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DarkPattern.games: Find Healthy Mobile Games

darkpattern.games

403 pointshomarp203 comments

Interesting how some "dark patterns", especially of the psychological kind, are actually important elements of good game design.

For example the "illusion of control" (The game cheats or hides information to make you think you're better than you actually are) is everywhere, and it makes better games. One classic example is "coyote time" in platform games. Or for a more specific example, in Portal, at one time, you have to quickly fire a portal to avoid being crushed, it is a tense situation, and an important part of the story. So, to avoid a stupid death at the worst time, if you fire the wrong portal, it silently switches the other portal to correct your mistake.

Aesthetic Manipulations (Trick questions or toying with emotions or our subconscious desires) is the entire point of many games. We want games to play with our emotions. Take a horror game for instance, you are sitting on a couch, at home, in the least scary environment you can imagine, the game has to pull all the trick on you if you want the scares you paid for. And no one is going to tell you that getting attached to characters is a bad thing and they would rather see them as the bunch of pixels they are.

Frequency biases are all over the place too, usually in favor of the player. So much that when the game uses true randomness, it feels unfair. Good games are designed for player enjoyment, not to punish them with randomness.

It also considers competition a dark pattern, are sports a dark pattern too?

“Dark patterns” which make an actually fun game aren’t really dark patterns because they’re mutual. Players want their games to have illusion of control (even if they don’t realize it - I sound condescending here but it’s true, e.g. in the Portal example if players were to get crushed they would be more frustrated than having the game cheat them out of it).

Real dark patterns are parasitic. e.g. loot boxes: players would rather just buy the items directly, and even if they end up spending more on the loot boxes, they’re not happy about it.

When a player says “I’ve wasted 1000 hours on X game and I love it” (e.g. Factorio), it’s a good game with addictive mechanics. When a player says “I’ve wasted 1000 hours on X game and I hate it” (e.g. LoL) it’s a bad game with addictive mechanics. Now those games blend the lines - if a game gets too addicting it probably starts negatively affecting you either way.

I think this is a great way of putting it, because I think there's a real and necessary distinction here. The sophomoric relativism of "Gee aren't all games dark patterns?" feels like a smart thing to say, but is wrong for reasons that feel obvious but get kind of tedious to unpack.

As a different way of making the same point as you, I think critical differences are: (1) whether the compulsion to play serves you or the game creator, (2) whether the game mechanics serve an entertainment purpose or are grafted on to a game that would be just as fun without them, (3) whether it's designed around an "upgrade treadmill" as the core interactive structure of the game, as opposed to elements that have some degree of human craftsmanship to them (e.g. the mobile game Sorcery is fundamentally about the story).

"Upgrade Treadmill" is a very nice way to put it. I'm using this term from now on.

All your points are pretty much how'd I put it. If the core gameplay loop is all about leading me to the microtransactions window, it's an instant No for me.

This goes for almost all free games such as Apex, Fortnite, Destiny, etc... where skins are the primary source of revenue.

That's without mentioning "games" which I consider gambling like Genshin impact, Fifa ultimate team, and all kinds of shameless gacha out there

"It's free" is not an excuse for preying on people's psychological weaknesses.

>"Upgrade Treadmill" is a very nice way to put it

I think "Red Queen Race" is the term from philosophy I'd use - the faster you run (from the Red Queen in Alice) the more you stay in the same place

     "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

I think the reason people are bringing this up in this thread is because even though it seems obvious to you, this website doesn't seem to make the distinction.

It just treats every instance of what it's decided are "dark patterns" as bad, regardless of whether they're being used maliciously or not.

I dont know if they added it very recently, but they have a definition right at the top:

> 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.

I don't think this solves all of it since it makes some weird assumptions. Does the developer really say "Hmmm, I want to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player" before adding lootboxes? I am pretty sure they don't, so this definition is not a very good one. OTOH, maybe just changing "to cause" to "that causes" would clean this up quite a bit by removing the assumption I disagree with, so maybe it's just in the way I read it.

Note: In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to say "this is tough to define but I can try to say 'yes' or 'no' to specific examples". It's also acceptable to me to admin (as you have to for some words) that a word doesn't have a real definition but is rather the product of confusion or convenience.

I totally am on board with the "dark" patterns Duolingo uses to lure me in. Their gamification is better than any I've experienced, keeping me on an over 2-year streak right now.

Do you think it's been good for you to use Duolingo consistently? I think a lot of people are unhappy with the design patterns used in it because they feel it gives a greater sense of learning than it does actual learning.

Homing bullets in Halo was my introduction to the concept. Lesser players may not know this: but _ALL_ bullets (except sniper shots) home in Halo, not just Needler shots.

Those crazy across-the-map pistol headshots you were doing do have an element of skill, but as a console platformer with relatively poor joystick controls (compared to accurate keyboard/mouse controls), it was necessary to have this auto-aim in order for fast-paced combat to exist.

Besides, no one plays FPS games to practice joystick control or aim. The "fun" part of the game is positioning and team-dynamics.

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This isn't a dark pattern at all. Its necessary to make the "mundane" or "unfun" parts more automated, so that the players can focus on the fun parts.

It's not the bullet that "homes", it's your crosshair that has a bit of stickyness.

If someone walks by you slowly it'll grab on to them and follow it.

You need a little bit of auto aim because aiming with your thumbs (joystick) isn't as accurate as a your wrist (mouse).

It's the reason why sweep shooting works so well. Sweep your crosshairs across the screen, pull the trigger when it crosses something, it'll hold onto them slightly as it goes by.

You can still be more accurate on a PC without autoaim vs a console with.

> Besides, no one plays FPS games to practice joystick control or aim

Not really true. They do to be better among their peers, doesn't matter if there are PC players out there, irrelevant.

Auto aim is simply necessary to fix a limitation in the hardware, sometimes it gets in the way, most of the time it helps with frustration of the dead area of the joystick.

It's both actually. I play mcc on PC. Controller players get that very obvious cross hair aim you mention, and keyboard/mouse players don't. That's why all the pro players use controller, a 150ms latency human can't compete with the aimbot.

But there's also subtle bullet magnetism, for both controller and kb/mouse players.

There are YouTube videos demonstrating this if you're interested.

I prefer keyboard/mouse which puts me at a disadvantage but I'm not a pro player so I don't mind.

Quake players say otherwise. PC players destroyed the console ones.

Quake autoaim is far weaker than Halo's autoaim.

Console games generally have much more autoaim, to the point where people kinda call them "defacto aimbots".

Its probably both, but even without the auto tracking you describe, it's still quite possible for the space within a single pixel to be mostly misses. If someone positions their cursor in this single pixel, the game gives them the benefit of the doubt and counts it as a hit.

> Not really true. They do to be better among their peers, doesn't matter if there are PC players out there, irrelevant.

If you really wanted to be a player without autoaim / bullet magnetism / all the stuff Halo "aimbots" into your controller, you'd be playing Counterstrike.

But no, people play Halo. Because people like (subtle) aimbots making their headshots more consistent. Games like Halo (and other FPS games that came after Halo, such as Battlefront or Call of Duty) all take this auto-aim concept to varying degrees.

Its now a staple of modern FPS games.

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But yes, I recall the "mouse practice" people would do to get better aim on Counterstrike. Those headshots don't happen by themselves: there's a lot of "move the mouse" practice in Microsoft-paint (practice moving one pixel at a time or whatever), and learning the positions of your wrist.

Most people don't care about that level of dedication or practice. I think it suffices to say that typical FPS gamers today prefer the subtle aimbot to handle that level of muscle memory.

I'm being a bit hyperbolic. Obviously the "Counterstrike" players and community cares about this stuff. That's why they still play Counterstrike. But I also am ready to admit that their community is a small minority of players in the greater FPS genre.

