I think this is a great way of putting it, because I think there's a real and necessary distinction here. The sophomoric relativism of "Gee aren't all games dark patterns?" feels like a smart thing to say, but is wrong for reasons that feel obvious but get kind of tedious to unpack.
As a different way of making the same point as you, I think critical differences are: (1) whether the compulsion to play serves you or the game creator, (2) whether the game mechanics serve an entertainment purpose or are grafted on to a game that would be just as fun without them, (3) whether it's designed around an "upgrade treadmill" as the core interactive structure of the game, as opposed to elements that have some degree of human craftsmanship to them (e.g. the mobile game Sorcery is fundamentally about the story).
"Upgrade Treadmill" is a very nice way to put it. I'm using this term from now on.
All your points are pretty much how'd I put it. If the core gameplay loop is all about leading me to the microtransactions window, it's an instant No for me.
This goes for almost all free games such as Apex, Fortnite, Destiny, etc... where skins are the primary source of revenue.
That's without mentioning "games" which I consider gambling like Genshin impact, Fifa ultimate team, and all kinds of shameless gacha out there
"It's free" is not an excuse for preying on people's psychological weaknesses.
I think "Red Queen Race" is the term from philosophy I'd use - the faster you run (from the Red Queen in Alice) the more you stay in the same place
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
I think the reason people are bringing this up in this thread is because even though it seems obvious to you, this website doesn't seem to make the distinction.
It just treats every instance of what it's decided are "dark patterns" as bad, regardless of whether they're being used maliciously or not.
I dont know if they added it very recently, but they have a definition right at the top:
> Definition: A gaming dark pattern is something that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer.
I don't think this solves all of it since it makes some weird assumptions. Does the developer really say "Hmmm, I want to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player" before adding lootboxes? I am pretty sure they don't, so this definition is not a very good one. OTOH, maybe just changing "to cause" to "that causes" would clean this up quite a bit by removing the assumption I disagree with, so maybe it's just in the way I read it.
Note: In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to say "this is tough to define but I can try to say 'yes' or 'no' to specific examples". It's also acceptable to me to admin (as you have to for some words) that a word doesn't have a real definition but is rather the product of confusion or convenience.
As a different way of making the same point as you, I think critical differences are: (1) whether the compulsion to play serves you or the game creator, (2) whether the game mechanics serve an entertainment purpose or are grafted on to a game that would be just as fun without them, (3) whether it's designed around an "upgrade treadmill" as the core interactive structure of the game, as opposed to elements that have some degree of human craftsmanship to them (e.g. the mobile game Sorcery is fundamentally about the story).