[Karunamon]

I think we're really abusing the terms 'dark pattern' and 'ethics' at the point where merely popping a notification about ingame events is covered.

When Tetris was first released back in 1986, its uniquely addictive nature led some to theorize that it was intrinsically harmful, or more conspiratorially, that it was a weapon made by Russians to harm US productivity. Had Tetris first been released in the modern era, I think both of these (patently insane) complaints would have been taken more seriously.

[ingonealan3]

I see a fundamental problem in the following general attitude: "make games a much more mindless/regular part of players' day vs. depending on users to actively seek out their game". Why do this? Why not just put the game out there, and if it's any good, players will start raving about it. Sure, in this case it's pretty harmless. But when most executives and/or developers start thinking this way, it turns into a sort of arms race for users' attention. User attention is basically the new "market share" that they seek to maximize. I think that as long as this is the general view on things, the companies' incentives (or individual developers, to a somewhat lesser extent) is misaligned with the public good.

And specifically on notifications, we have evidence that they don't have a positive impact on our attention spans: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2858036.2858359 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26121498/

[JadeNB]

There's also a difference between "merely popping a notification" and actively hoping to make your games a mindless part of players' days, as in your parent's quote.