damnedfurry

A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery.

Okay. Well, Balatro doesn't do that--no gambling of any kind happens in the game.

So, what's your point, exactly?

"Antes" are what Balatro calls its levels. Each level consists of 3 stages, which the game calls "blinds" (small/big/boss).

In poker, you don't "beat" an ante, it's part of what you bet. You also don't "reach" blinds, nor is there such a thing as a "boss blind" in poker. And the word "bet" or any synonym should be pretty conspicuous by its absence in Balatro's description. There is no gambling without betting/wagering, after all.

So yes, if you're familiar with poker, that description should make it obvious that the words have different meanings in the game than they do in poker.

The only actual 'mechanic' that's actually the same in Balatro as in poker is what comprises the different hands, and their relative value. And even then, there are also hands in Balatro that don't exist in poker at all (five of a kind, flush house, etc.).

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

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.

But Balatro doesn't do that, so how is this a valid addition to the analogy?

There is zero betting in Balatro.

It's not performative gambling. It's not any kind of gambling.

Gambling by definition requires making a wager that you risk losing. That literally does not exist in Balatro. There are no wagers at all, not even for fake currency/points.

The fact that people are so lazy that they keep going for the corporate-sure-to-enshittify options shows how little people actually care about escaping corporate control of their lives.

It's not that deep.

People want to go where other people are. A tiny minority of them are even aware of the things that are influencing your decisions. Not a single moment is spent thinking about whether X or Y is more 'corporately controlled' before deciding to join a new platform.

Well, now I feel 20 years older, lol

Pretty rude to sit down next to someone who is already seated and then tell them to leave, don't you think? lol

Edit: Phew, lots of weird fantasizing going on in this thread, lol

Yatzhee is dice.

So is craps, one of the most popular casino games on the planet.

Also, the simple fact is that there is no reason that any entity promoting their product has to choose any of these platforms over the other--you can just post to all of them, every single one that has enough users to be worth posting to.

You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.

You should know that you're talking about before drawing conclusions.