[HN Gopher] Dark Pattern Games
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Dark Pattern Games
Author : robotnikman
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-11-16 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.darkpattern.games)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.darkpattern.games)
| mzajc wrote:
| I like the idea, but their ratings seem.. dubious at best. For
| example: Hyperrogue, which hit the frontpage a few times and
| which I can confidently say does not feature any dark patterns,
| is rated just 1.19 [0] on a 5 (best) to -5 (worst) scale.
|
| [0] https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html
| 1bpp wrote:
| also funny how those first 3 'dark patterns' are basically just
| the core appeal of the genre
| Kiro wrote:
| Yeah, can't take this site seriously when it lists some of my
| favorite mechanics as dark patterns.
| p1necone wrote:
| 'Competition' is listed as a dark pattern. Ya know, the
| core _thing_ common to basically all games going back
| millenia, this site is ridiculous.
| vintermann wrote:
| The site says: "People like a challenge and playing
| against other people is often how games provide this
| challenge. Competition by itself is not necessarily a
| dark pattern. Classic games like chess and checkers, and
| most sports have competition. It's when competition is
| combined with other dark patterns that problems arise."
|
| And this is true. In particular, competition where you
| gain rewards for staying on top of leaderboards, and
| there is a pay-to-win element. Competition isn't
| necessarily bad, competition can be fun, "but how is this
| game using competition" something you should think about
| before you get into a new game.
| p1necone wrote:
| Sure but they have no room for this level of nuance on
| their actual ratings, it's just a checkbox for 'game has
| competition' which always counts as a 'dark pattern' for
| the purposes of the overall score.
| p1necone wrote:
| Yeah I think this clarifies the core issue with this kind of
| thinking (imo).
|
| The venn diagram between 'mechanics that make games fun' and
| 'dark patterns' (as described by this site) is basically a
| circle. The important thing isn't the patterns themselves, it's
| that they're used to make you spend money on microtransactions.
|
| Looking at just the mechanics divorced of any context of the
| surrounding business/marketing/monetization is missing the
| point.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Any game with any in-app purchase at all already feels unhealthy,
| even if its just a trial unlock.
|
| The healthiest games are consistently ones where you pay one
| large amount upfront, and then are never bothered about money
| again, because there is nothing else to buy. The developers are
| so confident you will enjoy it they don't bother with free trial
| offers. If you really don't like it, you just return for a full
| refund. Feels good.
| stavros wrote:
| I don't mind a trial unlock, or a one-time purchase. Any sort
| of currency is right out.
| acheron wrote:
| Nah that's going too far. 90s shareware was sold exactly that
| way -- free trial and pay if you want more -- and there were
| plenty of great creative games in that category.
| efnx wrote:
| How would you feel about a free game spending one frame per
| second mining a cryptocurrency? This would be as an alternative
| to a one-time purchase (and as an alternative to ads). So, you
| could play a full game for free, indefinitely, and have a small
| portion of compute do mining, and at any time you could pay a
| one time fee (purchase) to turn off mining forever.
|
| (Edit: added stuff in parens)
| Greed wrote:
| This comment makes me feel so sad. I lack the words to
| describe what critical essence this question is missing, but
| technology used to mean a hacker ethos of just doing things
| because they seemed cool and worth doing and even just the
| ask of this feels parasitic by comparison. Sign of the times.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I feel the same way about crypto as I do about those herbal
| supplements at gas stations. It's not that they're
| _inherently_ problematic, but everyone involved turns out to
| be scammers consistently enough that automatic distrust is a
| fantastic rule of thumb.
| stavros wrote:
| I made something like this a while ago, for mobile games:
| https://nobsgames.stavros.io
|
| Unfortunately, the manual part of it (reviewing user submissions)
| is too much for one person (me), but it should be fairly useful
| still.
| yreg wrote:
| I like this. I'm currently working on a (simple) iOS game, mostly
| because I got fed up with all of the dark patterns that are so
| highly prevalent on the market.
|
| I'm even thinking about naming it something like `Pay Upfront:
| Strategy Game` to underline the single purchase model, but
| perhaps it's silly to go that far?
