Maybe that’s why I enjoyed it, but wasn’t blown away by it.
I think you and I are probably similar in that. I’d say I really enjoyed about 20 hours of it, then played an additional 30 hours where I was hoping things would start getting fun again, but it never came.
Ignoring the video Slots scoring, and poker themes. I would still say luck is so much stronger in balatro then on any roguelike I’ve played. To the extent that the best “strategy”, is basically to start going all in on a certain playstyle, that requires 3+ things to be viable, and then die or reset if the necessary components don’t show up before the ante outpaces you.
In short, psudo-gambling mechanics are IMO largely what hooks people in the game, which I also have to say the PEGI group may actually be if anything slightly underestimating the risk. IE the game is 100% not gambling, but it draws on everything in the brain that gambling does. “Maybe next game will give me cooler jokers that will get me further”. I mean yes all games have some extent of these, there’s a reason why there’s such a large overlap. As well as why basically all mobile app developers, and a good portion of big corporate monstrocities turned their games to build on gambling mechanics.
Balatro IMO leans into all of the hook on gambling tropes, just avoiding the last step of exploiting it to get users to continue to pay them money. It’s actually a pretty reasonable question to ask… does it put kids/teenagers into a mindset that will make them more vulnerable to a less ethical game developer that takes that last step.
“Maybe next game will give me cooler jokers that will get me further”. I mean yes all games have some extent of these, there’s a reason why there’s such a large overlap. As well as why basically all mobile app developers, and a good portion of big corporate monstrocities turned their games to build on gambling mechanics.
The psychological term at the core of the mechanic is a variable reward schedule:
In behavioral psychology, reinforcement refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism’s future behavior, typically in the presence of a particular antecedent stimulus
Variable ratio schedule (VR) – reinforced on average every nth response, but not always on the nth response.[14]: 88
Variable ratio: rapid, steady rate of responding; most resistant to extinction.
Applications
Reinforcement and punishment are ubiquitous in human social interactions, and a great many applications of operant principles have been suggested and implemented. Following are a few examples.
Addiction and dependence
Positive and negative reinforcement play central roles in the development and maintenance of addiction and drug dependence. An addictive drug is intrinsically rewarding; that is, it functions as a primary positive reinforcer of drug use. The brain’s reward system assigns it incentive salience (i.e., it is “wanted” or “desired”),[31][32][33] so as an addiction develops, deprivation of the drug leads to craving. In addition, stimuli associated with drug use – e.g., the sight of a syringe, and the location of use – become associated with the intense reinforcement induced by the drug.[31][32][33] These previously neutral stimuli acquire several properties: their appearance can induce craving, and they can become conditioned positive reinforcers of continued use.
The thing is that many games use an aspect of random reward, which leverages the conditioning effect of a variable ratio schedule to get people to want to play. Rogue had random drops in 1980, for something early that I can name off-the-cuff. Like, having random rewards are all over video games, were around long before F2P or pay-to-win lootboxes. Like, banning games for leveraging that mechanic would ban a huge range of video games, card games, board games, etc.
I think that the reason that people worry about it with gambling is that a runaway impact on someone directly results in draining money from them, especially since someone can hope to “make money back”. “This will help encourage someone to buy an expansion or sequel” is acceptable, but “money is spent on a per-roll basis in the hopes of getting money” is not.
Balatro definitely makes use of random rewards…but many, many games do that.
Balatro looks a little like a gambling game. You can go and play video poker with actual money, and the first round or so of Balatro is simply video poker, with virtual money, before Balatro’s mechanics enter. But…I’m not sure that that makes Balatro particularly problematic. Maybe, I guess, someone could play Balatro, then think that “video poker is cool” and then go play video poker for money. I guess maybe that’s what the PEGI people were upset about.
I don’t know how much any special Balatro convertability into an actual gambling game is a factor. I mean, I am pretty confident that you could take virtually any video game and turn it into a gambling game. Hell, a number of free-to-play games spanning many genres do have some degree of winning at least in-game stuff when you insert money.
To the extent that the best “strategy”, is basically to start going all in on a certain playstyle, that requires 3+ things to be viable, and then die or reset if the necessary components don’t show up before the ante outpaces you.
Yeah, I feel this. Slay the Spire ability to choose paths gives you some control over fixing some bad RNG, so Balatrofeels more luck-based.
That said, it doesn’t really feel like a “gambling” game. Gambling games have essentially no skill, whereas Balatro does have a lot of player choice, where the “best” choice isn’t obvious (i.e. can’t just follow a system). Gambling, however, usually has minimal player interaction, or there’s optimal play that cuts the gap between the house and the player the most (but never more than 50%). It’s basically like other deck building games, just with a poker theme and a bit more RNG.
