this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
697 points (99.3% liked)
Games
16949 readers
582 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We can all imagine the imagery of balatro being somewhat a problem.
But less of a problem compared to games with actual gambling for actual money in the form of lootboxes or gacha mechanisms?
If you can get that to make sense, i'd love to hear it. Can there be a serious warning regarding gambling on balatro? for sure. But how is gambling imagery 18+, and actual gambling with actual money 3+? That's just insane.
What is most likely to get kids to become gambling addicts? Them learning pokerhands via balatro, or them gambling real money on lootboxes & gacha games and getting addicted to the thrill of winning after gamblling money?
No that part is very hypocritical, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with how much money the big game developers can throw around to make sure their loot box game isnt marked for adults.
I think both lootboxes and poker games are bad in this sense, its just the other reasons people are giving that are nonsense.
To say clearly, the rating board is hypocritical and should also mark lootbox games accordingly.
Have you ever played balatro?
Because calling it a pokergame makes me think you haven't. It's a deckbuilder that uses pokerhands (and impossible pokerhands) as mechanic to score, but there is no actual gambling, and except for which hands exist in poker and their relative value, you don't learn any pokerskills. You also don't do any gambling, you modify your deck of cards, and gather jokers that modify what cards are worth and how they score, and end up also making hands that are impossible in poker etc...
I can imagine the imagery and the link to poker to require some warning, but i'd find it hard to say it stimulates you to gamble, as it's not a gambling game, doesn't teach you the poker rules, and is a completely different kind of game. It just uses poker to flavor the gameplay, and uses some other poker terms (blinds, ante, chips) to indicate difficulty/score.
I dont disagree with what you brought up but you left out that the game literally looks similar to any general poker gambling site.
Its poker with a twist, which absolutely exists in casinos.
It does? I guess we'll differ on that opinion i guess.
Unless showing you a hand of playingcards means you look like a general poker gambling site. It has a very specific artstyle, and since its gameplay is completely different from actual poker, so is how it behaves. For me it's close to a slay the spire or heartstone kind of game, and looks like that...
I didnt mean specific if I said that, it generally looks like one. Like an old one from yahoo or something. The heavy poker themes and learning poker hands is enough.