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"360 No Scope" happens to take advantage of this bullet magnetism / autoaim as well. Moving the reticle quickly IIRC engages the auto-aim bot a bit more.

> It's the reason why sweep shooting works so well. Sweep your crosshairs across the screen, pull the trigger when it crosses something, it'll hold onto them slightly as it goes by.

The game's "auto-aim" system effectively fires two bullets for each frame. If your target is "between" the two bullets, then it counts as a hit.

Sweep-shooting is moving the crosshairs really fast, so that these two "bullets" are spaced as far apart as possible. So you've grown the auto-aim area.

> But no, people play Halo. Because people like (subtle) aimbots making their headshots more consistent.

Valorant, a counter-strike like game, is actually more popular than the current Halo game.

And let's not forget PUBG, originally a PC-only game, that was wildly popular. No aimbot in there either and not only was there no auto-aim, bullets don't even go where you click because they obeyed physics!

PUBG was destroyed by Fortnite, which reintroduced autoaim to the battle-royale genre.

Emperically speaking, whenever a new game comes out with a more "hardcore" mode with less auto-aim... a newer game comes out and just brings back auto-aim, and suddenly the community switches over to it.

People really like autoaim. Whether they consciously know it or not... kind of doesn't matter. People seem to have more fun and that's all a game designer wants.

That just makes it sound like it's cyclical or random which type of game is on top. Otherwise how would that be happening over and over?

Yea honestly it probably has more to do with the game in vogue. Auto aim tends to only happen on consoles anyways, otherwise the skill ceiling on aiming gets too high.

Plus there was call of duty, then overwatch, then pubg, then fortnight, then valorant. The PC ones tended to not have auto aim. Of course consoles tend to have auto aim but console gamers are also more casual and mass market… but the auto aim just makes up for the inaccuracy and speed of joystick control.

Also fortnite didn’t destroy pubg. People just got tired of the game. Most pubg players I know just stopped playing, and there were a lot of adults that played it. Fortnite had a totally different crowd (basically preteens and kids) because the game was free to play whereas pubg cost a whopping $30 and required a beefy computer.

There's certainly a community of "hardcore" players who want as little autoaim as possible. But I'm frankly convinced that they're in the minority.

This is true with a lot of console FPS games, but Halos auto aim is more complicated/intentionally designed than average.

Halo does a bunch of things to make aiming easier on a controller, sticky crosshairs and homing bullets are both involved.

I think more broadly games are all about psychological manipulation. But I also think that means we have a much greater responsibility to make sure that remains safe and consensual. The taxonomy is therefore contextual and requires looking at the sum of any one game. Not only that but within categories different techniques can be weaker or stronger and that will vary per game.

Likewise consequence is an important consideration. Is it bad that someone will finish a terrible game because they love the story? Probably not. Is it bad that someone spent money they can’t afford on gacha mechanics? Probably.

One thing consumers should be very aware of is that sanding off sharp corners is very much about broadening audience reach and retention not necessarily making a better game. Particularly as more games employ a GaaS model.

There was a racing game for the PS2 back when I played video games that had a drift mechanic. A friend of mine figured out that if he drifted while turning the wheel the wrong direction, the game would drift the car around the turn -- albeit facing the wrong way.

But, it didn't ask for my social graph, nor did it ask for my credit card to get me more powerful cars.

I saw a golf game I thought that would be fun to play on android. The problem is that in order to get better, you had basically shell out cash to get better clubs and more powerful balls. It didn't rely on skill as much as it relied upon how much free cash you were able to devote to the game.

At that point, it wasn't fun anymore.

I made a game for touchscreens, and a single pixel of "error" in input could be the difference between winning and losing. The game will cheat behind the scenes to try a few variations on your inputs to see if any of them can win - and it chooses the winner if it finds one.

I don't really consider this to be cheating though - it isn't like a person is capable of doing pixel perfect inputs to a touchscreen, nor is a touchscreen going to give pixel perfect finger positioning.

> Interesting how some "dark patterns", especially of the psychological kind, are actually important elements of good game design.

Right.

I really think this website is a great idea, but I'm surprised to see people reporting "dark" patterns in Lumino City, for example, when what they are actually talking about is a game so beautiful and gently maddening that you want to finish it.

Yeah, I looked up Dead Cells, and it lost points for being "too grindy", which is a big part of playing Rogue-likes.

It's also a big indictment of them. I remember with Rogue Legacy, a game I was into for a time, a central debate about whether it was good or bad related to whether it was "too grindy", with some insisting it was (which was bad) and others insisting it wasn't (which is good!). And yet, whatever you call it, the grind, the accumulation of upgrades is central to the experience of the game.

Dead Cells is one of my favorite games but I would agree it's too grindy. In my opinion the game can be even more addicting by speeding up the rate at which the player unlocks new weapons.

I started enjoying the game a lot more after installing a mod that makes things drop more cells.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I don't think it's a dark pattern, just a relatively poorly balanced mechanic.

I agree that these probably shouldn't be called dark patterns, maybe neutral?

> For example the "illusion of control" is everywhere, and it makes better games.

But what is a better game? A game that is enjoyed by most people, good retention or maybe a bit of both?

I'm also curious to see your take on what a dark pattern is.

I have hundreds of hours in Portal games and an avid Valve fan, but I had never heard of that Portal trick. Do you have any sources on it?

I would like to hear about that aswell.

Pacman is a good example - the ghosts are deliberately simple so you have a chance of avoiding them and the game is fun. I wouldn't call it a "dark" pattern unless the ghosts were also mind hacking my desire to play more with gacha techniques

Pacman is funny: one ghost was incredibly bugged and basically doesn't function right.

They fixed the glitch in "Ms. Pacman", and the game definitely feels better because of it.

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Strong Ms. Pacman players know the personalities of the ghosts. IIRC, Blinky (Red) aims at a direct path towards the player. I think the Blue-one IIRC tries to form a pincer attack. The other two I always forget (I'm not strong enough to really pick them apart at that level... but I'm strong enough to avoid most Blinky issues).

you're thinking of Clyde (https://ryanharveyauthor.com/2018/09/27/learning-clyde-sensi...) he's the most interesting one

The classic coin-op arcade game dark pattern is the Continue screen. Put more money in me to keep going, but hurry you only have a few seconds.

Wow, this site has a very low threshold for considering something a 'dark pattern'. If you look at the psychological section, these are all considered dark patterns:

* A leveling up system

* Badges/achievements

* Collecting things

* Getting better tools/equipment as the game progresses

That's like...most games, I think? Most single-player games at least probably have at least one of those.

edit: some of the examples listed here are hilarious

> D4DJ Groovy Mix

> "difficulty 1 through 14 is easy to learn and master, while 15 is the hardest difficulty in the game. makes people think that they have 90% of the skill of the best player but in reality it is not the case"

> Magic: The Gathering Arena

> "There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength."

This bar is not low at all. Anything involving reward can cause addiction and harm. All of those things you cited are just methods of scheduling rewards. You level up every X amount of time, you get an item every Y amount of time.

These things are not some unforeseen emergent feature, they are deliberately designed. What makes it malicious is the behavior these rewards are designed to create.

An RPG using a leveling system to make sure you can't survive certain challenges until you've progressed enough is not malicious at all.

An RPG that pits players against each other, imposes the same leveling system on players, rates limit their progression with a timer and allows people to reset the timer by paying money essentially turns the game into a spending competition whose goal is to see who can pay some corporation the most money. Not to mention their blatant attempt to form habits in players by giving them daily login rewards and tasks.

> An RPG using a leveling system to make sure you can't survive certain challenges until you've progressed enough is not malicious at all.

