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.
I’ve always wanted to make a website like this. But then I got too addicted to some game and spent all my time on that instead. /j
Only partly joking, I really wanted to make a website similar to this. But then stuff happened. You know how it is.
(Here was an entire wall of text, where I detailed the idea, before I decided to delete it all again.)
Interestingly enough Luca Galante the creator spent 10 years coding digital slot machines. He used a lot of the techniques used by them to keep you playing. He just did it in a way to maximize fun instead of micro transactions.
Vampire Survivors is a great game but the mobile version is the fucking worst.
I didn’t know there was a non-mobile.
I didn’t know there was a mobile version. PC version was like £3 and had no ads/payments/nonsense, what’s in the mobile version?
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.
I was honestly expecting a worse rating for my favourite gacha games, not gonna lie…good to see that objective opinions are still around.
Great site, lots of info on gamification
After spending days reading this website, write out case study, I can fully quit my mobile game addiction
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…
From the 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.” So that looks good for your request.
