on games that are anti dark pattern then that’s the type of game I want to hear about
I’m sorry, I’d share some links, but I make too many shitposts and unhinged takes on this account to want to link to my projects and thus my real name.
But I would argue that most at least somewhat successful indie games (at least on PC) have very few dark patterns.
They said they’ll expand to steam eventually, but sounds like they wanted to focus on mobile to start because it has biggest player base and most of the dark patterns are industry norms for mobile.
I’d argue that unfun design elements can be useful in games if used with care and purpose. For instance, “suddenly all of the characters you’re attached to are dead” is not exactly fun but one of the Fire Emblem games used it to great dramatic effect at the midway point.
Of course the line between an event or mechanic that players love to hate and one they just hate is thin.
What makes mobile games not “real”? Sounds very gatekeepy. I don’t always have the space to pull out my laptop.
The vast majority of mobile games are comprised of three mechanics:
- click X times to get something
- wait X amount to get something
- watch an ad to skip having to do the first two
and repeat.
Clearly you haven’t played any good mobile games. Or any bad desktop computer games for that matter.
vast majority
The handful of good ones aren’t why mobile gaming is worth more than PC gaming.
Nobody is forcing you to play the bad games. In fact, the website in the OP is made precisely for finding the good ones.
Literally just found out yesterday my wife has been spending on average 100$ a month on one of these games yesterday, thanks for the helpful site.
Now I guess I get to figure out how to have conversations with her that I never thought I’d have to have.
Oh no! That’s so annoying, maybe can help her quit by finding a better version of the game.
Like stupid match 3/candy crush trash has a million free clones.
Thanks for the advice. I’m honestly trying to wrap my head around the appeal or what it does for her. The app is called Gold and Goblins, and it’s an idle game. I’ve never understood idle games as a genre but I want to try to come from an understanding place. I’m a PC gamer myself (factorio currently) and I’m used to paying once for a game and being able to play forever.
I mean I have my own problems as well, my addictions are caffeine and nicotine. So I’m definitely not a saint. But it’s hard to talk to her about it when she pulls the whataboutism on my vices. I get it, my stuff is wasted money as well. I just don’t really see it as the same thing, Noone is compelling me with a time limited event or something to get me to smoke more.
Edit: I’m also actively quitting both my vices, while hers are getting worse. I just worry so much about how it’s affecting her and her mental health.
Do you have a “vices” budget? Maybe that’s one approach. You both get $100 or whatever and she blows hers on mobile games, while you’re cutting back and have money for other things.
This is a good idea to keep everyone accountable
Obviously I don’t know what your finances are like, but is it possible she’s just enjoying herself and considers it a hobby? Comparing it to other games, $100/month can seem ridiculous, but comparing it to other hobbies, it might not be that bad.
I used to be unwilling to spend any amount on a mobile game until I thought about how much I used to spend playing Magic: the Gathering. Sometimes hobbies cost money.
I have multiple hobbies and or vices that each cost about that much per month…so
I’ve played Gold and Goblins, it’s a typical idle skinner box; these companies hire the same people casinos do, to design their games to be addictive. It is a gambling addiction, same as if it were actual slot machines
Oof yeah I sometimes get drawn into idle games. It’s weird to be pulled into those, because just the constant feeling of accomplishing something short circuits my brain, combined with “Oh I should check in on my game once a day, or I’m not accomplishing things”. Usually once I stop playing for a few days I go “oh, why did I care?” But it feels real bad in the mean time.
If you want games just to play games I recommend downloading from f Droid. Pretty much every other game has ulterior motives be it ads or microtransactions. I haven’t come across a game on f Droid yet that has either of those.
Fair. Just that the selection of quality games is rather limited.
IMO monetisation is fine, after all we all need to earn a living. To goad people into spending money is the issue. Enter dark patterns.
A one-off purchase after testing the first level? Awesome! Wait a few hours - or days - for a building to finish? Watch a deceptive ad for a meager reward over and over? No, thanks.
It’s the difference between a theme park and a casino. Both are legitimate forms of entertainment for many people, and both do need income to maintain their operations.
