Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12
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Awesome to see them win this. If other games can have poker or other cards games where the characters are gambling and not have that influence their shit, the roguelike that uses playing cards in the same way Go-Fish does definitely shouldn't be smacked over this.
Fuck EA and all the loot box game makers that don't get hit with this crap
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Honestly... yeah.
How many millennial/genx gamers have stories about staying up all night playing Diablo 2 or WoW? Hell, it was almost a requirement for any games media person to have an "I almost flunked out of college because of WoW" story.
It was hard to care TOO much with D2 because any additional monetization was mostly illegal gold farmers (and let's ignore the various former devs who have acknowledged they were involved in those...). But starting with WoW? That was a subscription model. That "I need to run this raid 500 times to get the drop I want" equated to increased subscriptions which was profit. Again, there were limits-ish in that very few people ran multiple accounts so it was a fixed cost per year. But it was still there.
Fast forward again and we have the same concepts going into loot boxes and, eventually, gacha games where it is 100% predatory and basically what the majority of successful live service games are built around.
Like anything, it is about understanding what you are and aren't susceptible to. But it is also important to actually think critically and wonder if you REALLY like the gameplay of that game or if you just like the flashing lights and sparkles of a good drop?
Ugh, I remember those days well. I saw personally what MMOs did to two friends of mine (one from high school and one from college), and how the high school friend was able to really pull himself together and make a good life for himself after we helped pull him out of MMO addiction, and how the college friend we couldn't help just wallowed in a sea of empty energy drink cans and turned EVERYTHING into WoW during that time. I don't know if he was able to build a solid life/career after college, but I could imagine him looking back at that time and wanting more from it. Either way, I saw both their situations and vowed to never pick up an MMO because I didn't want the same to happen to me. Just because an addicting game isn't extractive of one's money doesn't mean it's not harmful if you have a hard time with self-control and moderation. You either lose your money directly or your time, which may cost you money in other ways in addition to other indirect costs. Ultimately you'll end up losing something of great value you will unlikely get back, if ever.
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I think it's more that hysterical moral guardians and corporate boobs only see the traditionally casino-like superficial imagery of cards, dice, spades, clubs, slots, etc. and instantly knee-jerk themselves into declaring it "immoral" without actually bothering to take the twelve seconds required to experience the gameplay. At which point they would immediately realize that they are wrong.
This is Kyle's Mom's version of only reading the headline, or not bothering to look beyond the dust jacket and only screeching about imaginary content that exists only inside their own assumptions and based purely on the picture on the cover.
Kyle's Mom
Who now?
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At this moment, any teaching or glamorisation of simulated gambling automatically leads to a PEGI 18 rating," the ratings board stated
Who's the clown now?
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Kyle's Mom
Who now?
Have you ever met my friend Kyle's mom?
She's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world -
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Just cut a few murder scenes and all the blood out and it should be fine
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At this moment, any teaching or glamorisation of simulated gambling automatically leads to a PEGI 18 rating," the ratings board stated
Who's the clown now?
The publishers own PEGI.
Whatever rating they want, they get.
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I can't speak to factorio since every time that dev has ever opened his mouth it has just been horrific hateful bullshit.
Link for context…
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/s/LS2QpCbwqw -
Have you ever met my friend Kyle's mom?
She's the biggest bitch in the whole wide worldPrecisely that.
I will add that Sheila Broflovski (a.k.a. Kyle's Mom) through her sheer incessant nagging (and also blame shifting away from herself and the other parents as spelled out in "Blame Canada") misses the mark so far that she manages to incite a hot war with Canada that gets enough people killed to spill sufficient blood to fulfill an ancient evil prophecy that literally incarnates both Satan himself and Saddam Hussein's revenant form back onto the face of the Earth.
Note that this not only predated Saddam's actual real world death, but Matt and Trey also successfully predicted the eruption of the Karen trend, probably a good decade or so before it risen to the height -- or sunk to the depths -- it's achieved today. Although senseless moral panics were well known and quite popular in the '80's and '90's already, to the extent that they not only managed to accurately predict the response to their own movie, but also parody it within the same movie.
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I can't speak to factorio since every time that dev has ever opened his mouth it has just been horrific hateful bullshit.
Til both that he's trash and that Uncle Bob is trash. It makes sense honestly, Uncle Bob was always hyped to no end with his mediocre contributions to software. Also the agile manifesto sucks ass.
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While the win is good, the fact that it’s still a PEGI 12 game while FIFA is a PEGI 3 shows what an absolute joke the whole process is.
Australia had to deal with similar levels of bullshit for way too long before our ratings board finally capitulated to common sense and introduced an R18 rating (for games like The Last of Us, not even XXX content!).
We have an endemic gambling problem too, so I don’t foresee much common sense coming out of that mob anytime soon - either.
