Clown emojis all around
I think the important note is it’s not just the cards in Balatro. Is it right? Not in my opinion. You have to admit tho, that it uses waaaaay more gambling imagery (you make antes for fuck’s sake)
Agreed, gambling doesn’t have to be for money or even anything tangibly real.
But it has to be for something. And in Balatro, there simply isn’t any gambling. You never wager anything to win anything based on that wager. All you have are points, and you can neither wager them, nor lose them in any way, chance-based or otherwise.
There is zero gambling in Balatro.
You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.
You should know that you’re talking about before drawing conclusions.
I haven’t played or watched Balataro but from the description on steam
You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
Unless ante here is referring to something else it seems it does have them?
“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.).
Do you know what gambling imagery entails? It doesn’t have to be how antes actually are used in poker for it to be gambling imagery.
A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery. It doesn’t even have to be anything more than a level in a casino.
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?
The term Ante in the game is used instead of “round” or “level”. It’s a measure of how far you’ve gotten. Each “ante” is made up of three “stakes”, point totals you need to beat in a set number of hands played and cards discarded.
There’s no aspect of choosing how much you risk, of “ante-ing up”, or how much you stake. You either beat the points goal (called “chips”) or you lose. There’s no playing of your hand against other hands, bluffing about how good your hand may be to convince others to fold, etc. It’s just you against the score goal. If you beat it faster than the amount of hands you’re given to work with you get extra rewards.
The game has no elements where you stake chips for rewards or anything like that. It borrows basic elements of scoring mechanics from poker, and uses a lot of poker terms for other purposes, but the closest part to gambling is the ability to buy random card packs between rounds (to customize your deck instead of just having the standard 52 card deck).
In between rounds you have access to buy various things to add further modifiers to your scoring, and to adjust the composition of your deck in order to make getting specific combinations more likely.
You can learn most of this in about 5 minutes with the demo, or by taking some time to watch someone else play on youtube.
Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (a common mechanic in roguelixe games, where going to a higher ascension/“stake” adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).
It’s near the line, I agree, I see your point, but it’s just the terminology and no gambling mechanics. You don’t set the ante, you just play. They could change the name ante to level and it would be the same. It’s not like you look at your stuff and decide how much you’re willing to risk. (You could argue skipping blinds is this sort of risk analysis like gambling but that’s hardly unique to Balatro.) There is no benefit from stopping earlier because if you lose on ante one or lose on ante seven it’s the same outcome. Also, if you choose to restart one ante one or ante seven it’s the same outcome. Because it’s just a score keeping mechanism. Nothing more.
