Competition
The game makes you compete against other players.
People like a challenge and playing against other people is often how games provide this challenge. Competition by itself is not necessarily a dark pattern. Classic games like chess and checkers, and most sports have competition. It's when competition is combined with other dark patterns that problems arise.
Competition in games takes many forms. It could be a scoreboard that shows who has the most points. It could be a leaderboard that allows you to directly challenge and take someone's spot. It could be a match between two or more people, or a variety of other methods. The main objective for the game developer is to make a goal that two parties strive towards, but only one can obtain. The winning party will get a sense of pride and superiority, and potentially some additional reward. The defeated party will feel negative emotions and may be punished inside the game.
If there are big rewards for winning and staying at the top of the rankings, this can lead to something called Pay to Win or "Monetized Rivalries". The more you spend on the game to have the best items, the better you will be able to maintain your rank and keep getting the better rewards. For some players this type of competition can be a strong motivator to spend large sums of money on the game to maintain their status. It may even cause players to exhibit anti-social behaviors, such as cheating, bullying or revenge.
If the losing party is punished inside the game, they may feel like they can regain what they lost if they invest more time and money. Additionally, they may feel the urge to practice so that they can get better and win more often. This is a strong incentive to play the game more often.
Games can also make you feel envy for other players by showing you all the rewards they are earning. Envy can inspire you to be like the top players and play the game until you are as good as them, or envy can be malicious and make you jealous of somebody in the game and make you want to destroy them. Either way, by allowing the game to manipulate your emotions like this you begin playing the game for reasons other than enjoyment, such as power and status.
Competition in games takes many forms. It could be a scoreboard that shows who has the most points. It could be a leaderboard that allows you to directly challenge and take someone's spot. It could be a match between two or more people, or a variety of other methods. The main objective for the game developer is to make a goal that two parties strive towards, but only one can obtain. The winning party will get a sense of pride and superiority, and potentially some additional reward. The defeated party will feel negative emotions and may be punished inside the game.
If there are big rewards for winning and staying at the top of the rankings, this can lead to something called Pay to Win or "Monetized Rivalries". The more you spend on the game to have the best items, the better you will be able to maintain your rank and keep getting the better rewards. For some players this type of competition can be a strong motivator to spend large sums of money on the game to maintain their status. It may even cause players to exhibit anti-social behaviors, such as cheating, bullying or revenge.
If the losing party is punished inside the game, they may feel like they can regain what they lost if they invest more time and money. Additionally, they may feel the urge to practice so that they can get better and win more often. This is a strong incentive to play the game more often.
Games can also make you feel envy for other players by showing you all the rewards they are earning. Envy can inspire you to be like the top players and play the game until you are as good as them, or envy can be malicious and make you jealous of somebody in the game and make you want to destroy them. Either way, by allowing the game to manipulate your emotions like this you begin playing the game for reasons other than enjoyment, such as power and status.
Citations and Sources • Seven Psychological Sins of SimCity Social
• 5 Game Mechanics that Make Games Addicting
• 5 Game Mechanics that Make Games Addicting
Examples
Drilla: Idle Gold Miner Game"There is a leaderboards tab."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel"This is a competitive and there's little to no way to play it casually. Casual Match, despite its name implied, is not casual-oriented, you can often match with decks that while have bad winrate are more toxic than in ranked. The most casual you can have is some events like N/R festival and Legend Anthology, the problem is these events are time-limited."
TheoTown"Multiplayer component."
Forge of Empires"in almost everything there is to gain, you are compared to other players/guilds. Although, for the most part, there's never any penalty in being the worst, it just gives more rewards to those on the top, which consist of things like forge points (progression points.) Goods and non-premium currency."
Beatstar - Touch Your Music"1. Global and Friend leaderboards. Neither allow you to only compare total score based on the songs you own. This can make it impossible to catch up, since these other players may own exclusive songs. 2. Weekly events contain leaderboards with limited attempts. You can buy more attempts with gems."
AFK Journey"Almost every mode has a leader board and shows the top players. Your guild also has a ranking on the server."
RPG Toram Online"Thanks to the Tier 5 skill trees, most players can have an opportunity to main the most obvious one via; Mage (either MD or with Dagger, etc.) which gain access to Qadal, and Magic: Cannon that could one shot the boss in a one fell swoop before other DPS could get there, and it ruins the fun for everyone, especially when they try to achieve an Attacker title or just try to get a single xtal alone. It FAILED to make it a fun, and friendly experience as players who wants to achieve gets nothing."
Invasion: Modern Empire"zone vs zone, guild vs guild, rift (player vs player), king zone, top territory government"
Clash Royale"You have to fight people to move up a rank"
MONOPOLY GO!"Friends and other real people, though the others are likely to be bots"