Temporal Dark Patterns

Game Update

We managed to fix the problem with the menu system that occurs when we press buttons and sometimes the last action from the last button we pressed tries to execute. This might have also fixed an issue with selecting troops in the toy box. There are some issues with the way we’re deleting troops however and so we will be focused on that this week.

I made some more updates to the spreadsheets to further balance them. I put out a new build and did some more play testing as well. Everything is going to take some time to get just right. There’s still an issue with leaders not updating and I took some time to work on that as well, but wasn’t able to find that line in the code.

My girlfriend is stepping up to work on the key art for the game, and I did some work to talk about a couple of options we could go with. I’m excited to see what she comes up with as she did a great job making some art for the Six Elements in the game.

Personal Update

Not much to report here. I took some time to walk this week and do some much needed household chores. Sometimes it’s nice to disconnect from technology. I spent some time on the beach with my girlfriend to unwind, and finally got to try out the board game Nemesis. I felt pretty tired most of this week, I don’t know if I’m getting enough rest hours.

Game Development Insight - Dark Patters

This week I got pulled into a game that uses some of the elements of Pokemon Go mixed with Clash of Clans. Both games which leverage dark patterns to addict their player base. I used it to motivate myself to walk, and so it wasn’t all bad. I came to the realization that dark patterns in games can be fine, if the game has some substance to it. Often the games that are available for free on the phone heavily leverage dark patterns with minimal substance.

The specific dark pattern I want to talk about this week temporal dark patterns. I like to call this “sit and wait”. Darkpattern.games mentions “playing by appointment”, “daily rewards”, “grinding”, and “advertisements”. I’m going to talk about everything accept for grinding which I mentioned in a previous dark patterns post.

Playing by appointment is the basic dark pattern that we first saw in some games where players could build virtual structures like a city simulation or real time strategy. The twist is that instead of the building taking seconds to build they would stretch it out over hours, days, or even months. This was done in an effort to make players feel like they were building “realistic” structures. I’m not sure when it was discovered that this game play loop created an expectation for players to respond which is similar to conditional training we do with animals.

Daily rewards follow the playing by appointment pattern as well. Again this can be OK if the game has substance to make the game play valuable, but at some point it’s just tiring to do that daily quest for the 60th time to improve your reputation or make in game money. Often though the game just wants players to log in and click a button.

Advertisements have become another way for games to make money through making players wait which takes them away from the game they are playing. I can’t imagine that this increases the players enjoyment of the game. It would seem that it delays them from playing the game. That said I have watched plenty of commercials to get in game rewards. Players feel that it’s OK to do this for free games so that the developers can get some incidental money from advertisers. I often wonder how often these ads actually cause players to complete a transaction or download a new app.

I can only guess at what societal conditions led to us creating games that are focused on these dark patterns. It’s possible that just the proliferation of cell phones to so many people made the market irresistible to make games like this. It’s difficult for many of us to ignore text messages, which also feeds into these temporal dark patterns. It’s not like it has to be bad, but often if the substance of the game is just the dark patterns then it’s not much of a game. These things are just add ons that need to be taken under consideration instead of just automatically tacking them on.