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Dark Pattern Games

(www.darkpattern.games)
350 points robotnikman | 3 comments | 16 Nov 25 19:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.612s | source
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swi ◴[16 Nov 25 22:31 UTC] No.45949064[source]▶
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.

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

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protocolture ◴[16 Nov 25 23:58 UTC] No.45949657[source]▶
PoE seems to be an outlier, having probably the softest freemium model in existence. I dont recall having been even slightly tempted to spend money in that game.
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p1necone ◴[17 Nov 25 00:19 UTC] No.45949766[source]▶
You say that, but some of the games that people point at as having harmful monetization have basically the same system of only selling cosmetic items that don't give you an advantage (e.g. Fortnite). And PoE's stash tabs straddle that line a bit.

As far as I can tell the main difference is a younger demographic and being more pop culture adjacent. I don't think that should affect whether you consider it "bad" monetization, but I will concede that context is important with these sort of things.

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1. parineum ◴[17 Nov 25 06:25 UTC] No.45951260[source]▶
> And PoE's stash tabs straddle that line a bit.

They don't straddle any lines, they're well beyond it. Stash tabs are de facto required for trade. One can, technically, play without trade and complete all the game content but the ones actually capable of that are putting in tons of hours and they will definitely use extra stash space.

There isn't really a target player that plays POE for free aside from those that are just trying it out. That's all fine with me but if you're going to get into the game, you're going to pay money.

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2. ThatPlayer ◴[17 Nov 25 12:07 UTC] No.45952895[source]▶
Yeah, late game without a currency tab just sounds terrible. Probably spend more time organizing stash than actually mapping.
3. Hikikomori ◴[17 Nov 25 12:27 UTC] No.45953004[source]▶
You can trade via trade chat. But yeah most people will buy trade and currency tables just because it saves so much time.

But it's certainly not required for ssf, you can complete the game without it.