Pay to Skip
Spend money to avoid waiting for a timer to expire.
There are a number of ways that this dark pattern can be used, but they all rely on spending money to skip over something in the game that you don't want to do.
1) You may have a limited amount of "energy" or "turns" that you can use before you are no longer allowed to play the game. You then have to wait for that energy to recharge, or you can pay to instantly recharge it.
2) You may start an activity in a game (building, researching, hunting, etc) and the game starts a timer that indicates how long it will take for this activity to finish before you can collect the rewards. You have to wait, or you can pay money to skip the timer and collect the rewards right now.
3) The game show you advertisements, but will allow you to spend money to skip the ads. This is how you can trade money for your attention.
In these examples, a game designer intentionally puts an undesirable blockage into the game that prevents it from being played unless you wait or pay money. This causes the player some discomfort which can be overcome by paying money. If the player chooses to wait instead, this turns into a different dark pattern called Wait to Play.
1) You may have a limited amount of "energy" or "turns" that you can use before you are no longer allowed to play the game. You then have to wait for that energy to recharge, or you can pay to instantly recharge it.
2) You may start an activity in a game (building, researching, hunting, etc) and the game starts a timer that indicates how long it will take for this activity to finish before you can collect the rewards. You have to wait, or you can pay money to skip the timer and collect the rewards right now.
3) The game show you advertisements, but will allow you to spend money to skip the ads. This is how you can trade money for your attention.
In these examples, a game designer intentionally puts an undesirable blockage into the game that prevents it from being played unless you wait or pay money. This causes the player some discomfort which can be overcome by paying money. If the player chooses to wait instead, this turns into a different dark pattern called Wait to Play.
Citations and Sources • Dark Patterns in the Design of Games
• You Shall Not Pass! The 4 Types of Paywall in Mobile Games
• You Shall Not Pass! The 4 Types of Paywall in Mobile Games
Examples
Blue Archive"Aside of Tactical Challenge tokens, you can also use Pyroxenes (Premium Currency) to recharge AP (up to 20 times a day). it gets costier as you try to recharge more in that way (price resets daily)"
Fallout Shelter"Nuka cola quantum, the games premium currency, can be bought for real life money. It is used to skip more than one quest a day and to speed up training of dwellers or to time skip in quests."
Drilla: Idle Gold Miner Game"In the Tower, an unlockable later, you either have the choice to wait 6 hours, or skip the timer and play now with, you guessed it, CRYSTALS!"
TheoTown"Paying crystals to skip time and increase speed"
Forge of Empires"can spend to speed up practically any time-based thing"
Bud Farm: Grass Roots"pay to skip building or finish growing a plant"
Space Arena: Build & Fight MMO"pay to skip "repair" cool down when you lose a ranked game with your ship design, can also do this with celestium which can be obtained for free but not in large quantities"
Dragons: Rise of Berk"You can buy an ingame currency to speed up certain thinghs"
PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator"You can refresh Gobble and daily quests, but only once per cycle. All other timer skips are acquired at a rate where you don't need to spend money to max them out"
Talking Tom Gold Run"Buying bombs to open boxes"