I agree with the distinction you're making here -- it can be used to malicious ends, but isn't always -- but saying that it's categorically a "dark pattern" is still making a judgment, and that's what the website is doing.

Read the webpage yourself if you don't believe me: https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/24/invested-endowed-va...

Note that not only does the body text make no distinction between reasonable vs malicious use of leveling systems, the examples make it clear that they consider all forms of this to be tainted:

> Galaga Wars

> "The more time you play, the more ships you get."

> DISGAEA RPG

> "Owned character progress and levelling up."

Even if you try to say, "well, it's a dark pattern that can be completely non-malicious," well, that's just shitty UX if you're gonna label things misleadingly like that.

The distinction between your two examples is not in the specific game design techniques.

In your first example the game designers are trying to make their game more enjoyable for players.

In the second example they're trying to extract more money out of players.

Listing a bunch of different game design tools that might be used to try to extract money out of people by a dishonest developer is missing the point because the specific mechanics are irrelevant, as you've pointed out with your examples.

I actually totally agree. For way longer than I should have did I avoid RPGs because of those systems, because they seemed a silly reduction of "progress". Now that I play RPGs, I still find them pointless annoyances that get in my way of enjoying the world/story.

I still don't like that Steam added achievements to my games. I wish I could disable the entire "feature".

"I personally don't like this thing" isn't the same thing as "dark pattern." There are people like you that explicitly avoid RPG's, sure, and there are people who explicitly seek them out because they enjoy that part of the mechanics.

Having 'levels' in games has been around for a long time, you can probably trace them back to the beginning days of D&D. Were the original D&D authors trying to get people addicted? Probably not, it was just something they thought players would like. And indeed, many players do.

Even if a long time ago these mechanisms weren't meant as a dark pattern, it isn't difficult to see how they are easily turned into one, is it?

It seems obvious these mechanisms always had this effect, and it is a pity that even with them amplified some still don't see the potential for harm. You are right, it does not matter whether or not we like the mechanism or not for it to be problematic.

> it isn't difficult to see how they are easily turned into one, is it?

Perhaps, but their mere existence isn't being a dark pattern.

> It seems obvious these mechanisms always had this effect

What effect? Getting people to play more? Do having a good story or tight mechanics count as dark patterns too then?

To me, the idea of a 'dark pattern' here is when a mechanic is being used to push people to play the game more past what they actually enjoy. It's when they don't really feel like playing anymore, but some system in the game compels them to, they feel they 'need' to do something in there. On the other hand, if people do enjoy the specific game element itself, if taking it away would make fans of that type of game find it less enjoyable, then it's not really a dark pattern.

If you removed levels and similar systems of progression from Final Fantasy or The Elder Scrolls, would fans of those series find the games more or less enjoyable? My bet is less.

> To me, the idea of a 'dark pattern' here is when a mechanic is being used to push people to play the game more past what they actually enjoy.

Would people play less if such mechanisms were left out? I'm sure of it. Thus they are nudging you to play more, to get that achievement, to round out that score. I don't see how it couldn't, or what this adds to a good game. Below you are spot on: these things are not intrinsic to the game and thus, IMHO, best left off. The meta game of completionism does not affect everyone the same, but I don't think it ever adds.

> Would people play less if such mechanisms were left out? I'm sure of it.

I already addressed this point earlier:

> What effect? Getting people to play more? Do having a good story or tight mechanics count as dark patterns too then?

I'm going to call out now that you ignored this question. Was that just because you didn't have a good response that fit your argument? It sure seems like it.

> I don't see how it couldn't, or what this adds to a good game.

This is just you asserting your own preferences as an Objective Moral Good. "I don't understand why other people would like <thing>, therefore I can conclude that their enjoyment is irrelevant or objectively incorrect."

Part of having an open mind is learning to accept that other people may enjoy things that we find odd or even bewildering. Asserting that if other people find different things enjoyable, then Other People Are Wrong is the mark of a closed mind.

If you actually believe the point you're putting forth here -- that RPG fans don't truly enjoy the mechanics most closely associated with a game being an RPG -- then I suggest you go to an RPG forum and ask them yourself. Because your whole argument here smells very strongly of, "doesn't understand the perspective of others, and doesn't want to understand."

The mechanic of levelling up or gathering experience points and so on are proxies for a sense of progress, not actual progress. They don't get you anything but the satisfaction of getting it. Textbook pointlessness.

Asserting that I do not understand people enjoy different things differently, and the other things you Seem To Wish To Imply: undermines your attempt at convincing me my mind is closed. You insistence on mistaking validation for goodness (because people enjoy it, does not mean it without dark pattern) however might show you something about your own mind. Tons of people like things that are not 'good' for them, doesn't mean we should see no problem with is or at least understand the pitfall.

> They don't get you anything but the satisfaction of getting it.

High quality music doesn't provide anything but satisfaction either to those who enjoy it, so I guess that's useless too huh?

You're just making a completely facile judgment that amounts to "things other people like are dumb and incorrect." The things you like have some greater value, the things other people like don't count.

> (because people enjoy it, does not mean it without dark pattern)

If people generally enjoy a thing for its own sake, then it's not a dark pattern. That's the whole point of what a dark pattern is; essentially tricking people into doing something that they'd otherwise rather not. If people legitimately enjoy leveling systems, if removing said systems would make the game flatly worse for them, it's not a dark pattern, no matter how much you personally don't see the point.

"It gets people to play the game more" is irrelevant by itself, since almost anything good in a game gets people to play more.

> The meta game of completionism does not affect everyone the same, but I don't think it ever adds.

I think it adds.

Your argument seems to be that it never adds, which is easily refuted by one person who thinks it adds.

Although, saying "it adds" is incomplete. What I mean is it adds to the enjoyment of the game, there are games I would enjoy less without "leveling up". Thus, leveling up adds to a game by enhancing its primary purpose for existing, mental stimulation and enjoyment.

What you've done here is arguing in bad faith. There are reasons behind why people classify something like Grinding for Levels as a dark pattern, and you've straw-manned their argument as "I personally don't like this thing". I hope that you consider editing your comment if you're willing to recognize your premise as an informal fallacy. Please engage with others on Hacker News in good faith.

It's not an argument in bad faith, I've been extremely straightforward with my points the entire time. The real strawman here is classifying any leveling system as a 'dark pattern' just because some clearly are.

> "I personally don't like this thing".

Read their comments; it's obvious that their personal preferences are constraining their viewpoint. They just repeat over and over that others must not be getting any true enjoyment out of levels.

Some people are comfortably stubborn when it comes to understanding the perspective of others:

> The mechanic of levelling up or gathering experience points and so on are proxies for a sense of progress, not actual progress. They don't get you anything but the satisfaction of getting it. Textbook pointlessness.

It's clear as an open blue sky: they don't see the value in it, therefore it must have no real value.

> It's clear as an open blue sky: they don't see the value in it, therefore it must have no real value.

This is not my viewpoint, nor the point I'm making here. You insist on straw-manning.

Others insist they see value in it personally, but that doesn’t stop you from calling it “textbook pointlessness”.

It’s not a strawman, it’s your actual viewpoint. You just don’t like it being out in the open.

Why don't you like achievements? I'm curious. I never cared about them in the past and for most games they are just a little nonsense side bubble that pop up sometimes. But for a few games I've sunk a ton of hours into, mostly rouge likes, they are fun to try to complete.

I feel similarly sometimes myself. It's like those studies on giving money to little kids when they draw. You're doing something for the intrinsic reward, the joy of playing, and now they've slapped on some extrinsic reward you didn't ask for. So the game makes you feel, on some level, that you're doing it for the extrinsic reward, and it saps some of the intrinsic joy you felt earlier.

https://www.spring.org.uk/2021/07/intrinsic-motivation.php

> So, those who had previously liked drawing (high intrinsic motivation) were less motivated once they expected to be rewarded for the activity.