One of them charges for entry and then you enjoy the park, only paying for additional but ultimately optional things like merchandise or food. The fun ends when you decide to leave or the park closes.
The other is designed so you have to spend small amounts consistently, and it is designed in incredibly manipulative fashion, literally employing tactics that trigger addictive responses. The fun ends when you run out of money to spend, therefore compelling you to keep spending.
The people designing the theme park are designing something entertaining, the people designing the casino are perfecting a skinner box.
One is more deserving of income than the other.
As a former gacha addict I totally agree. Nowadays when I get the urge to play on my phone I’ve been doing Open Sudoku, Fruity Game or Ricochlime. They don’t scratch that same itch quite right but I’m definitely wasting less of my time and money.
Tbf, last time I checked the site it had stuff like ”random loot” listed as a dark pattern. Gacha sucks, but random loot from a boss is IMO valid game design.
There’s a spectrum, but if I were to map all and every dark pattern, random loot surely qualifies.
If a fight is compelling it has its own reward, random drop chances (especially abysmal drop-rate) will have you mindlessly repeating it no matter the quality of the boss design.
I like the strategy most Terraria bosses go for: You always get something good, it just might not be exactly what you’d wanted in that exact moment, but the re-spec to use it effectively will be pretty easy.
Boss fights definitely, your sentiment reminds me of Warframe. Don’t miss farming bosses. However, there are a lot of ways randomized loot can be implemented, and I wouldn’t call all of them dark patterns
Well 1 dark pattern doesn’t ruin their score or make a dark pattern game. Because like games with random loot where every piece is viable and goes for a fun build like a rogue like is wonderful, but it’s a thread of a dark pattern. Alone it’s not scary, and can be fun. Combined with time gates, terribly low drop rates, and pay to skip? Suddenly we have a very nasty dark pattern.
I think it depends on the extent and context behind it. Some games have random loot, which give you a random chance to get an actual reward, which may also just be part of a greater pool of things you need for the actual reward to be completed.
Meanwhile, for a hack’n slay game it would be natural to have randomized loot as a feature. But it could also be unnaturally bad in balance to encourage other aspects - for example back then Diablo 3 and their real money auction house.
I mean it is a dark pattern. It drives us to play more even when we’re not having fun. How many times have we all done a dungeon 10+ times, not because it’s fun, but because we want it to drop the thing?
But at the same time, if that’s the “only” dark pattern, that’s probably fine! And it’ll most likely get a high score of 3+ on the positive side. But if you combine the random loot with time gate, pay to skip, pay to win, etc. then the score rightfully craters.
I think the site is good because it empowers us to pick what we actually want to deal with.
Interesting. I was chatting with a lot of big name AAA designers and indie designers discussing dark patterns, and they’ve got a very different opinion on what constitutes a dark pattern. To them, largely, it needs to be more technical deception - like having a fake “X” button, or immediately popping up an ad over where a button was to trick you into clicking it, or bait-and-switching pricing before the user notices.
I tried to raise these kinds of patterns as problematic, and it was a mixed bag. The general vibe from them was that they’d only call it a dark pattern if it deceives the player to get more money than they were prepared to spend (or similar for ads). If the player knows what they’re getting into, and they are presented with a choice to stop or continue, it’s on them.
And I’ll admit, while I don’t go that far (and there were designers in both camps), I can at least understand how all game design is manipulation, in the same way that teaching and storytelling is manipulation, and drawing the lines can be very hard. Your job is to convince the player that they are having fun and want to keep playing. Resources in a game have no real value, only valued by the scarcity and utility of them, which the designer intentionally assigns to convince the player it’s more or less valuable.
Curiously, the examples listed in the OP were exactly the patterns I see designers discuss, but don’t seem to be the patterns on the website (like “illusion of control”, artificial scarcity, which is like, game designs while thing).
