Definition: A gaming dark pattern is something that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer.
Learned about it from another lemmy user! it’s a newer website, so not every game has a rating, but it’s already super helpful and I intend to add ratings as I can!
While as an adult I think it’ll probably be helpful to find games that are just games and not trying to bait whales, I feel like it’s even more helpful for parents.
Making sure the game your kids want to play is free of traps like accidental purchases and starting chain emails with invites I think makes it worth its weight in gold.
EDIT: Some folks seem to be concerned with some specific items that it looks for, but I’ve been thinking of it like this:
1 mechanic is a thread, multiple together form a pattern. It’s why they’ll still have a high score even if they have a handful of the items listed.
Like random loot from a boss can be real fun! But when it’s combined with time gates, pay to skip, grinding, and loot boxes… we all know exactly what it is trying to accomplish. They don’t want you to actually redo the dungeon 100 times. They want you to buy 100 loot boxes.
Guilds where you screw over your friends if you don’t play for a couple days because your guild can’t compete and earn the rewards they want if even a single player isn’t playing every single day? Yeah, we know what it’s about. But guilds where it’s all very chill and optional? Completely fine.
Games that throw in secret bots without telling you to make you think you’re good at the game combined with a leader board and infinite treadmill, so you sit there playing the game not wanting to give up your “top spot”? I see you stupid IO games.
But also, information is power to the consumer.
Back in uni, most of these dark patterns were taught as “game design fundamentals”.
Now as I work on my indie games, I avoid using what I learned in uni.
Game design all boils down to “is it fun?” and anything else is bullshit sales tactics.
I wish the site also focused on real games, and not just mobile games.
They said they’ll expand to steam eventually, but sounds like they wanted to focus on mobile to start because it has biggest player base and most of the dark patterns are industry norms for mobile.
What makes mobile games not “real”? Sounds very gatekeepy. I don’t always have the space to pull out my laptop.
What games do you make? If you’re actively working on games that are anti dark pattern then that’s the type of game I want to hear about
I think the focus on mobile is due to the fact that very few people would choose to make a fun game on mobile unless they were deliberately chasing money. Indie devs don’t want to use and make customers use an inferior device with more hoops to jump through. Publishing for PC is easy, publishing for Console has a higher bar to clear for quality. Publishing for mobile is more difficult than PC and makes it more difficult to build a quality game, so the majority of mobile games are unrewarding trash so the only incentive to make them is pure monetization.
Also because the install base for mobile devices is just about everyone everywhere, and yes, a fair amount of people, particularly young people, would much rather play something on their phone than a PC or even console.
The difference in potential customer base is orders of magnitude larger.
I’d argue that unfun design elements can be useful in games if used with care and purpose. For instance, “suddenly all of the characters you’re attached to are dead” is not exactly fun but one of the Fire Emblem games used it to great dramatic effect at the midway point.
Of course the line between an event or mechanic that players love to hate and one they just hate is thin.