To me gambling requires betting of long term/valuable resources. In Balatro, the only thing that you'll affect is each individual run, you're back to square one after each as it's a rouguelike. Games like Clash Royale where you can spend actual money on chests for items that affect the game long term, not just for a single match, to me is actual gambling, whereas playing a poker hand using fake chips that only affects that single <1h run absolutely isn't.
It looks like whoever came up with the ratings just saw it uses poker hands for scoring and represents a score with chips, therefore it's gambling, and gave it an 18+ rating, when you're not actually gambling anything (either real world money, or long term items in the game)
PEGI can't even make their minds up, I believe it was originally given an 18+ rating, which was amended to 3+ when the publisher appealed, and then it was amended back to 18+ unprompted.
Perhaps LBAL should get reskinned (with no slot animations and with some pocket monster collection instead of cards, or similar) - with no change to the gameplay.
Anti-gambling activists have limited resources too. They're going after what they recognize, which is casino gambling and simulations of it. This new shape of gambling just isn't on the radar of non-tech people yet.
It doesn't have to be a human, either, at this point it could be AI trained on the same bad answers.
It's just like "sexual content" ratings in TV and movies. It's not really about sexual content. It's about whether or not you show a nipple or genitalia. A show can have plenty of steamy sexual stuff but it's unlikely to be classified as sexual content unless it visually contains key checkbox items. Likewise, if it merely shows a body part in a non-sexual context, it gets labeled as sexual content.
> This game teaches - by way of images, information and gameplay - skills and knowledge that are used in poker. During gameplay, the player is rewarded with ‘chips’ for playing certain hands. The player is able to access a list of poker hand names. As the player hovers over these poker hands, the game explains what types of cards the player would need in order to play certain hands. As the game goes on, the player becomes increasingly familiar with which hands would earn more points. Because these are hands that exist in the real world, this knowledge and skill could be transferred to a real-life game of poker.
Their issue with Balatro is that it teaches poker hands.
Now search the PEGI site for 'poker' and you'll find numerous games with Poker in the title which are rated 12 and 16. 'Poker Smash' for Xbox and 'Poker Masters' for PC and three other games are even rated '3'.
It seems that ratings have changed over time - early 2000s were much more leniant on gambling as a topic. Every game on Google Play with Poker in title, bar one, which I found had an '18' rating.
https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
Similarly, they avoid drawing attention to their shenanigans by keeping the vibe clean
Age Rating
12+
Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
Infrequent/Mild Simulated Gambling
Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear ThemesAnyway, I think this is wrong, because kids are mostly playing with their parents’ money. So it still becomes a system with a positive ROI from their point of view.
Nit picking I guess, but... looks like a slot machine simulator... and slot machines are synonymous with gambling IMO.
It takes the aesthetic of a slot machine but there's no wagers. There's no gambling mechanic.
Are we really that blind to what gambling is that there are people that think playing poker without wagers is a form of gambling?
On the flip side, it's super similar to those video poker machines in bars and restaurants. If you allowed the option to increase the bet and got rid of the special joker abilities, it's basically the same thing. People claiming otherwise are being willfully ignorant. I love Balatro, but it's definitely gambling adjacent and depending on how rules/laws around children gambling are defined, it probably should be age gated, or those rules/laws should be updated to reflect reality, you can't have it both ways. But also, I'd say the same about all of those games with gacha and lootbox mechanics.
There was no bet in the first place, that's the point. It's not gambling because there's no wager.
Other than the fact that no real money is involved, which is really the core problem that reasonable people have with predatory gambling apps
I could see Google wanting to comply with some directive not to “glorify gambling” or something along those lines. This would be independent of whether or not the games actually are gambling.
Anyway, I don’t think people are being willfully ignorant. I think they are just assuming Google is trying to regulate actual gambling. Not gambling aesthetic for non-gambling. But I have no idea what Google actually is trying to do.
I will note that it is pretty suspicious that the one type of gambling they managed to regulate is the one that doesn’t make them any money other than the first purchase…
Other than playing cards being shown on screen, it's not.
> If you allowed the option to increase the bet
There is no betting in Balatro.
