Balatro is a recently published indie game developed by LocalThunk. The game is targeted towards people who are familiar with the hand rankings of poker and the strategy component of similar rouge-like games. While Balatro relies on these hand rankings (while adding some of their own), it is a fundamentally removed from gambling; the player at no point has to risk anything of their own, bluff, or try to deceive another player or NPC. Instead, Balatro is far closer in gameplay to a conventional roguelikes, such as The Binding of Isaac or Slay the Spire. Every run is a self-contained challenge, with the option for the player to escalate in difficulty or modify mechanics upon completion. The game is a test of the player’s mastery of the game mechanics and their ability to develop unique strategies with the random draw of cards they are given.
To answer the main question for this Critical Play, I would say it would be somewhat unlikely for Balatro to contribute to addictive behaviors, the one caveat to this argument is that the sensory engineering the game provides is incredibly satisfying to look at, hear, and experience. Scoring a large hand with a powerful joker combo set up triggers a strong dopamine release in the player; watching the chip and mult counts skyrocket as the scoring panel erupts into flame. The sensory design is somewhat reminiscent of that of a slot machine; bright colors, flashy animations, and explosive sound effects accompany a great hand, eliciting the same response that modern hybrid reel displays would produce. This type of design is well documented to produce habit-forming and addictive behaviors, especially when combined with a chance-based or RNG element.
However I think that the visuals of the game can be better attributed to the visual stylization of the game: pixel-art poker, rather than any sort of maleficent intention to get players addicted to playing. Balatro is a one-time charge game, it contains no microtransactions, time-gated content, purchasable cosmetics, or loot boxes. The game does not provide any extrinsic motivation for the player to complete daily log-ins or climb global leaderboards. I would say that Balatro is far from being ethically dubious. The addictive potential of Balatro is far closer to that of similar games in it’s genre, such as the roguelikes mentioned earlier.
While Balatro is heavily reliant on randomness, specifically in it’s random seeding for runs to determine Joker (powerup/game modifier) appearances in the game shop, the game’s use of randomness is primarily a game mechanic rather than an addictive mechanism. Randomness can create a feeling of excitement, such as in this run when I was able to randomly find a “legendary” joker that provides a large advantage for scoring potential, it is not used to manipulate the player into an endless engagement loop through artificial scarcity and hidden odds. Quite the contrary, in fact. The “spawn” rates for each joker are publicly available from the developer, and the strategy of the game revolves around adapting to the luck of the draw. Every seed in Balatro is “winnable” if the player makes optimal decision, even on the hardest difficulty. The gameplay is deeply strategic rather than mindlessly throwing yourself to the mercy of RNG.
