Encourages Anti-Social Behavior
The game incentivizes players to lie, cheat, or backstab other players to get ahead.
Some games encourage anti-social behavior. Combat games may encourage you to kill other players in violent ways. Driving games may encourage you to drive recklessly and break the law. Other games may encourage you to lie, deceive, steal from or backstab other players to get ahead in the game. Some games may even allow or encourage some form of cheating.
Within the context of the game, these behaviors are normalized, but you still feel bad when you are on the receiving end of one of these anti-social behaviors. If you have invested time and perhaps money into a game and then lose some of that because a friend backstabs you, that's going to cause some unwanted bad feelings. If someone steals some of your in-game resources, that may make you angry and require you to spend more time and money earning those resources back.
For some players, being on the receiving end of one of these behaviors may make them feel a need for revenge. If the player is part of a team, they may be able to enlist their teammates to pick on a particular player in the game. This will cause a negative experience for that player and may prevent them from enjoying the game.
Within the context of the game, these behaviors are normalized, but you still feel bad when you are on the receiving end of one of these anti-social behaviors. If you have invested time and perhaps money into a game and then lose some of that because a friend backstabs you, that's going to cause some unwanted bad feelings. If someone steals some of your in-game resources, that may make you angry and require you to spend more time and money earning those resources back.
For some players, being on the receiving end of one of these behaviors may make them feel a need for revenge. If the player is part of a team, they may be able to enlist their teammates to pick on a particular player in the game. This will cause a negative experience for that player and may prevent them from enjoying the game.
Citations and Sources • Dark Patterns in the Design of Games
• Wikipedia :: Video Game Controversies
• Wikipedia :: Video Game Controversies
Examples
King of Thieves"Raiding other player dungeons is literally the point of the game"
Single City: Life Metaverse"very much so."
The Walking Dead: Survivors"PvP is main focus of the game, surprise attack on "unshielded" players are a common thing, rewards and achievement are rewards for PvP, and ranking and titles are given to most aggressive and powerful players"
Last Fortress"Very political with other alliances. You can lie or have spies in those alliances to backstab and gain advantages"
Palace Rule"To be fair it is literally a harem game so encouraging you to use harem politics isn’t surprising…but it’s still toxic to design a game that forces people into situations where you benefit the most from those behaviors."
Final Fantasy XV: War for Eos"It's considered a "war" game and the realm chat is full of people trashing other people for being upset when they get attacked by other players."
Figure Fantasy"The only form of sacrifice is during a guild event called Playground of destiny,that club activity requires a sheer amount of teamwork,sadly even within that event there are limited recources and frames that decorates IGM profiles only available to top 9 members based on accumulated damage done on bosses of each stage, even thought it was everybody's teamwork that got them there, so yeah, betrayal promotion is here, take note that most of active players who are into the game quit after the event"
Kawaii Home Design"It's a competitive game and the only goal is to get higher in the ranking. Some people just copy the last room that ranked #1 and get a lot of points from it, without ever designing anything themselves. When I vote for designs, I've seen the same design 10 times for the same room pitch. The name of the players were all different."
Love Nikki-Dress UP Queen"Some of the moves you can use in competitions."
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang"some events require you to get the most points and the easiest way to do that is by cheating other players to give you items without you giving back some items."