Online gaming is today a popular everyday activity among both young people and adults. This has led to several new design methods such as dark game design patterns which aim to manipulate the user to act in a certain way that may not necessarily be in their best interest, with features that can be destructive to the user. 

The purpose of this study is therefore to examine the presence of dark patterns on two popular gaming platforms – a free to play mobile game and a slot game at a popular online casino – to then investigate what the implementation of these patterns means for the given context. This was considered important to study to identify if the implementation of dark patterns is used differently depending on the gaming platform’s target group, especially as several studies show that it is mainly children and teenagers who play mobile games that are free to play, while slot games are aimed towards adults. The conclusion of this study has shown that the amount of identified dark patterns primarily depends on the game’s construction rather than it’s target group, but also that dark game design patterns are implemented to encourages the user to actively play online games, which in the long run should make the user want to support the gaming companies monetarily.