Dark Pattern Games

Overall it feels like unless your game is a linear single-player game, it will fall under multiple of the site's labelled 'dark patterns'. Here are some really bad ones:

Infinite Treadmill - Impossible to win or complete the game.

Variable Rewards - Unpredictable or random rewards are more addictive than a predictable schedule.

Can't Pause or Save - The game does not allow you to stop playing whenever you want.

Grinding - Being required to perform repetitive and tedious tasks to advance.

Competition - The game makes you compete against other players.

Especially for online games, these aspects are actually quite core to long term play. I am pretty casual as far as time invested goes, but many online games have to cater to both me and the Die Hards who play their games 10x more than other players.

To the die hard players, the infinite grind is a feature, treadmills help them reach whatever insane goals the developers have to keep cooking up so that they're satisfied.

Watching Arc Raiders evolve recently is a great example. It's trying to cater to casual players. It is going well now, but the die hards are going to ruin that experience I can promise. Then the die hards will be all that remain, and they'll have to cater to them.

The difference between a casual player and a die hard can be, 30hrs in a year played. And 5000 hrs in a year played. Some people play like it's their job.

I have mixed feelings on this assessment. I definitely agree that some of these labels could be better ("can't pause or save" and "competition" are missing a lot of nuance), but some you mentioned feel reasonable on the part of the site creator (for example, "variable rewards", which is to say different reward outputs for the same performance/input, are a pretty classic Skinner box and unnecessary as a core feature to make most games work).

I'd also like to question the idea that that multiplayer games are being treated inherently "unfair" here or that these features aren't worth acknowledging as a dark pattern just because they're core to certain genres. I like Minecraft and there's variable drops and achievements and grinding and multiplayer and a bunch of other "dark patterns". I also like to straight up gamble occasionally, and I'm not a gambling addict as of the writing of this comment. It's more the awareness of things that can psychologically hook you that's important, and then you can do what you want with that (or for parents, they can attempt to restrict applications as they find appropriate).

The website does label some relatively harmless elements as ‘dark patterns’, but out of your ‘really bad ones’, I don’t see ‘Competition’ as being a dark pattern.

Competition is a fundamental part of Play. Humans (and other animals) are social creatures and learn via playing and competing with others.

Can people play games by themselves? Yes.

Is competitive play bad or a dark pattern? Not at all.

Chess:

- infinite treadmill: theoretically you can play all possible moves but not in a lifetime.

- variable rewards: sometimes you stumble upon (or try) a tactic that works.

- can't pause or save: except when you maybe play against a computer which is not the point of the game

- grinding: you need to play the same openings many many times to encounter all the responses that will let you know if your "build" is worthy

- competition: nothing to add

The game I was the most addicted to was Age of Empires II, but I don't blame Microsoft for this: they just created an awesome game. Competition + "can't pause", these two can really make you disconnected from real life if you're competitive, but it's also fun and somewhat useful to know how much you can push yourself and how far you can go on the ladder.

My advice is to force yourself to stop playing after each single match, but that's hard when you're in a loosing streak because you want to win at least one match.

Paul Morphy has to become the best chess player before he understood that chess was a waste of time. He said that it's important to know the game well but there's a limit.

Even linear single-player games will usually hit "Invested / Endowed Value" and "Badges / Endowed Progress"

> - can't pause or save: except when you maybe play against a computer which is not the point of the game

Famous games span multiple years or decades and are also done across continents over a phone line. Chess is very pausable.

> - grinding: you need to play the same openings many many times to encounter all the responses that will let you know if your "build" is worthy

You can start from a given state to try things out. You can even start from non-reachable states if you want to.

Yes, this site reads like it's written by someone not enjoying games and understanding the concept of gaming. There is nothing dark about most of these concepts individually. The harm comes from combination and/or excessive usage. The dose makes the poison.

Though, learning them and being aware of them is not bad. But I'm curious how much the phrasing pushes the mindset of the readers in the wrong direction.

What % of the time do you think the die-hard gamers live a healthy lifestyle? I’m thinking it’s higher than my knee jerk reaction, like 40-50%, but an important consideration. Of course people define “healthy” differently too, but obesity and mental health crises have objectively grown and correlate with rising technology use.

If Chess were a mobile game, you'd be forced to watch an ad after every three moves, the bishop would be on a timer and to use it again you'd have to wait 10 moves or pay using in-game currency, the knight would only be available if you bought the DLC, and the game wouldn't run unless you granted it access to all of your contacts.

This is a hard one for me to ballpark because all my gaming friends are gym rats, so my view is probably skewed. Some of them game hours every day and make time for gym and nutrition. Unsure of there other health needs though.

I think it's much harder to be healthy when 6+hrs of your day is gaming. Especially if you also have work. It takes time to eat healthy, excercise, get out into the sun and be social. At some point you must be making compromises to game 6hrs a day.