[sdwr]

I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. Balatro is building on 50 years of addiction-seeking game design. Everything from the sound effects, to the random round rewards, to the pacing of unlocks is optimized to be as attention-grabbing and dopamine-releasing as possible.

It's like praising Coca-Cola for not tasting as sweet as Pepsi

[banannaise]

It's a roguelike deckbuilder. The randomness is necessary to the genre.

I think you've missed something important: none of these elements in Balatro are monetized. The only way the developer makes more money is through players telling other players how fun the game is, which convinces them to buy it.

[kevinmchugh]

There's also nothing timed in balatro, so there's no need for the next game to be _now_.

[bscphil]

> players telling other players how fun the game is

I wonder if we've collectively been trained to perceive addictiveness as fun. It's good that the developer isn't being directly monetizing eyeball-hours, but when users have grown to expect that specific dopamine hit that proves addictive, you end up having to include it anyway.

[junon]

Idk, I think it's also just fair to say that one finds Balatro fun. Not everything has to have a psychological basis for harm.

[djeastm]

>I think you've missed something important: none of these elements in Balatro are monetized.

Monetization doesn't really affect addiction, which was the question at hand.

[banannaise]

It absolutely does, because monetization leads to weaponization of patterns of addiction.

Key things Balatro does not have, that make it a poor example of the problem of addictive games:

1. Monetization. See above.

2. Anything timed. At all. No hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly anything. Nothing that tries to coerce you into reopening the app, aside from "I want to play Balatro now".

3. Lootbox cosmetics. All cosmetics are deterministic. All unlocks are part of gameplay. The collection tracker is dependent on obtaining items (mostly cards) at random, but is focused on the challenge aspect to diversify gameplay: rather than "can you get these cards" it asks "can you win with these cards".

Balatro does belong in a nuanced discussion of how we often conflate addictiveness and fun, and how that presents itself in media and games, but that's not because it's a particularly egregious example of weaponizing addiction.

[endgame]

What's interesting to me is that despite all that (the escalating lights and noise as your score ticks up, and the hypnotic effect of the sound slowing down and speeding up when you fail/restart the run, are two big examples), I seem to be the only person who hit a wall with Balatro. I enjoyed it for a few days, saw what grinding out all of the jokers/stickers would be like, and put it down. Not in an insulted way, but in a "I've had a good meal, I'm full, and I'm happy to leave the rest of my plate" way. I find this particularly interesting because other games do have an ability to grab me by the throat.

Perhaps it was too overt?

[khalladay]

I was this way too, until I bought it again on my phone. Now its my commute game and I have clocked in a huge number of hours. But in small, 1-2 run sessions

[mfro]

I think both of these are true. Balatro is a like a finely honed blade of dopamine harvesting -- it truly does build on the most addictive facets of gaming we have discovered thus far. It is also laudable in the ethos of its designer, expressed through the game. As others have said, there is not and will never be monetization, per LocalThunk's distaste for gambling(we can be pedantic and argue that at the core of each roguelike is a gambling aspect but).

I think there is a fine line here between the cynicist 'never indulge' and the consoomer/accelerationist 'do as you will'