> In fact the expected reward reduced the amount of spontaneous drawing the children did by half.

They are a meta game and feel like cheap way to encourage me to play more. A game, at least that's how I prefer it, should just be so good that I will want to play more. Games should trust their own quality, and let the player have their own experience of it, not incentivize or normalize the experience.

As an adult gamer with limited time, I'm not a completionist at all, so I sympathize with feeling that achievements can be kind of naggy, like I'm being scolded for not investing further in a title. Part of that is just facing my own demons— like, Spider-Man PS4 was a super fun time; I played it through twice and got almost all the trophies, but I'm not a bad person for being done with it before getting the platinum.

On the other hand, recently playing Nobody Saves The World, I've actually come to enjoy the little mini Form Quests that it gives you— you have to complete something like 200 of these to progress the main story (they award stars that are needed to open key dungeon doors), but more importantly, they encourage you to engage with the mix-and-match abilities system that the game offers, which preps you with the mindset that is needed to take on certain late-game challenges.

Into The Breach is another excellent title that has in-game completion tracking, encouraging you to get a 2-, 3-, and 4-island victory with each set of mechs, and awarding unlocks at certain milestones of those.

So I think I slightly resent but am happy to ignore "bolted on" achievements that are purely observational, but I also appreciate some games that do more with achievement-like challenges in terms of pushing the player to try new strategies.

> Into The Breach is another excellent title that has in-game completion tracking, encouraging you to get a 2-, 3-, and 4-island victory with each set of mechs, and awarding unlocks at certain milestones of those.

I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach. If you want to gate content behind beating the game at certain difficulties or something, I guess that's fine, but to do it with arbitrary numbers of random bullshit objectives, many of them luck based, was annoying as hell.

> I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach.

That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs.

I think what I liked about the progressive unlocking was that I was never overwhelmed by too much choice upfront as happens in some games (think old school RPGs with a spreadsheet character builder as the first screen), and I felt when I did get a new team unlocked like I'd really put in the effort and earned it; I was excited to try it out in a way that I wouldn't be if I just had them all available from the beginning (or unlocked via some other means that I hadn't worked for).

> That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs.

....which has absolutely nothing to do with achievements? I agree, the game design was fine in this regard, it is the gating of unlocks behind arbitrary objectives relying on luck that I have a problem with[0]. If they just gated each team behind beating the game with a previous team I wouldn't have complained.

[0] Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events, as did even having an attempt at some of the achievements. All achievements need to be unlocked for the final team, which I never got because fuck that noise.

> Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events

Okay yes, thanks for this clarification. My RNG comment was based on a reading of your previous message that you didn't like progression being gated on completing the main missions because those had a luck component, and while I felt that at first, upon further play it became clear that there really are very few true Kobayashi Maru scenarios in Into The Breach, even on Hard Mode [0].

[0]: Youtuber soulmata has a series of 30k videos that are worth a watch to see what really high level play looks like.

Yeah, I think I caught that on later reading and I fully agree. There is a certain amount of luck in any given game of Into the Breach, but it isn't a luck-based game. After I got good at it, I never encountered a situation that I felt was impossible due to luck, only because I'd made bad choices somewhere along the line. Pretty much the same praise (and complaint, re: achievements and luck based unlocks) for FTL.

I am mostly take-it-or-leave-it on achievements but I keep the notifications turned off because it's super annoying to get to a big dramatic moment in the story and have an achievement with a dumb punny name pop up. It kinda ruins the reward of "getting this cool story beat" with the supposed reward of "one more virtual trophy".

There was a time when I would have detested them because they would be constant teases to the part of me that wants to get 100% on any game I start playing, but that was before I sunk the time into getting the astoundingly disappointing reward for getting 130% in Crash Bandicoot 2 and swore off ever doing that again for a game that wasn't pure joy to play.

I think achievements can sometimes push you into playing the game in a way that is less fun than what you would have otherwise done. The opposite can be true too of course, but still for people that a predisposed to want to "complete" things they will inevitably run into bad experiences.

One variant of that problem is achievements for certain endings or outcomes that feel like discouraging you from choosing your own.

Another problem is not inherent with achievements but but with the common implementation: For immersive games a popup even if it is show only a short time can really take you out of the experience. On the other hand, it is possible to inegrate the achievement popups into the experience like the "The Part Where He Kills You" achievement in Portal 2 that adds of the comedic effect of the cutscene it appears in.

Overall, there are definitely games where achievements take more away than they add. Unfortunately they seem to get added to almost everything just due to cargo culting, because they also serve as telemetry or even player demand. Platforms should at least give you the option to never show them.

If you don't wish achievements to appear you can disable steam overlay or download Steam Achievement Manager and 100% all games. One of the reasons devs put them in games, especially those that track chapters completed, is to have a measure of story completion across player base.

> A leveling up system

> Getting better tools/equipment as the game progresses

These two in particular have been a consistent part of game design for a long time because they ease players into increasing gameplay complexity over time. Metroid games are a simple example: when you start off you can run, jump and shoot, and by the end of the game you're using every button on the controller (sometimes multiple at once) and probably have other abilities you can toggle on and off.

I think it's one of those things that can be good game design, but can also be abused depending on how it's done. In the end, you're still getting that sweet hit of dopamine every time you level or when you get some new cool weapon/item. Games have always exploited that to make their games more fun and addictive. It's nice that the site lists those things for people who are concerned about that or are looking to cut down on your time spent in the skinner box

I think categorically calling all of them dark patterns is overselling it though.

I really enjoy having tight controls, that probably gives me a hit of dopamine; are good controls now a dark pattern? We get hits of dopamine for things we enjoy, and yet we wouldn't call everything fun in games all dark patterns.

> I really enjoy having tight controls, that probably gives me a hit of dopamine; are good controls now a dark pattern?

There's nothing wrong with a game having good controls, or having a leveling system that exploits our brain's reward system, but knowing which games do it and to what extent they take advantage of it is useful.

Just like how good tasting food isn't a bad thing, and my enjoying the taste of apples isn't a dark pattern, but a company that loads up their food with a ton of extra fats, sugars, and salts to make them even more addictive could be considered a dark pattern and a website listing snacks that contain a bunch of added fats, sugars, and salts might be very useful to folks looking for healthy options. I don't see why it should be any different for a site listing "healthy" games.

If you aren't worried about the amount of dark patterns in your games at all don't bother going to the website. If you only care about some (loot boxes) but not others (level ups) this site has them all listed out for you so either way you'll know what you're getting.

> Just like how good tasting food isn't a bad thing, and my enjoying the taste of apples isn't a dark pattern

Exactly, and a company having a leveling system in a video game isn't automatically a dark pattern, as this website erroneously asserts.

> If you aren't worried about the amount of dark patterns in your games at all don't bother going to the website.

Look, this is blatantly disingenuous framing. I've made it clear that I take issue with what they're categorizing as a dark pattern, that it's overbroad, but you're responding as if I'm making a completely different point.

It's fine to disagree, but please argue the point I made, not something else.

I think it's a good idea to have a website like this, but they should be using more sensible definitions, not something that catches almost all video games.

improving in skill creates investment in the game, which is apparently bad according to one of the bullet points.

I like the concept and think this is a topic that deserves more attention, but the definition is broad to the point of meaninglessness

Curious question, what about if you use some of these "dark" approaches for something good? Say some education app that hooks you so you can progress and learn more. Are they still called "dark patterns" in this case? Example - badges for tasks you have done or "streaks" or levels to show you how you progress and what you have achieved so far?

