Temporal
Designs that exploit time and the value of the player's time — grinding, energy/wait timers, appointment mechanics, daily streaks, attention capture.
Patterns in this family (7)
Can't pause or save
Designs that prevent safely stopping — no pause or save, or progress lost (or attacked) when you leave — so players can't quit on their own terms.
Content treadmill
A relentless cadence of new seasons, stories, and limited updates keeps players returning so they never fall behind an ever-moving target.
Daily login / streaks
Escalating rewards and loss-aversion penalties punish missing a day.
Energy / wait timers (appointment mechanics)
Play is gated by real-time cooldowns that can be bypassed for money.
Interruptible-but-sticky loops
Auto-advancing or endless content resists natural stopping points.
Pay-to-skip / engineered grind
Progression is deliberately slowed so the game can sell time-savers that remove the friction it introduced.
Grinding / engineered repetition
Repetitive effort is inflated to extend play or to drive pay-to-skip purchases.