Either way, nice to have this as a resource because honestly a lot of these elements are what I’d put in the “bad / abusive design” category rather than purely dark patterns, but still great to highlight, but I can agree that we should probably be careful blanket calling these dark patterns; examples: It mentions illusion of control being separating you into shards of leader boards so that you can be in the top 500 of a shard rather than top 200,000 world ranking or whatever, or claw machines choosing whether you successfully grab an item rather than relying on skill. How does this compare to Uncharted not letting enemies successfully shoot you in the first few seconds of an action sequence to give you time to ground yourself, or Resident Evil spawning different loot and enemies based on how good/bad you play?
I’d say, is it to extract money from you in the short term, but it’s more grey than a non-designer might read into from lists like these.
I’m shocked that the people who stand to benefit from it have a different definition than we do.
i’m sure they’d be fine with it if it were their kids on the receiving end, right?
All I’m commenting on, as a game design researched and professor, is that it’s an established term in a discipline which means something else to those actually within the discipline. These are still patterns, and they can absolutely be harmful patterns, but the terminology is being overloaded and there is some interesting nuance within it.
Also, just to comment on the last quip there, and yes - to those I’ve spoken to, they are okay with those because they (being actively involved in the industry) know more than most people to educate and supervise and ensure that playing games with these patterns doesn’t turn into harmful behaviours. They also call them out for what they are - often, very bad design.
I guess that’s really the line they drew - these patterns are more gray than the examples they presented. Most are good sometimes and terrible other times depending on how it is used. The term “dark patterns” as used professionally refers to always bad, always deceptive, always harmful. I do like having that line, even if it means the dark side is a much smaller subset of the greater space, then you can easily say, “If this uses a single dark pattern, it’s out. If it uses a lot of ‘grey’ patterns, be cautious. If it’s nothing but grey patterns, it’s purely abusive trash.”
I mean I think this site goes with “overly broad so you can pick what you want” approach.
Also the way I’m viewing it, is each individual item is a thread of a dark pattern. Weaved into normal game play it’s completely fine. It’s just when all the threads of a category come together is it a pattern designed to trigger addiction and over spending.
Like competition is listed under a category, but if that’s the only item in the category, it still has a stellar score and rightfully so and isn’t listed as a dark pattern.
Yeah, that’s definitely the way to see it, and as that I think it’s great. I think it might overload the term dark patterns a bit too much, and would have liked to have seen a different name used (as a game design academic), but I absolutely agree with and appreciate the approach otherwise.
Edit to include, I guess why I have that hesitation with an example - I couldn’t link this in a class I’m teaching without loads of caveats because suddenly 80% of the curriculum gets seen as abusive when it’s really just experience design and explain the grey (which we do, so this is quite helpful for that particular purpose), and I would need to caveat that when they see the term out in the wild it will be used differently.
That makes sense! The list of dark games probably is most helpful to be like “here’s a list of games made to be addictive, what features that we spoke about are present in the games on this list?”
It’s kinda funny, I’ve become so turned off to these manipulations that the gamification of duolingo just annoys me more than it motivates me. The whole point is to learn a language. Power ups that let you extend the time to complete a timed exercise don’t help with learning a language. Getting to the top of the leaderboard didn’t make a difference either, especially if it was done using xp boosts.
At this point, I just hate that it forces me to spend time watching various meaningless bars fill up after each lesson.
I’ve even missed a couple of days, thinking “oh well, there goes my streak, which also doesn’t really matter”, only to find that they cared more about keeping that than I did and have automatic freezes. Though it wanted me to buy more after the last one, so I’m thinking the next time I miss a day it’ll finally go back to 0.
Oh and yes, duolingo is a pay to win language learning game where you can give them money for boosts in the meaningless gamification shit. Even after buying a year subscription (that I don’t plan on renewing).
They also completely skip any of the foundational stuff and jump right in to phrases that they don’t explain. I’m a few months into Japanese lessons on there and it still hasn’t even mentioned that it’s been teaching the polite form and that other forms exist (which makes things confusing if you try to use other resources that generally use the neutral form).
It might be better for other languages that aren’t so different from English, but I do not suggest duolingo if you want to learn Japanese.
Tbh I don’t suggest learning Japanese at all if you aren’t strong with languages and memorization. There’s a couple thousand kanji symbols you need to learn for everyday communication, and each of those can be combined with others to form words that aren’t always intuitive, and then those words can be strung together into sentences that also aren’t intuitive to interpret.
