Rambling Thoughts on My 'Balatro' Problem

Balatro is not a game about gambling, despite what the Pan-European Game Information guys might have once claimed. It does start as Poker but quickly evolves into something much more, until its weird mutations have it resemble Poker as closely as Final Fantasy Tactics resembles Chess, insomuch as both take place on grids. Yeah, Balatro is a card game about building hands, but it's also an absurd math problem built around stacking bonuses to numbers beyond human comprehension.

Now, however, as much as Balatro is Not Gambling, it is still a dangerous, terrible addiction. Please check on your loved ones if they start playing Balatro, especially if they have the phone app downloaded. The app is not a casino but works on similar psychological manipulations such as hiding your phone's clock, denying you any sense of time or place, leaving nothing but flashing lights and numbers. Their lives are on a downward spiral and they will need care and support. They might not listen to anything you're saying since odds are they'll be looking down at their phones, playing Balatro. Please give them understanding because they are no longer in control of themselves. Balatro is a disease. Abstain from moral judgments towards the sufferers.

I spent $10 to get Balatro on my phone back in January and that was the entirety of the sum I risked for my entertainment. After all, it is Not Gambling. However, if we consider that at the moment my time is worth something like $30 an hour and that I have spent somewhere in the region of hundreds of hours playing Balatro in the first quarter of 2025, really I'm down thousands of dollars lost from potentially productive time. To complicate this I have definitely played whole games of Balatro while on the clock at a job. (Mr. or Mrs. Eric's Boss, you are not allowed to read this - you may leave the room now.) That time however could have been spent on more production neoliberal activities such as actually gambling on sports or crypto-currencies. Just think of all the economic progress I could be achieving playing real Poker instead of fake electronic nonsense Poker! 

Clearly I am an antisocial terrorist with my deviant behavior of not maximizing my grindset every second of my life. I instead am playing a game with no real point or aim. That I am willfully a wasteful and not maximally productive member of society is not really the problem for me. The problem is that I can't stop. Balatro has devoured my gaming life. I am searching for an escape and cannot find one.

'In the Lost Lands' Somehow Exists and I Appreciate That

In the Lost Lands is probably terrible, probably unworthy of my interest, and yet I am mildly obsessed with this thing. There is a kind of perverse nostalgia compelling me towards it. I saw the trailer for In the Lost Lands and said out loud to nobody "that looks like total shit, I need to see this".

The movie has the over-produced color correction of a 2000s movie, think of Zack Snyder's 300 or Robert Rodriguez's Sin City - plus the overblown lens flair on every lighting source from JJ Abrams' Star Trek. The plot is a generic post-apocalypse western SciFi fantasy... thing which would have sounded very cool back in the 90s if it were an anime OVA, not one of a dozen similar genre mashup ideas. This movie is apparently based on a George RR Martin story, one purchased by the producers back when Game of Thrones was red hot. Instead the idea sat on a development shelf for a near-decade, gathering dust and losing relevancy. If In the Lost Lands were a trailer during a Sony State of Play, it would fit right in next to say, Forspoken. During coming attractions next to proper movies with more than two colors in their pallet like Novocain or Black Bag, In the Lost Lands looks like a bizarre mistake. Maybe somebody had thrown together a fake trailer and AMC Theaters had put it up as a joke.

What In the Lost Lands reminds me of more than anything is bad movie called Priest. Do you remember that? You don't do you? It came out in 2011? Starred Paul Bettany? Was basically lame Judge Dread but with vampires and priests that knew kung-fu but also vaguely a western? In the Lost Lands is that kind of movie. Thing is, Priest made 76 million dollars fifteen years ago. It was based on a Korean comic book that nobody in the West knew about, so had no existing fanbase, yet drew crowds. Priest did not review well, had no fanbase then or now. Paul Bettany would rather you never mention it in presence, I imagine. However, Priest was profitable!

In the Lost Lands is a disaster that has made none of its budget back. It is too small a movie to even get clowned on by industry types who love to laugh when say, Mickey17 is not a hit. There's something to note here: a D+ genre movie fifteen years ago could make money. Whereas these days, oh no. If you have 55 million dollars, you would save more of it by setting it on fire than doing this: flying Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich out to Poland to pose dramatically in front of green screens with guns and sickle knives.

This massive flop will probably be the final nail in coffin for the long decline of the career of Paul W.S. Anderson, who not coincidentally is married to Milla Jovovich. In the Lost Lands could very well be the last time either name gets inside a cineplex. Anderson and Jovovich have been a great power couple in the realm of mediocre genre flicks, having piloted the original Resident Evil film series through six or seven installments (neither you or I care to actually count). