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
Fishdom"yes you can buy gems and coins which you can use to buy time skips, or buy a special package which gives you more lives"
DungeonSquad"it's possible to spend money to get tokens that are used for upgrading your characters."
Cookie Run: Kingdom"You can use premium currency to skip timers."
Alto's Odyssey"You can use in-game coins to revive, or watch an ad."
The Sims™ Mobile"Every action takes a certain amount of time to complete, often somewhere around 30 minutes just to cook something in game for one. Most of the game consists of waiting and you can pay to get past this"
SUITSME: Dress Up Fashion Game"If you miss a day of playing, you can pay to keep your game streak"
IdleOn - Idle MMO"Gacha"
The Sims™ FreePlay"'life points' (premium currency) can be used to speed actions up. the main way to get 'life points' is to pay; any other method is rare and unreliable."
Figure Fantasy"In some type of events the only way to progress is to pay (Cat race events), Hot toys collection little sun farming upgrades after you spend on upgrading the futured figure, same goes for cooking & baking events & toy factory event, in other terms they are all of roundabout forms of spending for the sake of shortening needed time to gather more prizes, those who don't pay hard will miss out a lot."
Love Live!School idol festival"You can play songs for LP (live points). They recover slowly over time, and you can spend items or premium currency to refill."