Abstract
Temporal dark patterns are patterns that request too much time, provide too little entertainment time, or result in users feeling like they’ve wasted their time. Temporal dark patterns pose particular danger to users as their power is already well known by developers, and they’ve been honed to a high degree of effectiveness. Don’t confuse irresistibility, where the user wants to come back and spend more time in the application, with temporal dark patterns, where the user feels obliged to come back and spend more time in the application. When the user is in the application, irresistible apps make the time feel well spent and that something meaningful has happened, while apps that use temporal dark patterns make the time feel wasted and pointless.
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Notes
- 1.
Patricia Hernandez. “This Year’s Biggest Shooters Remind Me Why Multiplayer Unlocks Suck.” Kotaku, 2010.
- 2.
One variant is for all hellbanned users to see only each other, subjecting them to the style of problem broadcasts that they had given others. Max Payne 3 uses a similar system, where players caught cheating being banished to a “Cheaters Pool,” where they can only play against other cheaters.
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© 2014 Chris Lewis
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Lewis, C. (2014). Temporal Dark Patterns. In: Irresistible Apps. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6422-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6422-4_9
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Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4302-6421-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4302-6422-4
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