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Link for context…
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/s/LS2QpCbwqwWhile I sympathize with not knowing every random english word, the one next to it being 'rape' should've been enough clue
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Til both that he's trash and that Uncle Bob is trash. It makes sense honestly, Uncle Bob was always hyped to no end with his mediocre contributions to software. Also the agile manifesto sucks ass.
I have no idea who that guy is and I dont feel like I'm missing out
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Good.
I very much think games like Balatro DO need to be assessed and probably have an increased rating because they are unabashedly designed to be as addictive as possible. Same as ARPGs that have been built around skinner boxes basically since Diablo.
But this was never that. It was just "oh, cards and poker theming? GAMBLING!!!"
How would you even go about classifying this? It sounds like you're saying games aren't allowed to be too fun.
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How would you even go about classifying this? It sounds like you're saying games aren't allowed to be too fun.
Like I said in this and the branch below it, many games, balatro included, include game and visual design that evoke psychological experiments and concepts that are basically the foundation of slot machines and the like.
And these are the same concepts people deride when we call them loot boxes (but not gacha for some reason).
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Like I said in this and the branch below it, many games, balatro included, include game and visual design that evoke psychological experiments and concepts that are basically the foundation of slot machines and the like.
And these are the same concepts people deride when we call them loot boxes (but not gacha for some reason).
I don't understand what you're talking about. Balatro does not contain loot boxes/gacha. In a world where so many modern AAA games are exploiting all kinds of shady dark patterns, Balatro took off by not doing any of that shit. It's just a sincerely fun game, and it sounds like you're literally just complaining that it's too fun and that should somehow be policed.
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I have no idea who that guy is and I dont feel like I'm missing out
He wrote some hyped up programming books and he was involved in the creation of extreme programming (a bust), cucumber (an almost completely useless waste of time), and agile (an ok idea but in reality it's a huge bust, it's biggest effect is that management tells everyone "we need to be agile" all the time).
Tldr: you're not missing out
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Honestly... yeah.
How many millennial/genx gamers have stories about staying up all night playing Diablo 2 or WoW? Hell, it was almost a requirement for any games media person to have an "I almost flunked out of college because of WoW" story.
It was hard to care TOO much with D2 because any additional monetization was mostly illegal gold farmers (and let's ignore the various former devs who have acknowledged they were involved in those...). But starting with WoW? That was a subscription model. That "I need to run this raid 500 times to get the drop I want" equated to increased subscriptions which was profit. Again, there were limits-ish in that very few people ran multiple accounts so it was a fixed cost per year. But it was still there.
Fast forward again and we have the same concepts going into loot boxes and, eventually, gacha games where it is 100% predatory and basically what the majority of successful live service games are built around.
Like anything, it is about understanding what you are and aren't susceptible to. But it is also important to actually think critically and wonder if you REALLY like the gameplay of that game or if you just like the flashing lights and sparkles of a good drop?
In college, circa 2005, I played about three hours of WoW during a free weekend. I installed the game (from a CD!), started it up, and played for an afternoon. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I realized that I was at a crossroads: I could either make this game my life for the next indeterminate number of years, or I could leave it behind forever. Those were literally the only two options for me. My brain would accept no third option.
I deleted the game and went out to get pizza. Since then I've never picked it up again, and now it's so big and unwieldy I'm not even tempted anymore. But that was a touch and go situation for those few hours.
A few games have given me similar pulls over the years, but I've gotten better about it. Balatro is the most recent one to grab me, since I got it only when it came to mobile. And yeah, it grabbed me pretty hard, but I also know that once I unlock all the Jokers I'm unlikely to go much further in it.
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I think it's more that hysterical moral guardians and corporate boobs only see the traditionally casino-like superficial imagery of cards, dice, spades, clubs, slots, etc. and instantly knee-jerk themselves into declaring it "immoral" without actually bothering to take the twelve seconds required to experience the gameplay. At which point they would immediately realize that they are wrong.
This is Kyle's Mom's version of only reading the headline, or not bothering to look beyond the dust jacket and only screeching about imaginary content that exists only inside their own assumptions and based purely on the picture on the cover.
Speaking of only reading the headline, I love me some corporate boobs.
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I think it's more that hysterical moral guardians and corporate boobs only see the traditionally casino-like superficial imagery of cards, dice, spades, clubs, slots, etc. and instantly knee-jerk themselves into declaring it "immoral" without actually bothering to take the twelve seconds required to experience the gameplay. At which point they would immediately realize that they are wrong.
This is Kyle's Mom's version of only reading the headline, or not bothering to look beyond the dust jacket and only screeching about imaginary content that exists only inside their own assumptions and based purely on the picture on the cover.
It can be both. The moral screeching is a convenient cover story for the corrupt industry.
🤮
