{"id":13002,"date":"2025-02-21T11:24:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T18:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=13002"},"modified":"2025-01-01T11:39:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T18:39:43","slug":"dark-patterns-in-game-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=13002","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Dark Patterns&#8217; in game design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>[Dark Patterns are] design practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm. &#8211; 2022 FTC definition<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.perkinscoie.com\/en\/professionals\/eric-j-weiss.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eric Weiss<\/a>, a trial lawyer who defends companies from class action lawsuits and other disputes, is warning software and game dev clients during his GDC talk to be aware of the dangers of &#8220;dark patterns&#8221; as lawsuit cases are rising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t just academic &#8211; and not just related to gambling sites. The FTC just landed a $245 million settlement with Epic Games\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/business-guidance\/blog\/2022\/12\/245-million-ftc-settlement-alleges-fortnite-owner-epic-games-used-digital-dark-patterns-charge\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">after claiming<\/a>\u00a0that Fortnite&#8217;s unintuitive UI constituted using &#8220;digital dark patterns to bill Fortnite players for unintentional in-game purchases.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What are other dark patterns? The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkpattern.games\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.darkpattern.games\/\">Dark Pattern Games website<\/a> gives some examples. The free-to-play market of apps probably has some of the most egregious. Some you may have encountered from online retailers include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A warning that a product is almost sold out\u2014&#8221;only two remaining!&#8221;\u2014when there&#8217;s actually plenty of stock<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A timer that counts down the seconds remaining on a limited-time 20% discount, but just resets after hitting zero<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A request to send you email updates that can only be rejected by agreeing to a ridiculous accusation like &#8220;No thanks, I don&#8217;t care about children&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Weiss says that one of the dark patterns is grinding: &#8220;One of the identified dark patterns is grinding. And that&#8217;s &#8216;making a free version of a game so cumbersome and labor intensive that the player is induced to unlock new features with in-app purchases.&#8217; So it&#8217;s set up in a way that you don&#8217;t need to make a purchase, but is it\u00a0<em>so\u00a0<\/em>difficult that the practical reality for the reasonable gamer is that they&#8217;re going to have to make that purchase? Have they been deceived, or is it unfair in some way?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Articles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/gaming-industry\/dark-patterns-in-games-gdc-2024\/\">https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/gaming-industry\/dark-patterns-in-games-gdc-2024\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Dark Patterns are] design practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm. &#8211; 2022 FTC definition Eric Weiss, a trial lawyer who defends companies from class action lawsuits and other disputes, is warning software and game dev clients during his GDC talk to be aware of the dangers of &#8220;dark patterns&#8221; as lawsuit cases are rising. This isn&#8217;t just academic &#8211; and not just related to gambling sites&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=13002\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3nI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13004,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13002\/revisions\/13004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}