this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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What? Did the playing cards have their tits out or something?
It was imagery of gambling. And yeah, that tracks.
Sure, but there isn't any actual gambling, and Balatro works a lot differently to actual gambling. It's not the gateway drug PEGI seems to think it is...
Their reasoning is because it uses poker hands, it teaches you poker which could lead to gambling. Pretty ridiculous.
Yeah, the hands are what make poker dangerous...
My concern with poker has to do with betting, and therefore risk-taking, and Balatro doesn't have that. Learning how poker hands work is an academic exercise, and I absolutely encourage it, since it's such an important cultural thing (i.e. shows up in lots of movies).
So yeah, absolutely ridiculous.
Crazy. The benchmark for age ratings should be based in the game design, not solely aesthetics. Balatro doesn't tell you to enter your credit card details and use psychologically manipulative tactics to maximise player spend, like other games good for ages 3+.
Of course, then PEGI would need to do some actual research into the games they're rating.
But there is imagery of gambling. If GTA had a casino and people playing the cards, they'll get a similar rating for it.
Super Mario 64 DS had you sitting at a poker table in a casino playing poker. New Super Mario Bros had the same poker game, but I'm not sure if that one was in a casino. PEGI rated both of them 3+.
The poker game in both games is in a very obvious casino environment. PEGI is smoking something.
Smoking that Nintendo cash.
Not to mention the pokemon games, many of which had slot machine minigames.
I'm sure GTA would get hit with a higher rating for other reasons first...
The reason gambling is a problem is because it's easy to get addicted to chance, which is particularly problematic for games with a negative expected return and high chance-based payouts. For those games, the house always wins, but the player keeps playing because they think they'll get lucky and beat the house. I am 100% against anything of that nature in games.
However, the only "risk" in Balatro is not scoring a high enough score and having to start over again. This has much more to do with other "roguelikes" like Slay the Spire than actual gambling, because you're not really staking anything. LIterally, the only overlap is that poker terminology is used (hands, "blinds," chips, etc). The actual mechanics have nothing to do with gambling.
MTX are bad because the house (publisher/devs) wins due to preying on the player, so they should absolutely be rated higher than a game like Balatro, which doesn't do anything of that nature at all.
I would have no problem with my kids playing Balatro, and I may even pick it up to play with them because it has fun mechanics. They've watched me play Slay the Spire and Inscryption, and Balatro looks very similar to those, with the main difference being the look of the cards and mechanics for scoring. That's it, there's no gambling.
And murder