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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

“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.

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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.

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