Somewhere in my comment history, back when Steam did their 2024 yearly awards I think, I called out someone who was trying to defend Balatro’s RNG by saying that players and modders had proven that only 1 in 5 RNG seeds resulted in a truly unwinnable game on the max difficulty.
I don’t know how true that is, but it definitely lines up with my anecdotal experience of the game.
That would mean that at best, playing 100% optimally (the RNG is deterministic, so the same actions on the same seed lead to the same RNG outcomes), with the ability to cheat by undoing your moves and by seeing the rng outcomes in advance… at absolute best you could only have an 80% win rate on the hardest difficulty.
I enjoyed Balatro, but that is cuckoo fucking bananas absurd.
The average player is not playing 100% optimally with full sight of RNG outcomes and an undo button… this is so beyond the realm of “just git gud scrub”.
I think you and I are probably similar in that. I’d say I really enjoyed about 20 hours of it, then played an additional 30 hours where I was hoping things would start getting fun again, but it never came.
Ignoring the video Slots scoring, and poker themes. I would still say luck is so much stronger in balatro then on any roguelike I’ve played. To the extent that the best “strategy”, is basically to start going all in on a certain playstyle, that requires 3+ things to be viable, and then die or reset if the necessary components don’t show up before the ante outpaces you.
In short, psudo-gambling mechanics are IMO largely what hooks people in the game, which I also have to say the PEGI group may actually be if anything slightly underestimating the risk. IE the game is 100% not gambling, but it draws on everything in the brain that gambling does. “Maybe next game will give me cooler jokers that will get me further”. I mean yes all games have some extent of these, there’s a reason why there’s such a large overlap. As well as why basically all mobile app developers, and a good portion of big corporate monstrocities turned their games to build on gambling mechanics.
Balatro IMO leans into all of the hook on gambling tropes, just avoiding the last step of exploiting it to get users to continue to pay them money. It’s actually a pretty reasonable question to ask… does it put kids/teenagers into a mindset that will make them more vulnerable to a less ethical game developer that takes that last step.
The psychological term at the core of the mechanic is a variable reward schedule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_reinforcement_schedules
The thing is that many games use an aspect of random reward, which leverages the conditioning effect of a variable ratio schedule to get people to want to play. Rogue had random drops in 1980, for something early that I can name off-the-cuff. Like, having random rewards are all over video games, were around long before F2P or pay-to-win lootboxes. Like, banning games for leveraging that mechanic would ban a huge range of video games, card games, board games, etc.
I think that the reason that people worry about it with gambling is that a runaway impact on someone directly results in draining money from them, especially since someone can hope to “make money back”. “This will help encourage someone to buy an expansion or sequel” is acceptable, but “money is spent on a per-roll basis in the hopes of getting money” is not.
Balatro definitely makes use of random rewards…but many, many games do that.
Balatro looks a little like a gambling game. You can go and play video poker with actual money, and the first round or so of Balatro is simply video poker, with virtual money, before Balatro’s mechanics enter. But…I’m not sure that that makes Balatro particularly problematic. Maybe, I guess, someone could play Balatro, then think that “video poker is cool” and then go play video poker for money. I guess maybe that’s what the PEGI people were upset about.
I don’t know how much any special Balatro convertability into an actual gambling game is a factor. I mean, I am pretty confident that you could take virtually any video game and turn it into a gambling game. Hell, a number of free-to-play games spanning many genres do have some degree of winning at least in-game stuff when you insert money.
Yeah, I feel this. Slay the Spire ability to choose paths gives you some control over fixing some bad RNG, so Balatro feels more luck-based.
That said, it doesn’t really feel like a “gambling” game. Gambling games have essentially no skill, whereas Balatro does have a lot of player choice, where the “best” choice isn’t obvious (i.e. can’t just follow a system). Gambling, however, usually has minimal player interaction, or there’s optimal play that cuts the gap between the house and the player the most (but never more than 50%). It’s basically like other deck building games, just with a poker theme and a bit more RNG.
Somewhere in my comment history, back when Steam did their 2024 yearly awards I think, I called out someone who was trying to defend Balatro’s RNG by saying that players and modders had proven that only 1 in 5 RNG seeds resulted in a truly unwinnable game on the max difficulty.
I don’t know how true that is, but it definitely lines up with my anecdotal experience of the game.
That would mean that at best, playing 100% optimally (the RNG is deterministic, so the same actions on the same seed lead to the same RNG outcomes), with the ability to cheat by undoing your moves and by seeing the rng outcomes in advance… at absolute best you could only have an 80% win rate on the hardest difficulty.
I enjoyed Balatro, but that is cuckoo fucking bananas absurd.
The average player is not playing 100% optimally with full sight of RNG outcomes and an undo button… this is so beyond the realm of “just git gud scrub”.