In my opinion, yes. Take for example DuoLingo. It is very aggressive about trying to get you to turn on notifications. They claim that if you have notifications on you're more likely to continue learning at a regular pace. That may be true (though spaced repetition seems best, and they use "streaks" of days you've interacted with the app as a metric, which is the opposite of spaced repetition). However, my understanding is that they also slip in other notifications about things you might not care about like your "rank" on the "leaderboards". (I'm trying to learn a language, not compete in the Olympics. Why do I need to compare my progress to random strangers around the world?) Some of the dark patterns go away when you subscribe, but not all. Using the app feels really gross, even though I am learning a new language. Many of the dark patterns may have positive outcomes, but it's all still to juice their metrics in the end.

> though spaced repetition seems best, and they use "streaks" of days you've interacted with the app as a metric, which is the opposite of spaced repetition

I wouldn't say that. First, spaced repetition would usually apply to the individual vocabulary items DuoLingo wants you to remember, not to DuoLingo itself. It's a method for choosing which items to review.

Second, and related to #1, the learning work in spaced repetition is being done by the repetition part. More repetition is better. Constant repetition will make you learn more effectively than spaced repetition will. What spaced repetition is (successfully) attempting to improve on is the model where you review a fact once and then never look at it again. It's a huge upgrade from that; you'll forget your one-and-done fact very quickly. But it's a huge downgrade from reviewing the fact every day for the rest of your life. It's just that it's also cheaper than that is.

It's a good idea to make a service that claims to help you be cheap.

Duolingo doesn't have any intrinsic claim to take up a large space in people's lives, so it might be a good idea (if their goal is to help people learn languages) to remain as tiny as possible while being effective over some threshold. Then it would easily fit in people's schedules.

Their motivation seems to be engagement with the app, not language learning, and I make this judgement by noticing that engagement tools have changed over time, but language learning has not (visibly).

> it might be a good idea (if their goal is to help people learn languages) to remain as tiny as possible while being effective over some threshold. Then it would easily fit in people's schedules.

Sure, but a little bit of daily engagement is a reasonable approach to that.

> Their motivation seems to be engagement with the app, not language learning

True, but daily streaks are a plus for language learning, so it makes no sense to attack the practice of tracking daily streaks.

Duolingo is not an effective use of your time if you want to learn a language. But if we assume that the options are Duolingo or nothing, you're better off using Duolingo every day.

I get duolingo notifications for daily reminders and full hearts. That is it.

You're talking about Duolingo, right? The problem with these incentives is you eventually forget you installed the app to learn a new language and you start gaming the system instead by repeating easy lessons just to avoid losing your position in diamond league.

> Curious question, what about if you use some of these "dark" approaches for something good?

All of these "dark patterns" are just tools and psychological manipulations. They're used for all kinds of positive outcomes. Gamification lets us use them to help with learning, or our todo lists, or to kick a bad habit or as part of therapy. It's not that these techniques themselves are always evil, but the potential for abuse exists and when they're used in games, it's often to keep players addicted or spending money.

Badges and achievements definitely are a dark pattern. You can tell they are because game developers have gone so overboard on them now that you are like, oh I got a badge, yes I'll claim it, no I haven't a clue what it does...

The rest of the things you identify, as you say, that's just games.

(I think this website is a very, very good idea)

I think this is a case where it may be vary by personality.

Some people may feel compelled to get achievements even when they don't really enjoy the experience. It feels like a dark pattern to them.

Some people really enjoy the process of getting achievements, and are disappointed when they discover a new game doesn't have them. It doesn't feel like a dark pattern to them.

> Badges and achievements definitely are a dark pattern. You can tell they are because game developers have gone so overboard on them now that you are like, oh I got a badge, yes I'll claim it, no I haven't a clue what it does...

Identifying something as a dark pattern for no other reason than that it's common doesn't make any sense.

I find the explanation convincing that the reason for so many achievements in games is that Steam will report completion rates for each achievement to the developer, and developers want to know things like "what percentage of players complete the tutorial?".

> Identifying something as a dark pattern for no other reason than that it's common doesn't make any sense.

That's not what I am saying, but it might not be clear.

What I mean is, that pattern is so common in "free to play, pay to advance" games that it is now a kind of "noise" pattern -- it has infected all games in the way that Upworthy's headline writing style ("X Will Drop Your Jaw And It Is Amazing") has infected all writing.

These are dark patterns because they manipulate the reader or player into doing something irrational.

The fact that these things are now so commonplace as to be self-satirising doesn't make them good patterns.

I'm not sure if it's a broad definition of dark pattern or a narrow definition of game. This site probably considers sudoku, wordle, and crosswords to be games, but would probably not consider, say, Witcher to be a game...at least not a good one. I kinda see their point.

Arena is pretty bad. Definitely dark patterns are being used with their gold/gem economy.

Agree. There are other types of games besides straightforward puzzle and platforming games!

otoh I looked up a few games my kids play that I consider to be flagrantly evil (genshin, gardenscapes, emojiblitz) and they all score a "neutral" here

Oh wow. Gardenscapes is basically just every conceivable dark pattern wrapped up into a bland and friendly looking package. This database suffers badly from not having enough votes on anything, but at 20 or so voters this has more than most. Maybe the whole Gardenscapes staff? https://www.darkpattern.games/game/50/0/gardenscapes.html

So this can help parents and kids with mobile games, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room of the games we ourselves are addicted to or our kids keep coming back to play.

When I was a teen I was addicted to World of Warcraft. I played for a few years before quitting. My grades dropped, my social life was hurting, and all for just in game items? I remember how worried my parents were about my screen time and the lengths they went to try and limit it.

Some of my best friends continue to play to this day and keep telling me that they are bored with it and will quit next expansion. They are now re-playing the same game over like they did with me a decade ago as it’s now a “classic” version.

How do we help people get help they desire when these games create almost a combative, intervention needed type of situation?

There’s https://www.restartlife.com/ and other similar types of websites out there to help, but I feel like the problem is the dark patterns already have a hold on one’s behavior to the point where only that person can be the agent of change or a major event happens in their life to spark the change.

Reminds me of the studies with drug addiction and rats. IIRC some of the early studies about how certain drugs were so addictive were done with rats who basically couldn't do anything else, and when you give the rats other things to do in their life, suddenly the drugs aren't as interesting.

I think the fundamental thing about playing repetitive games like WoW forever is that the skinner box is more interesting than real life, which is more an indictment of their real life than the game. Not sure how to fix that, though, and certainly there are people who can enjoy MMO's in moderation.

This may not be true for everyone, but it was for me. In college, I was skipping classes and ignoring friends. I just stayed in my room and played WoW. Then my graphics card kicked the bucket, and the game was unplayable. So I stayed in the library and read random books, skipping classes and ignoring friends.

I wasn't addicted to WoW. I just had major depression. After dealing with that over many years, I got back into WoW. Played a lot less of it, then.

I had the same problem with spending too much time in Warcraft 3 in college.

I dunno if I'd say that I was depressed, exactly, but I was feeling overwhelmed by my classes. Like many of us here, I'd had a very easy time in high school, and I was unused to classes that would seriously challenge me, where it would be a struggle to learn some of the content. That, combined with new freedom (I was several hundred miles away from home, and my parents had been fairly sheltering/controlling) did not make for a disciplined student, and I ended up getting academically suspended.

Came back several years later with my head on straight and retook the various classes I failed, mostly getting A's. Was actually getting an academic scholarship from my GPA by my last semester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park likely is the study you were thinking about, studying how the willingness/desire of rats to self-administer morphine changes depending on their living conditions.

You can't think in interventions. A person has to realise their way of life objectively and feel they are making a mistake. They don't feel WoW is a waste of time. Same thing with weight loss.

It was used in reference to a friend who has told me countlessly that they want to quit but they don't know how. I also ran into this as a teen but "woke" up from it when going to college.