> and got rid of the special joker abilities, it's basically the same thing.
So completely change how the game works completely then it's "basically the same" as video poker? Do you hear yourself?
> People claiming otherwise are being willfully ignorant.
People claiming otherwise can tell the difference between 2 games using playing cards.
> I love Balatro, but it's definitely gambling adjacent
Again, there is no gambling in Balatro.
> and depending on how rules/laws around children gambling are defined, it probably should be age gated, or those rules/laws should be updated to reflect reality, you can't have it both ways.
Gonna ignore this because you haven't explained in any way how Balatro is in anyway "gambling adjacent" other than your made up situation where if you completely change the way the game works it becomes gambling, which of course is nonsense.
Even though video poker as it’s typically implemented and played is essentially indistinguishable from a slot machine — if there is user choice of what cards to swap in a hand, the machine will indicate and default to the option with highest expected value, so user skill is irrelevant.
Well, most of the time :)
In many of these communities, obvious replacements like Rook decks [0] are somehow perfectly fine. Even though you can easily emulate a standard deck using this deck that consists of about the same number of ranked cards divided into 4 suits.
Two things that are practically identical, but one is "evil" and one is not purely by association of how some people use one of the things.
As a species, we draw some pretty weird dividing lines.
Two shepherds watching a flock of sheep can gamble between themselves on which side of the field the sheep will mostly be on at mid-day.
For my own perspective as someone who did grow up in a "no playing cards" religious group, it didn't help much regarding gambling. My siblings and I made wagers on random things all the time, including card games we made up ourselves with Rook decks.
The "evil" connotation did have some particular effects, personally. I remember around age 8 or so, some classmates with a standard card deck taught me how to play "Go Fish". No wagers, just playing the game. I was still apprehensive to join the game, and I spent the rest of the day alternating between being afraid of my parents finding out and worrying that my soul had been damned.
A mother appears in front of you, with haunted eyes and a worry-worn handkerchief in hand. "You cannot save those two missing girls, but you have to stop this from happening again! Help those that cannot help themselves."
What do you do, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia?
My guess? exactly what rational people did
* Be vocal about the worst-case scenario
* Criticize those that ignore the warnings
* Ostracize those that ignore the criticism
* Do your level best to discourage "gateway" behavior as best you can
I don't disagree with any of your bullets, but none of those bullets actually require saying "playing cards are evil." They all work just as well with a theme of "Gambling can be fun, but it's addictive, and you might not know you've lost control til it's too late."
Yes, and this is extremely stupid.
A deck of cards which you can use to play non-gambling card games but that doesn't use the same "branding" I'm sure works really well. It's hard to feel "cool" when you're playing with a Fisher-Price deck.
This might be the "worldwide standard" but that doesn't mean anything.
Every major religion is comfortable with the concept of needing to go out into the sticks and unfuck the rubes before they start sacrificing children to their goat god.
Dice for determining movement in a board game was somehow totally fine, but making anything more than that dependent on the outcome of a dice roll was considered evil.
Just like us banning certain medicine because it can be turned into drugs...
And how we ban knives or certain guns because they can be used for evil purposes...
And words/phrases(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42675025)...
Really the only thing I haven't seen recently (the US specifically) is sexulized content restrictions...
Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.
I was told it was because the face cards were derived from Tarot cards. Playing Uno or Rook (which had only numbers on their cards) at functions was considered just fine -- although of course any poker chips would have been so obviously Right Out that nobody even thought to ask.
(FYI later on I looked it up and the face cards do not derive from Tarot cards; but these discussions happened before the World Wide Web.)
I think it is fair to argue where to draw the line, but I think some "looks like gambling but without gambling" do in fact deserve more scrutiny just because of the resemblance.
(On the other end of the spectrum we as a society should really crack down on the "doesn't look like gambling but is gambling" epidemic.)
One of them has the aesthetic, one of them has the actual negative thing.
The aesthetic being banned is supposed to be in support of reducing the impact of the actual negative thing, but the actual negative thing is being PROMOTED instead of banned.
It all feels very pants-on-head kind of up-is-down logic.