Dark Pattern Games

Scoring System and Taxonomy Concerns

• Many see the numerical ratings as “dubious”: games perceived as benign (e.g., traditional roguelikes, HyperRogue) score poorly because any checked pattern counts negatively.
• The implementation treats patterns like “competition,” “grind,” or “collecting items” as uniformly bad, despite the textual descriptions saying they are only dark in certain contexts.
• Several commenters say the site is more useful as a pattern database than as a comparative scoring tool.

What Is a Dark Pattern? Mechanics vs Monetization

• One camp argues: the overlap between “fun mechanics” and the site’s “psychological dark patterns” is huge; what matters is when those mechanics are tied to monetization (loot boxes, microtransactions, wait-to-play with paid skips).
• Others reply that some items (daily rewards, friend spam, social pyramid schemes) are intrinsically manipulative and not fun.
• There is debate over whether competition, grinding, reciprocity, power creep, and “wait to play” are inherently dark or only when used to drive spending, guilt, or habitual daily logins.
• Some define a true dark pattern as any design that serves the business at the expense of the player’s own goals (e.g., obscured subscriptions, tracking, loot boxes with paid keys).

Monetization Models and Live Service Debate

• Many praise pay-once, no-IAP games as healthiest; others defend trials, shareware-style unlocks, or modest F2P models.
• Debate over live-service / card games: controlled power creep can keep a meta fresh, but is criticized when tied to paid card acquisition and devaluing prior purchases.
• Examples discussed include PoE stash tabs, Fortnite’s cosmetics and battle pass, and War Thunder’s “pay to progress” grind.
• A proposal to fund games via background crypto-mining is widely viewed as parasitic or untrustworthy.

Addiction, Players, and Children

• Multiple commenters describe personal or observed harm: lost time, depression masked by grind loops, kids normalizing exploitative designs.
• Others note that “addictive” is not automatically bad if aligned with beneficial goals (e.g., language learning apps), though some argue gamified education still uses the same hooks.

Usefulness and Author’s Clarifications

• The site creator explains the project arose from their own game addiction; learning the patterns helped them quit.
• They emphasize the written pattern descriptions as the core value; the crowdsourced game ratings are outdated, likely noisy, and may be removed.
• Several people report the site (and similar “no BS games” lists) as valuable for finding healthier games and understanding manipulative design, even if the scoring is imperfect.