Yeah, that’s definitely the way to see it, and as that I think it’s great. I think it might overload the term dark patterns a bit too much, and would have liked to have seen a different name used (as a game design academic), but I absolutely agree with and appreciate the approach otherwise.

Edit to include, I guess why I have that hesitation with an example - I couldn’t link this in a class I’m teaching without loads of caveats because suddenly 80% of the curriculum gets seen as abusive when it’s really just experience design and explain the grey (which we do, so this is quite helpful for that particular purpose), and I would need to caveat that when they see the term out in the wild it will be used differently.

All I’m commenting on, as a game design researched and professor, is that it’s an established term in a discipline which means something else to those actually within the discipline. These are still patterns, and they can absolutely be harmful patterns, but the terminology is being overloaded and there is some interesting nuance within it.

Also, just to comment on the last quip there, and yes - to those I’ve spoken to, they are okay with those because they (being actively involved in the industry) know more than most people to educate and supervise and ensure that playing games with these patterns doesn’t turn into harmful behaviours. They also call them out for what they are - often, very bad design.

I guess that’s really the line they drew - these patterns are more gray than the examples they presented. Most are good sometimes and terrible other times depending on how it is used. The term “dark patterns” as used professionally refers to always bad, always deceptive, always harmful. I do like having that line, even if it means the dark side is a much smaller subset of the greater space, then you can easily say, “If this uses a single dark pattern, it’s out. If it uses a lot of ‘grey’ patterns, be cautious. If it’s nothing but grey patterns, it’s purely abusive trash.”

Interesting. I was chatting with a lot of big name AAA designers and indie designers discussing dark patterns, and they’ve got a very different opinion on what constitutes a dark pattern. To them, largely, it needs to be more technical deception - like having a fake “X” button, or immediately popping up an ad over where a button was to trick you into clicking it, or bait-and-switching pricing before the user notices.

I tried to raise these kinds of patterns as problematic, and it was a mixed bag. The general vibe from them was that they’d only call it a dark pattern if it deceives the player to get more money than they were prepared to spend (or similar for ads). If the player knows what they’re getting into, and they are presented with a choice to stop or continue, it’s on them.

And I’ll admit, while I don’t go that far (and there were designers in both camps), I can at least understand how all game design is manipulation, in the same way that teaching and storytelling is manipulation, and drawing the lines can be very hard. Your job is to convince the player that they are having fun and want to keep playing. Resources in a game have no real value, only valued by the scarcity and utility of them, which the designer intentionally assigns to convince the player it’s more or less valuable.

Curiously, the examples listed in the OP were exactly the patterns I see designers discuss, but don’t seem to be the patterns on the website (like “illusion of control”, artificial scarcity, which is like, game designs while thing).

Either way, nice to have this as a resource because honestly a lot of these elements are what I’d put in the “bad / abusive design” category rather than purely dark patterns, but still great to highlight, but I can agree that we should probably be careful blanket calling these dark patterns; examples: It mentions illusion of control being separating you into shards of leader boards so that you can be in the top 500 of a shard rather than top 200,000 world ranking or whatever, or claw machines choosing whether you successfully grab an item rather than relying on skill. How does this compare to Uncharted not letting enemies successfully shoot you in the first few seconds of an action sequence to give you time to ground yourself, or Resident Evil spawning different loot and enemies based on how good/bad you play?

I’d say, is it to extract money from you in the short term, but it’s more grey than a non-designer might read into from lists like these.

Everything changed when I found the most understanding teachers at the end of my school. I switched schools and had a teacher recognize I was smart and bored and distracted, and she tested me out of the classes and let me spend my time on other random things that were tangentially related and still work with the other students. Game changer compared to where I was where I’d get deductions for doing problems early or reading ahead.

The point on the way to many interests and things, and loving yourself beyond the meds, very important! I found o was regulating myself too much for the first while after diagnosing, and the most relaxation wasn’t what people might typically find relaxing, it was letting the (healthy enough) chaos flow in a safer environment than I was previously prepared to setup.

100%. Great way of putting it. I bounce back forth on occasion, but the trend line is always toward accepting that old part of me, and realizing it’s okay to move on because it’s a very closed chapter that’s been outstaying its welcome. Like any death, you still have those same neural patterns, and they’re slowly getting overwritten, and it’s confusing and disorienting when your muscle memory reaches for something and it’s not there.

It’s extra confusing when what’s reached for is that feeling of not grabbing anything, but you do. When you’ve been falling for decades the ground feels weird for a while when you land.

Hah, yeah, I’m sure I could have taken time to phrase it better.

I definitely feel like a big part of what I’ve grieved is the childhood that I never had, moreso than the future I won’t. It was a big relief, and I felt like I could do well and cut myself slack. I’m just trying to do the same with past me; cut myself that slack, give my past self that love and understanding now that I didn’t get then, accept it was a brutal time, and that it was unfair, but that I’ve grown and learned and stopped rejecting that person was me, and we’re doing all right.

I do think stigma is a part, both your expectations of others and the expectations on yourself. I had a psychiatrist tell me years before my diagnosis that I was “too successful” for ADHD and that pretty much derailed the acceptance for a long time, heh.