Maybe it is the dark patterns of the real life that push people back into games? What help could be given to help people find worthwhile things in the "real world"?

For many people, life is just going to work and then crashing exhausted on the couch to watch Netflix. So they would quit games for the sake of watching Netflix.

Quitting World of Warcraft may have similarities to quitting smoking. The thing that brings ex smokers back to smoking is the social component.

I used to play team fortress 2. In TF2 whenever you hit an enemy a bell is rung. I remember laying in bed one night and all I could hear was that bell ringing and I felt like one of pavlovs dogs.

If this is considered a dark pattern, you could consider almost anything that makes a game enjoyable to be a dark pattern. Because, y'know, a really enjoyable game might make you think about it at other times! You might even feel like going back to the game and playing it, because you enjoy it so much!

"Wow, the controls in this game are really tight, it feels amazing to play...nice try, Miyamoto, you won't get me this time!" *chucks Switch out the window*

Like Tetris is so "bad" about this, it has a syndrome named after it. Where people see how to Tetris things together outside of the game and/or have dreams about it after playing it so much.

Such a terrible game. Should never have been created. /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

I think there is a more genuine take. The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable. The fact that GP is thinking about the bell instead of his game session brings into question whether or not it's a dark pattern.

Hard disagree. I mean, it's only one tiny part of the game, but sound design is a big part of what makes weapons feel 'chunky' or powerful or satisfying, and it sounds like this is similar. With the other part being that the distinct sound is useful from a gameplay transparency perspective, it means players are very aware when their shots land or not.

I played a lot of Overwatch for a while, and it had some similar sound design IIRC.

I agree that sounds and details play an important part of the game and there are sounds that are quite famous (Mario). I am merely saying that it not u reasonable to be question whether or not sounds can be a dark pattern. I didn't draw any conclusions myself.

> I didn't draw any conclusions myself.

Yes, you did:

> The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable.

But yeah I otherwise agree.

I recall having to quit Illyriad [1] because the PvP politicking was so intense it was undermining my ability to function IRL. That's pretty common in that game.

There's a couple of bona-fide dark patterns in that game, but the developers definitely tilt towards serious gaming, and overall the game is the opposite of cow-clicker addictive patterns.

[1]: https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk

When I was a kid, I played bomberman too much with some friends one summer.

Going to sleep, I had the levels blinking through my eyes for 20 minutes before my mind could finally find some rest.

Happened to me with both Bejewelled and Candy Crush. I went to sleep with jewels and candies moving around and matching up. That’s where I drew the line.

Happened to me with FIFA in college. I could see balls passing and common patterns of crosses/attacks/corners playing on the back of my eyelids. I realized I had drilled the football patterns into my neurons.

This has happened to me with Roller Coaster Tycoon (laying out the paths in particular), and for a non-digital example, jigsaw puzzles.

I also have Minecraft dreams if I've been playing a lot.

That's not really considered a dark pattern, seems like an auditory "tetris effect"

Blizzard one-upped them by playing a reversed and tweaked sound of opening a beer on hitting the enemy.

I believe thats an option to disable, but it's just too helpful to not have.

Unless they've changed it, the default is that it's off.

China is taking draconian measures to protect people from game addiction. While I generally don't agree with their politics I feel they are doing the right things to protect the society.

I feel the occidental states are not doing enough to protect people from game addiction and protect children from tablet addiction and bad contents.

These thing are slowly eroding our society and making people more miserable when they are not able to help themselves against all these forms of addiction.

Video games and tablets are not eroding our societies.

Children’s usage of video games and tablets is their parents job, not the national government’s.

I don’t know what country you’re in, but the thought of whoever is in control of mine “protecting” anyone from bad contents, let alone children, is enough to send chills down one’s spine.

That is a blank check on info consumption and the sheer naivety required to entertain that idea for more than a second is bewildering.

Are you a parent? If you are, what degree of control do you think you have over what your child is exposed to during the times when they’re not with you?

Not saying I like the draconian levels that China is going to on this, but a lot of how your kid turns out is based on what they’re exposed to by their peers, and so some things are societal/population level problems. Parents can broadly try to affect this by controlling the school their kids go to, but that’s a very blunt instrument at best, generally much more expensive than less great schools, and a huge amount of work to redo. If they’re already struggling due to eg high housing costs relative to their wages (another one of our societal issues), then the parents are going to have a really uphill challenge trying to curate their children’s’ experience.

It takes a village, and if your village is not working well, you’re going to have a hard time as a parent. This whole idea of nuclear families as independent units was never true and needs to die.

I largely agree with you up until your last sentence. The mistake you're making is equating the government with the village. That is a fundamental mistake and failure that seems extremely widespread. Civil Society needs to address this problem.

Bastiat has a passage in the Law which touched on this, though he is specifically talking about socialists:

> Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

>Children’s usage of video games and tablets is their parents job, not the national government’s.

Confucianism would disagree and most East-Asian countries have been running on some version of it for a few thousand years, so you might want to reevaluate why that idea is so bewildering to you.

Honestly I find the idea bewildering that parents are supposed to be the sole authority on these matters, because 1. works out pretty badly for people who don't have stable parents, which is quite a lot of them nowadays, 2. neglects virtually all institutional knowledge collected over long periods of time

Well said.

I do think there is a place for state institutions to fund research and public-good marketing campaigns on these issues. Maybe to go so far as campaigns explaining these behaviors are unhealthy and potentially dangerous in optional school programs. In short, state intervention in child rearing, short of major abuse, should be limited to optional education.

It is about empowering the parent/citizen in the face of trillion dollar companies spending more money than ever gaming our psyches.

Are you referring to limiting online play time or were there other steps as well?

I only know about limiting online games.

China's video game regulator hasn't approved any new titles since July 2021. Sounds like an outright ban to me.

I hate absolute ratings (e.g. 5/5 with 1 vote being ranked higher than 4.99/5 with 100 votes).

All the top games seem to have 1 report giving everything positive ratings so that other fabulous games with more ratings but say a 4.97 rating are lost.

https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...

I believe computing (or even knowing about) the Wilson score is beyond the capabilities of your typical full-stack developer, but one could at least have the common sense to hide ratings until an item has a sufficient number of them (say, 10).

3blue1brown has a great series of videos about how you should reason about these types of ratings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q

Relevant plug for Lichess mobile app (I am not affiliated). It's a free chess app that allows for rated play against opponents. Tens of thousands of concurrent games. No ads or payments (I don't remember if I paid, but I would be happy to support). No bells, no whistles, just chess.

I have a pseudo addictive personality and mobile phone games P2W have gotten me to shell out more than I'd care to admit. I've stopped playing all such mobile games and my "nicotine gum" game was getting back to my roots (elementary school chess team): mobile chess from Lichess.

Lichess is amazing and I use it every day. Completely free, no ads, and runs 100% on donations. They publish their costs, it takes ~420K a year to keep Lichess running and the primary developer of Lichess takes home about ~56K a year. https://lichess.org/costs

Anyone reading who loves Lichess consider becoming a patron - https://lichess.org/patron

You wouldn't have paid for Lichess but you can donate to keep the site alive (and get some neat wings). You can also view their costs over at https://lichess.org/costs

Great website. I'll be using this.

Two small bits of UI feedback:

1. It's not extremely clear that the search field is usable

2. Feature request (probably for medium term, I get this is a very new project): The 4 boxes up top giving a breakdown of different dark patterns is cool, but it would be cooler to filter granularly. e.g. some might not care too much to avoid such things as grinding or "complete the collection", but would still like to avoid others.

Google bears huge responsibility for the decline in ethics here. They enabled this very explicitly via features on the App Store for Android.