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm sending this to all of my young family members. To them, some
| of these dark patterns are just a natural part of using
| technology. It's not great.
| epsilonic wrote:
| There's a good book that discusses dark patterns in Gambling
| games, making it easier to appreciate how they extrapolate to
| other contexts as well. The title of the book is:
|
| Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
|
| Author: Natasha Dow Schull
| keerthiko wrote:
| The premise of this site seems to be that anything designed to
| make the game "addictive" is a dark pattern -- this is
| contradictory to the concept of "dark pattern" in products in
| general, which I would define as "when an interface biases users
| towards action that is _more in the interest of the business
| controlling the interface than the user 's goals for using the
| software_."
|
| When someone plays a game, the user's goal could be expected as
| "having fun for as much time as they want to." Being addictive is
| usually in service of that. A "slightly dark" pattern would be
| combining core addictive gameplay junctures with
| microtransactions (retry/next level/upgrade) -- but in this
| economy this just feels like a basic mobile game business model.
| A moderately darker pattern would be making the game increasingly
| frustrating while still addictive, unless you perform a microtxn
| (eg: increasing difficulty exponentially, and charging money for
| more lives/retries or forcing more ads).
|
| A "true dark pattern" would be sneaking things like push
| notification permissions, tracking permissions, recurring
| subscription agreements, etc. under an interface that looks
| similar to something the user doesn't read carefully and tries to
| get past out of habit, such as an interstitial ad with a "skip"
| button -- but with a below-the-fold toggle button defaulted to
| "agree" and a "Confirm" button styled to look like the "skip"
| button at first glance.
| stackghost wrote:
| Yes, not everything here is a dark pattern. The one that stood
| out to me was "Wait To Play"[0].
|
| In the before times, there was a browser-only MMO called Urban
| Dead[1] which had a cap on the number of actions any player
| could take in a single 24-hour period. This was to avoid giving
| undue influence/advantage to players who could play more during
| the day and disadvantaging people who e.g. had to work during
| the day and could only play in the evenings. I played a lot of
| UD in its heyday and thought it worked really well.
|
| That said,
|
| >A "true dark pattern" would be sneaking things like push
| notification permissions, tracking permissions, recurring
| subscription agreements, etc. under an interface that looks
| similar to something the user doesn't read carefully and tries
| to get past out of habit, such as an interstitial ad with a
| "skip" button -- but with a below-the-fold toggle button
| defaulted to "agree" and a "Confirm" button styled to look like
| the "skip" button at first glance.
|
| There are lots of "true dark patterns" that are not deceptive
| UI elements. Loot boxes that require expensive keys comes to
| mind. Same with brutal grinds that can only be bypassed by pay-
| to-win booster items.
|
| [0] https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/30/wait-to-play.html
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Dead
| thrwaway55 wrote:
| This site feels like this it's made by people that misunderstand
| games and genres and can't stand the concept of live service
| games which surprise takes money to run.
|
| Saw one where powercreep is considered unhealthy ...if you played
| a competitive card game without power creep you'd quit because
| the first meta would be the only meta. Controlled power creep is
| healthy for game longevity.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I think what they would want to see is the cards all be free.
| That way powercreep does not make a purchase less valuable,
| does not make people gamble for cards they want, and not give
| an advantage to people who want to spend more money to get good
| cards.
| thrwaway55 wrote:
| I agree that is what it would take to get a high score on
| their site but I think it's an unrealistic expectation to
| suggest that the developer should be on the hook indefinitely
| for content. Each card game set is functionally a new game
| with some costs amortized thanks to it's previous sets.
|
| We have seen the forever sticker price in mega hit indies ala
| Stardew Valley or Terraria but I don't think that is really
| healthy to expect for gaming as a whole and is more that
| small teams hit a home run.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I feel like a bunch of these are throwing the baby out with the
| bathwater. Is 'reciprocity' really a dark pattern, or is it a
| healthy feature of human social interaction?
| smusamashah wrote:
| It does not look like all patterns described here are meant to be
| taken as a rule. If your game don't have any of the patterns this
| website suggests, it won't automatically become a good game.
|
| Grind or collecting items is suggested as a dark pattern. Dead
| cells is an amazing game and it has both of these. Most rogue
| lites use these both patterns heavily.
|
| I don't see grinding as a hard no. I don't mind repeating if game
| makes feel I am making progress and getting something in return
| which dead cells do amazingly well. Grind needs some better
| definition on the website probably. Same for collecting items
| (what about coins in Mario).
| swi wrote:
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| "Dark Patterns: Are Your Games Playing You?" -
| https://youtu.be/OCkO8mNK3Gg
| charlie-83 wrote:
| This feels useful even if the software don't directly tranlate to
| how "predatory" the game is and if scores can't be compared
| between games.
|
| Sure, being unable to pause the game isn't necessarily the
| developer being evil, but it's good to have a website that tells
| you about it before you buy the game.
|
| I think you just need to interpret a game having a low score as
| there being some parts of the game that you might want to know
| about before buying/playing rather than "this game is evil".
|
| In the same way that, when a film is rated 18, I can check
| whether that means it's going to scar me for life or if it shows
| a nipple for 2 seconds.
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(page generated 2025-11-16 23:00 UTC)