Yeah I did the Spanish for months and it was like “You’re so high level!” but I realized as soon as I stepped back that I mostly had just gotten good at playing their games because they were formatted where the answers were generally obvious, to where I felt like just memorizing key words then trying to read children’s books would have been more helpful.
So yeah they for sure use a dozen dark patterns. Making you feel like your account is valuable, making you feel bad for skipping, giving you bonuses for playing on their schedule, and making you feel better at the language than you are.
Lol Spanish is one language that I had assumed might actually work decently with that approach, but I can’t say I’m surprised it doesn’t.
And yeah, they do seem to design the exercises to be easy. Like translate a sentence to English, but they only give one verb option, or sometimes they don’t even provide any options that aren’t a part of the sentence and it becomes “can you string these English words together to form a valid sentence with hints in the language you are learning?”
I’m using another app specific to Japanese that at least has grouped the answers in ways that make it harder but more effective because I need to tell the difference between similar looking kanji. It’s frustrating, but at least the frustration comes from being annoyed at my own pace rather than from getting a false sense that I’m doing very well only to realize I barely know anything without multiple choice hints.
I’m sure it worked for some people, but for me my brain just picked up the super obvious patterns before picking up much spanish.
It is possible, though I think it’s one of those products whose success is based more on customer testimonials than actual statistics about it’s effectiveness.
They might exist, but I haven’t met anyone who has said they were able to use duolingo to become fluent or even competent in a language.
But then again, my German learned from a class in high school isn’t much better. Hell, my French leaned from being in French immersion all through elementary school followed by normal French classes in high school isn’t even at a competent level, though I can at least communicate a bit in French. I can still see those subject-verb conjugation tables though lol (though I’ve lost the French version of “them/they”).
Completely free lessons. No gamification. Really natural feeling learning method.
I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Invested / Endowed Value - Having already spent time and money to improve your status in the game, it’s difficult to throw it away.
Isn’t that every game? I can’t think of a single game, back to old Atari 2600 or arcade games, that doesn’t have this element. Many people are playing to see how far they can get, to beat the game.
I mean, games without memory didn’t. Because once you turned off the game, it was all gone. This is more referring to if you have spent $200 on a game, and have like special event stuff in it, you’ll struggle to give it up.
But again, this is all part of bigger pictures. If it has this + grinding + time lock things + micro transactions it’s a problem. Games with just a couple of the features still have a high score of like 3+ and will be good games. Some of the things it asks about are only problems paired with other mechanics, while some categories are by themselves enough to be a problem.
I looked at their individual page (https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/4/psychological-dark-patterns.html)…
If deleting the game and starting over from scratch sounds like a horrible idea and a waste of your investment, then the game has Endowed Value for you. The more time and money that you invest in the game, the more value it has over a fresh copy of the game.
So I guess they are referring to is something more transactional… for example, if I spent $100 on a gacha game or loot boxes to get a bunch of ultra-rare SSRs. I’d be pretty compelled to keep playing since I’ve already spent so much money on it.
They are not counting, for example, that I get hooked on some weird roguelike game because I genuinely want to get better at it but can stop any time. And if I lose my save file I would still happily start from scratch again (which, hilariously, a pattern named Infinite Treadmill is marked for both Slay the Spire and Balatro… https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/14/infinite-treadmill.html)
It’s sad that the most unhealthy games are the ones ranked as most played on the google play store 😮💨
It’s not sad, there is a direct connection.
They are the top games because of the psychological manipulation being successful.
I mean… It’s also sad
Very much so :( I’ve played some genuinely really fun games in the top list, but the instant you start playing you can feel what they are about.
Like I’ve been playing Warhammer 40k Tacticus. It’s really cool!.. I’ll probably play it for another week or two at most. Every action I take brings up a suggestion for me to buy something. Everything requires energy. There are about 50 different currency types. I get alerts that I’ve completed quests… that I can’t turn in because they are quests only available if you buy the premium Battle pass. Or the ULTIMATE battle pass. Like you unlock a new character and instantly it pops up like “Congrats on your new character, would you like to spend $20 to level them up so they’re not useless?”
