| ▲ | lukewarmdaisies 8 hours ago | |
I have mixed feelings on this assessment. I definitely agree that some of these labels could be better ("can't pause or save" and "competition" are missing a lot of nuance), but some you mentioned feel reasonable on the part of the site creator (for example, "variable rewards", which is to say different reward outputs for the same performance/input, are a pretty classic Skinner box and unnecessary as a core feature to make most games work). I'd also like to question the idea that that multiplayer games are being treated inherently "unfair" here or that these features aren't worth acknowledging as a dark pattern just because they're core to certain genres. I like Minecraft and there's variable drops and achievements and grinding and multiplayer and a bunch of other "dark patterns". I also like to straight up gamble occasionally, and I'm not a gambling addict as of the writing of this comment. It's more the awareness of things that can psychologically hook you that's important, and then you can do what you want with that (or for parents, they can attempt to restrict applications as they find appropriate). | ||