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.
Yeah I did the Spanish for months and it was like “You’re so high level!” but I realized as soon as I stepped back that I mostly had just gotten good at playing their games because they were formatted where the answers were generally obvious, to where I felt like just memorizing key words then trying to read children’s books would have been more helpful.
So yeah they for sure use a dozen dark patterns. Making you feel like your account is valuable, making you feel bad for skipping, giving you bonuses for playing on their schedule, and making you feel better at the language than you are.
Lol Spanish is one language that I had assumed might actually work decently with that approach, but I can’t say I’m surprised it doesn’t.
And yeah, they do seem to design the exercises to be easy. Like translate a sentence to English, but they only give one verb option, or sometimes they don’t even provide any options that aren’t a part of the sentence and it becomes “can you string these English words together to form a valid sentence with hints in the language you are learning?”
I’m using another app specific to Japanese that at least has grouped the answers in ways that make it harder but more effective because I need to tell the difference between similar looking kanji. It’s frustrating, but at least the frustration comes from being annoyed at my own pace rather than from getting a false sense that I’m doing very well only to realize I barely know anything without multiple choice hints.
I’m sure it worked for some people, but for me my brain just picked up the super obvious patterns before picking up much spanish.
It is possible, though I think it’s one of those products whose success is based more on customer testimonials than actual statistics about it’s effectiveness.
They might exist, but I haven’t met anyone who has said they were able to use duolingo to become fluent or even competent in a language.
But then again, my German learned from a class in high school isn’t much better. Hell, my French leaned from being in French immersion all through elementary school followed by normal French classes in high school isn’t even at a competent level, though I can at least communicate a bit in French. I can still see those subject-verb conjugation tables though lol (though I’ve lost the French version of “them/they”).