Yohan Engineer

https://doi.org/10.64823/ijter.2601003

Mobile games, video streaming platforms and over-the-top (OTT) platforms are examples of digital entertainment platforms that are increasingly dependent on interface-level design strategies to maintain user engagement, retention, and monetization. In conjunction with usability and personalization, academic literature has also pointed to the increasing popularity of dark design patterns, design practices that affect the behaviour of users in a manner that can diminish transparency or informed choice. Although this practice has been examined in various digital spaces, there is still a paucity of systematic synthesis of entertainment platforms and how they are regulated in new markets. This paper is a literature review of the dark design patterns in the digital entertainment industry, their popularity, the thematic organization, and how they relate to the Indian regulatory environment. In accordance with PRISMA, 67 peer-reviewed articles were located and filtered in Scopus. The bibliometric analysis was carried out with the help of VOSviewer to map the intellectual framework and thematic development of the literature based on the analysis of co-occurrence of keywords. A narrowed down set of 20 important studies were then examined based on the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) framework to facilitate deep qualitative synthesis. The results indicate thematic clusters that are different, but interrelated and include mobile gaming, streaming platforms, persuasive and deceptive design practices, user engagement mechanisms, and ethical considerations. The TCCM synthesis emphasizes the prevailing theoretical bases on behavioural science and persuasive technology, various entertainment settings, repetitive influence features, and a spectrum of qualitative, experimental, and computational procedures. The review also places these insights in the context of the consumer-oriented regulatory framework in India, which demonstrates how the regulatory instruments facilitate the principles of transparency, informed consent, and responsible design.