It’s fun because I’m still unlocking more story content at a decent clip, but as soon as it’s a day between 20 second lore drops I’ll have to uninstall. Which sucks, because the game play is fun and interesting since it’s modeled after the mechanics of 40k with the customization of a video game.
So yeah, very sad.
Just capitalism infecting and ruining another form of art
I’ll probably play it for another week or two at most.
I, too, can quit anytime I want.
Haha good call out, but yeah I play this way on purpose and jump from freemium game to freemium game. I’ve gotten pretty good at jumping as soon as it feels like money is the only way to make progress, but to be clear I used to not be good at it and have wasted a few hundred dollars on stupid p2w games. I really want to try to stick to these nicer games now that I have a cool website to help me find them.
It can be both…
It really is, and it kills me when there are legit good games under there.
For a few months I played a cool monster catching game where it was like 5v5 style. The amount of cool combos you could do, the emergent game play with that many, each monster having own unique abilities and moves, etc. was so cool! PVP was really good because once you were proper placed, the games were close and often times came down to either a choice in game or realizing a mistake in team building “Why did I only bring one party member that can counter X?? As soon as they got focused down I got rolled by a team built around it!”
But the pve battles would get harder and harder, but the monsters you could catch weren’t getting stronger. So to continue in the main story you had to do events to get new ones, or… that lovely gacha shop. Eventually in the story the ability to catch new monsters was just removed. You could go back to the early parts to catch the old monsters, but there was maybe one in the main story that was any use once you were to where catching was disabled. Oh and evolving the monsters required you to do events which took… energy! Oh also chapter 1 of the story didn’t require energy to play, and had ability to catch monsters… but later on it did require energy.
So it opened with this really cool game where you could catch monsters, the fights were fair based on what you could catch, and overall was a fun time. Then slowly but surely every team member would need to be replaced by Gacha monsters (that could only be leveled up by gathering materials from events), and all the infinite play game modes would run out of content, leaving only the game modes that require energy.
UGH.
I think one of the reasons why I stopped gaming as an adult, is because I realized that pretty much all the popular games are rigged to keep you going. The progression is artificial, and demotivates me to invest time in it.
Old games were basically: play them, and with the right skill you can complete the levels and finish. Simple, fun, and you didn’t have to return back to the game in 11h:23m:45sec in order to “unlock” anything, either. You turn it on when you want, then turn it off. You can return to it months or even years later and it makes no difference.
New games? Always moving the goal posts. You have to pay to level up quickly, but the next level just sets you up for another artificial grind. Spin a wheel or open a loot crate? Those are just programmed to give you exactly the items you need to keep going a little further. Seasons, timed events, social media integration… all the fun is sucked out.
Video games use quite a few of the same tactics that you’ll see in lotteries, casinos, and other “games of chance”.
Once you realize that, you can’t unsee it.
100%, it’s why I’m more pulled towards RTS games these days.
Like to “catch up” and compete in say a card game… you have to spend money. They are not designed for you to catch up on time.
An rts though? I can catch up to most of the folks if I want to.
grinding
glances at my 300 hours of OldSchool Runescape
You should try a healthier hobby, like heroin.
Only 300? XD
That game is nothing but grind after like 20 hours.
This is such a good idea, I’m almost mad it wasn’t made sooner!
The list of “Healthy Games” is a great resource to have!
Mobile only. Lovely resource.
It literally isn’t.
We are starting with iOS and Android games because this is where most dark patterns appear, but we will be adding other platforms soon.
It literally is.
Your quote quote refutes your statement of it being mobile only. It’s just WIP.
No it doesn’t. Future promises are nothing to the now. Just because I didn’t add a “for now” to my first comment doesn’t mean i’m “literally” wrong.
Thanking for sharing OP. This is really good.
Someone shared it with me the other day and I fell in love so had to share!
Reading the descriptions on the dark patterns and dark social patterns, That’s actually the stuff I miss about world of Warcraft.
This is hands down great thanks for sharing!