- There's no way to filter ad-free apps, and the app store is loaded with ad-ridden apps. I am totally willing to pay, but it's not easy any more to find ad-free, paid apps.

- One time payment is mostly dead. I'd have loved it, even if it was a heftier initial amount. Instead we have in-app purchases and subscriptions. The problem with subscriptions is that now you've to get the user hooked on like with a drug, or they'll stop paying. Hence a lot of engineering is devoted to manipulating the user.

As more apps went down this path, expectations were lowered, and developers slowly embraced shady practices for more "engagement".

I think the website would be more useful, if you can select what patterns you personally consider "dark" and filter by those. For example, I don't consider "Variable Rewards" as a dark pattern and don't want it to affect game scores in a list.

Ironically variable reward schedules are the most powerful reward schedules for maintaining behavior in the absence of further rewards. I know you're not a rat/pidgeon but it's just funny you picked the one that classical behavioral psychology would say is close to the most influential.

It's also crucial to some genres working at all though. Can you imagine a roguelike /without/ randomized loot?

Why I love retro DOS and Window games. Basically none of this nonsense.

Hilarious filter pattern in use in the top games list: https://www.darkpattern.games/games.php?alignment=dark. At the top is a "Filter by Platform" list which filters out, not in. I clicked the Android logo expecting, you know, to filter for Android. The resulting querystring when you click Android is "?alignment=dark&android=0". It literally filters out not in.

> There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength.

One of the dark patterns they found in Magic the Gathering Arena is "Illusion of Control" because they match players of similar skill or deck strength. I actually think it is a good thing they match games this way, and it seems like the website is just looking for things to complain about games.

I guessed as a grind-free roguelike, Hyperrogue must score highly [1]. Alas it is unreviewed [2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974

[2]: https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html

More obscure is King of Dragon Pass, which I've reviewed, giving it three dark patterns.

https://www.darkpattern.games/game/3735/1/king-of-dragon-pas...

This seems like a nice list to be on; how do I submit my game? It has no ads, no dark patterns...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribe...

Android only for now, but an apple version could be arranged

The two games I looked up have a handful of votes, but are wrong, or based on a optimistic view of a portion of the game.

Which is to say, it feels like this site itself is being gamified to a degree. Fans of games will no doubt "vouch" for their favorite game, ignoring dark patterns unless they're severe.

It's a great idea but terrible UI. The sort needs to be different, a game with a single 5.0 rating should not appear above a game with 10,000 reviews but a 4.99 rating.

Games with dark patterns are an overwhelming majority on Android. That's sad because they abuse fragile people and children.

That didn't had to be that way if Google didn't promote its ad-based revenue model for apps and games. To my eyes they are responsible for the current situation.

Every time I open the app store on my Android phone, I am amazed at the utter drivel it presents me with. I guess that's the attention economy at work.

I'm pretty confident gaming addiction is a thing, but not sure how strong (in terms of studies/evidence) the correlation is with these dark patterns. My hypothesis is that certain personality types are just more susceptible to gaming addiction, regardless of patterns.

The first time I read "99 francs", I remember arriving on the double page that was nothing but a list of tag lines from tv ads. No context. No brands. Just 2 full pages of things that I've heard in between shows.

I could hear the jingle in my head. I knew each of the names of the brand after reading the tag lines.

For every. Single. One. Of. Them.

I always though I was not susceptible to this. Ads are only influencing others, but not me.

But no.

There are ways for people to burn themself through the screen into your brain. And video games mechanics is no exception.

How many of those brands have you purchased?

I'd say 5% more than once a year.

But my point is that there are ways to stick in people's mind through screens. You can't make 100% of the targets make 100% of the moves you want. But a few % here and there add up.

I’ve always wondered if I have a “gaming addiction”

I play league of legends at least 4 hours per day, sometimes 20+ hours. I am obsessed with learning all the intricacies and improving in the ELO-based ranking system.

I still maintain a full time job as an SWE, a romantic relationship, and personal hygiene/diet. Admittedly LoL comes first before work for me, and can cause tension in my relationship at times.

I know many men that have a very similar relationship with golf, but are they golf addicts?

You have a "gaming addiction" as much as some people have a "network television" addiction. Some people just like to experience a medium for several hours a day. Playing four hours of LoL is just as meaningless as watching four hours of TV. One is more stigmatized than the other (I'll give you a hint, the one where ads can be delivered on a regular schedule is the more acceptable one). And I'm willing to bet that if there's something you need to do that night, you could sacrifice one or two days to get things done and not feel any ill effects (and if I may rib on it a bit, probably feel much better having stepped away from LoL).

This. Being an addict to "x" often depends on what relationship the average citizen is expected to have with "x". In a deeply religious society, reading and analyzing religious texts for hours every day may be seen as an average activity, while in a non religious society you may be seen as a lunatic. In most if not all societies, people are expected to work full time, but workaholism treatment centers are not particularly popular.

> Playing four hours of LoL is just as meaningless as watching four hours of TV. One is more stigmatized than the other (I'll give you a hint, the one where ads can be delivered on a regular schedule is the more acceptable one).

Watching four hours of TV a day is stigmatized pretty heavily.

I don't think very many men play golf at least 4 hours every day. That's a full round of 18, every single day? And some days 5 full rounds?

The exception would maybe be if they're working from the course (closing deals/making calls/etc.), but that's pretty different from your situation.

The addiction definition requires negative effect on you or closed ones. And inability to stop even when you rationally think you should stop. So, depending on how much tension and what kind of tension, it can be qualified as addiction or not.

> I know many men that have a very similar relationship with golf, but are they golf addicts?

Very time consuming hobbies do have higher rates of divorced participants. Regardless of whether they are popular enough for people to know about hobby related issues or not.

Divorced persons may have more time by themselves so maybe they also engage in more time consuming hobbys.

Yes, the relationship goes both ways. Divorced people have more time and are more likely to join. People are more likely to divorce if they have such hobbies too - the implications for partner are very very real.

You can see a correlation between healthy and unhealthy games in their icons.

Ungealthy games are mostly high quality 'renders' for lack of a better term. The healthy games have a much less attention grabbing 'lower quality' icon.

That observation suggests that if we want to improve player health, an effective place to start is to set up pro-bono or subsidized initiatives to create very high-quality, eye catching icons for the games recognized as healthy in order to help them compete. That's by no means an exhaustive solution - part of this is survivorship bias too. The devs are incentivized to invest in the dark pattern games that generate plenty of revenue for comparatively little effort and those investments include more frequent feature additions, bug fix and content updates. Services to buttress these offerings for healthy games would also be important.

I’m a bit disappointed that the website only focuses on the health aspect, and nothing more gaming related and in-depth, such as:

- cheap enemy shots that are almost unavoidable based on reflexes alone, you need to know about them in advance and position yourself properly (Metal Slug games do this sometimes)

- overly long boss fights where they have predictable and repeatable attacks, but huge HP pools and intend to wear the player down

- intentionally sluggish controls, beyond what could be explained by poor programming; perhaps intended as a way of artificially increasing the difficulty

Shouldn’t these be considered “dark pattens” too?

This is so much up my street its practically in my house!

A few days ago, I just released a mobile game focused very much on the wellbeing of the player.

It's called Kanso, And I'll be submitting it here for sure. Thank you very much for posting!!!!

One past discussion:

Show HN: Dark Patterns in Game Design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20953553 - Sept 2019 (8 comments)

I have tried a various many different types of mobile games on Android and have only ever held onto two mobile game apps: Lichess and Wordiest. Every other gaming app I have briefly tried (before uninstalling) has had one of these dark patterns: pay to win, invasive fullscreen video ads, daily play incentives, and/or incessant grind to complete never-ending objectives. It's unfortunate that there aren't more quality gaming apps on mobile.