Absolutely! Important to recognize you’re not “weird” for not going through this, sometimes it just aligns so well you’re already prepped for it.

I agree to an extent, but also that the parents need to take time to understand how to “gas them up” appropriately. It’s not everyone’s case, but it became very apparent to me when I was young that my parents would cheer me on over anything, and never take any time to learn about the things they were cheering me on over, and that led to disbelieving pretty much any positive feedback from anyone long-term. The only feedback of substance growing up was the very rare negative feedback, because they would only pull it out when they understood it enough to know it needed improving. That, and emphasizing their efforts as the thing to cheer on, not just the end results.

I’ve learned to work through that, and maybe it goes without saying for most people, but being a genuine and substantive cheerleader is important.

I know this is in response to a post saying your ADHD is not other people’s ADHD, but I’m pretty sure your ADHD is my ADHD.

Mainly learning that I did, in fact, have ADHD, Then: medication (Vyvanse); drastically reducing or cutting weed, alcohol, and caffeine; therapy to help deal with childhood issues (which exacerbate symptoms); taking time away from work to start recovering from ADHD-driven burnout and building some structures to support my ADHD in the workplace.

Systems to externalize things. I’ve accepted that if I don’t see something, it isn’t happening, so I try to arrange and organize things in a way that it’s physically out in the world for me. Digital doesn’t work extremely well for me for the most part, except for some work things where it’s all in one place, because digital disappears from existence when the screen turns off.

I hate it, but regular exercise, eating more healthy, and the nights where I can actually sleep are probably the biggest factors in whether I have a good day or not. Not that knowing that is enough, of course.

Oh, and just generally learning what my weaknesses are. I’m still hugely struggling with ADHD overall, but knowing the big weaknesses helps. It’s not about doing what’s easy, it’s about facing what’s hard head-on and accepting it sucks, but you have to go on.

• I struggle with transitioning, so random text messages or having to sporadically decide to move from Task A to Task B is hard/impossible, so I have scheduled socializing and build in transition “rituals” like going for a walk, having lights and TV automatically turn off at set times,
• I get stuck on tasks, so hard rules like “Under no circumstances can you do this after X time” are vital to live by, when you can,
• I don’t notice bodily needs, so practicing meditation and having regular reminders to check-in on myself help to make sure I’ve eaten / drank water / walked around and generally am not hurting my body with whatever weird way I’m sitting,
• I’m terrible with detail-oriented work, so I have workflows specifically designed to reduce the amount of detail-oriented work I need to do,
• I binge a ton of work in short periods and rest for periods, so I moved my career toward flexible scheduling to allow for this, with enough accountability to have deadlines I can’t violate.

Yeah! Not beating yourself up over this is really important, same with not overthinking it. Some days are hard, some are less hard, some, I’ve heard, are easy.

Some days the best progress/discipline is noticing it’s a day where you need your own compassion to admit you need to let yourself off the hook for a bit.

It’s a good start to a long path :) I’m not a doctor of medicine, and not medical advice, but I know it was really helpful for me when I started recognizing I was on a path to helping myself, not the ADHD, not the trauma, not whatever else it may be diagnosed as, but me, my experiences, my patterns, my brain.

The labels can be helpful for seeing, noticing, understanding, approaching, and getting medical support where needed, but ultimately it’s great that the symptoms were validated, and congrats on taking the steps! It’s hard work to identify the need, hard work to reach out and get support, and it means you’re very likely on a good path.

The remembral is really smart! I might need to find a way that works for me for that one.

Being really open is also great; radical authenticity and openness (with those it’s appropriate and comfortable) has helped me learn and help others, and gotten acceptance from people I’d struggled with. “Let’s assume I’ve been living underground for a while, how exactly do you go about X, if you’re comfortable answering?” Also great for those with absent/developmentally lacking childhood experiences.

Yeah, a lot of my systems have been built up by noticing bad patterns and finding easier alternatives. A frozen curry that takes 10 minutes of effort tops, with pre-made masala paste - it may not be the most satisfying, but it’s costing me about $4, I’ll be eating in less time than ordering in, and I won’t get stuck looking at menus for an hour.

Yeah, I fortunately had a magic bullet (not great for it, but works) from years ago I received as a gift. The other comment nailed it; any time I’ve added water, it’s been bland. While milk, some yogurts, and a healthy mix of fruits is really flavourful, and it might throw the texture, but the oats and spinach add a night nutrient punch.

Less of everything is real. I’ll regularly and unintentionally mentally itemize what I have and what my options are regularly and funding ways to limit that is always helpful. I have a nearly empty fridge, pantry, a mealplan which is more like a two-week menu of options, only a few pieces of each clothing, and on. Fewer opportunities to fall into bad patterns. There was a time where my solution to not doing laundry for two weeks was to buy more cheap “backup” clothes.

Then the purge happened.

Few, good things, that were bought with the intention of easy maintenance, minimizing choice, while allowing a bounded spontaneity.

Yeah, the struggles of this work pattern are real. I’ve been trying to temper it, but also to accept it as much as I feasibly can, because going against the mental grain can be much more exhausting. Some of us are sprinters, not marathon runners.