Cool cool cool. The dark games list is basically all the play store recommendations
Keep in mind that the recommendations are likely influenced by being in the top 200, which is where they look for games to review. Careful of correlation fallacy
At the same time, the goal of dark patterns to to make people spend more money. Given that revenue is very likely one of the key things Google wants (and thus promotes) out of apps, its also entirely expected that the apps people find are largely those who try and get the most money from users, which requires dark patterns.
From the link:
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.
Can’t find your game? We’ve tried to include all games that make it into the top 200 on the App Store charts.
This appears to only cover mobile games. I’d love to see something similar for PC/console releases…
Anecdotally Fifa (EA FC or whatever they’re calling it now) would have to be up there. Hadn’t played it in years but gave it a go last season as it was free on Game Pass.
They’ve combined the addictiveness of card collecting with loot box mechanics, FOMO and moving the goalposts (pun intended) to get the best players. The gameplay also seemed pretty rigged to prevent grinding rewards out.
Then when the new game is out, rather than dishing out all the rewards to those still playing it instead becomes infeasible to unlock any more decent players so you’re pretty much stuck with what you have.
Even if you pay full price for the next game you’ll have to use low stat players as they only seem to start releasing decent ones half way through the season.
From the site:
DarkPattern.Games is a brand new website. We are starting with iOS and Android games because this is where most dark patterns appear, but we will be adding other platforms soon. Because we are new, we have a lot of games that don’t have any reviews yet. This will improve over time and we are working hard to get games reviewed. Please help us by finding a familiar game and submitting a review.
Brand new is definitely a stretch, their legal page seems to date back to 2019.
Most games fit multiple categories of dark patterns. Almost all gachas have 90% of these
Many of the games listed here have old or dead links, and you can’t sort by rating either. I had a very bad time finding games using this site.