The healthy games column on this site actually has some good recommendations. Lara Croft Go is so good, it's sad they don't make them like this anymore.

Legends of Runeterra is really, really free to play. It has daily rewards, competition, and some other stuff this site calls dark patterns, but I've got close to everything (and there's a lot) in the game for free and never really felt pressured to pay money or even to play, which satisfies my personal sense of fairness. No ads either, they make their money selling cosmetic stuff.

My go-to these days is board game apps. For the most part, they're very free of all this crap. Some great adaptations: Through the Ages, Scythe, Root, Wingspan, Concordia, Galaxy Trucker, Railroad Ink, Spirit Island. Spirit Island is at a higher price point than the rest, and tries to get you on a monthly subscription. But it's a fantastic board game.

lichess is so well made

If this site is legit then this awesome.

Mobile apps and games today are pretty much dead as far as iOS App store is concerned. 99% of new and featured apps and games are "free" and try to force you to either buy tokens or pay monthly fee or something as insane.

Even the most trivial sports tracker (how many reps/minutes etc.) apps try to make you pay ridiculous monthly fee or sell "lifetime" license for several hundreds of USDs.

Plenty of great word or number games only cost a couple of bucks to buy or remove ads on forever and have no other IAPs. Half of my family is obsessed with Wordsmyth at the moment. Most mobile action games are stuffed with dark patterns these days, but there are plenty of great ports with only one-time charges. Rockstar's ported Max Payne and most of their great PS2-era games: GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, Bully, Max Payne, etc.

I avoid all mobile games because they're, for the most part, just spyware. I read though this list hoping to find something, clicking a few random games, everything looks pretty similar:

  Data Linked to You The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
  Purchases
  Location
  Identifiers
  Diagnostics
  Other Data

I'm sorry, but no. You do not need my location, identifies or other data. gtfo

Some recommendations:

If you enjoy Wizardry, there is a Japanese developer who developed a few WZ clones. Just search "Wizardry" in Google play and you should find it. It's called the "Wandroid" series. AFAIS the sales were decent (1K+ for the first game) for such a game.

There are also mobile ports for classic games such as "Dungeon Master". But overall, I don't see Mobile as a healthy gaming platform.

This site has an interesting categorization system. I made https://nobsgames.stavros.io a while back, and chose something slightly different (mostly based on the existence of in-game currency or pay-to-win).

I don't know which system is better, but mine has worked very well for me, I've discovered some great games.

Recently I've bought a Nintendo Switch because I've come to the realization that mobile games (I play on a high end tablet) are inferior. Why? Because most of then rely on dark patterns to get you watching ads or paying lots of money to roll chances like a casino. Console games are more likely to provide you a quality, limited time, instead of the opposite -infinite low quality time.

I always see cool ads for games that have nothing to do with the games I end up installing.

Would be nice to find the real games, if they even exist.

What I find problematic with websites like this is that the whole thing is based on an implicit assumption that there is a universal "good" and "evil" (probably from an anglophone westerner point of view), with no regard for personal, regional, and cultural differences.

Things are never that simple, and that assumption reeks of hubris.

Relativism is a western concept

This reminded about the “Go” games from Square Enix[0]. They are so fun. I wish they’d make more of them.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app-bundle/the-go-trilogy/id118192...

Rule 1 of picking mobile games: If it's "free" and is sponsoring a YouTube video, or if it's advertised in another mobile game, or if it advertised in the store, DON'T PLAY IT, because it is not a game!

I wish the stores had an "In Game Currency" filter, not just "In App Purchases".

I love grinding and found a lot of good games in the "Dark Games" section so thanks!

What a great website. I'd been thinking of how to find such info. We buy lots of kids games, and this is a great 'cheat sheet'. It is great that you spell out the dark patterns.

Who reviews the games? Upfront, it seems like they have done an excellent job.

After a quick skimming of both dark and non-dark pattern games, seems that most of the dark pattern ones are free with in-app purchases, while the non-dark pattern games are priced at a couple dollars, sometimes with zero in app purchases.

Different revenue models.

A while back I tried to find some good rhythm games for mobile, and they seemed to fall into two categories:

* Unpolished games with more limited and/or less interesting content that you could buy for a straight fee

* Fun-looking, polished games with songs I wanted to try that were filled with energy systems and ways to get you to spend money forever and ever

osu!stream is a pretty good free one on iOS, but unfortunately they're done updating it.

One of the worst parts of the walled garden app stores is how they control search to maximize their profits. Even when they are forced by regulation, for example to label apps with ads, you still can't search by that field.

Heh. So if you click the Apple icon, you get games that are NOT playable on Apple devices :S

*confusing*

With free games it would be easier to put a list of games without dark patterns.

I like this idea BUT... I feel like this is too much of boolean checkbox type situation.

I play a game that is on the F2P model. You can play free and it's great. If you pay you get some advantages as far as progression goes and some vehicles that are better than free vehicles (sometimes...) but IMO ultimately it's the skill of the player that determines your experience.

The game has the usual loot boxes and stuff I don't care for. I just don't do that stuff.

I really like the game ... it plays well and I've no problem throwing a couple bucks their way from time to time.

I've gotten more out of it than many $60 AAA titles.

If I went by check boxes the game has everything I hate, and yet I really enjoy playing and don't have to do any of the 'dark pattern' stuff.

It's just to binary to say "has X is Y bad".

You want healthy mobile games? Emulate console games from before consoles were online. There you go, thousands of games created purely to be games.

Cool site! I wish there was a way to show games which are both free and healthy. I suspect it would be a small list, but still worth having.

Surprised Slay The Spire is on the nice list. It doesn't extract money but it's definitely designed to be addictive

Well... it's a game, not a service with fixed features, so everything will make little sense if it brings no fun.

This list seems pretty ridiculous to me. What they call dark patterns mostly just seem to be various things that make games more fun.

My personal definition of dark patterns in games is basically anything that sacrifices fun, consistency of progression, consistency/believability of setting or suspension of disbelief in order to get people to pay more money.

If you aren't sacrificing your vision to extract more money from consumers though, go nuts.

>> Competition - The game makes you compete against other players.

PvP games are flagged as dark patterns by this..

This feels like a sort of granular MPAA/content rating but instead of movies it is for mobile games. Of course that is very valuable, and knowing that a particular game has certain attributes could help someone avoid it before they come across them while playing it (similar to how people approach content ratings and trigger warnings), but I don't think it makes sense to rank games based on that. I don't care to know what is the game with the fewest dark patterns, I care to know what is the best game that doesn't have that many (or particular ones that affect me). It looks like the data is there, so this is likely just an improvement on the presentation side. They seem to have coverage of around 50000* games which is very impressive, so perhaps at this point they should spend some time to make that data actually accessible.

I would personally recommend https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ for similar purposes, even though it has a much smaller collection as it seems better curated and way easier on the eyes.

*Edit: Scratch that, it looks like games after page 9 don't have ratings so it's more like 300 games total with a couple of reviews each.

I've thought about making something like this for a while, happy to see it!

Just buy any Michael Brough game, for example Cinco Paus, and be done with it

This is exactly the service what I been planning for the last two years.

This is really great. Is there something similar to non-gaming software?

I believe https://www.darkpatterns.org/ is a general Dark Patterns site

Great website ! I was surprised to not see Magic Arena on there .

Reminds me of the games Buddha would not play

I always wish the iOS app store had a search filter for “Free + No in—app purchases” plus all categories or specific e.g. Games.

Free + No IAP sounds great for users, but it's completely unsustainable for developers. So don't expect any major updates over time.

I’m a developer, I get it. However those apps do exist so their developers have already made that decision.

Obligatory plug for Simon Tatham's (the author of Putty) puzzle application.

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