this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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If that's what it is, maybe I'd pick it up to support them, and play it w/ my kids while teaching them how poker works. I'm 100% against gambling, but I've taught my kids how blackjack, roulette, etc work because I think they're interesting games. In fact, I've taught my kids how card counting in BJ works, and I do it as a hobby (again, not with real money). I have a zero tolerance policy for gambling (they can do what they like when they're adults though), but I have absolutely zero problem with gambling games. You do you, as long as you understand the long-term statistics and don't use actual money while living at my house.
If I lived in the EU, I'd definitely buy this game for my kids as a protest. Screw this pearl clutching.
That said, I have a strict rule about actual gambling in my house. I've told my kids I won't let them play anything that has microtransactions, full stop. They really want to play Fortnite, but that's a big no from me, even though many of their friends play. I've told them they can play pretty much any game they want, as long as there are no MTX, and basically every F2P game has that crap.
The irony is that you can't really teach someone who doesn't know anything any poker anything more than what the hands are, and which are considered better than others, by playing Balatro.
Everything else in Balatro is completely divorced from poker. There are a few other shared terms, but they're defined completely differently in Balatro than in poker (e.g. a "blind" is a stage, 3 stages in a level (small/big/boss), and the levels are called "ante"s, also totally different from what an ante is in poker.
Exactly! And most of the concepts behind the hands are present in other games (double and triples, straights, etc). I played Yahtzee as a kid, and that has pretty much every hand from poker (aside from a flush, because dice don't have suits). If Yahtzee is offensive to you, I don't know what to say...
Hold on, I'm going to go make a game that's obliquely about a porn studio. Let's see if you buy that one as a protest too.
Eh, if it was a management-style game, that might be interesting. I really liked "Game Dev Studio", and honestly, the only difference here is subject matter. As long as there's no actual porn, throw a PEGI 12 or 16 on it, depending on how far you take it.
For Balatro, PEGI 12 seems more than appropriate.
Thinking about this hypothetically is making me laugh.
Imagine setting things like how often your employees are checked for STIs, and the cost for that, etc., lol
It would also be interesting to manage a brothel. Same basic mechanics, but you could choose the type of business (escort vs full service), gender of workers and target clientele, types of advertising, etc. If you take it too far, you could get shut down/caught by the authorities (depending on whether you go legit or underground).
I'd probably play both those games, especially if the developer doesn't take it that seriously. Both seem like a ton of fun, and can be done without anything explicit in it.
Maybe those games exist, idk, I haven't considered looking.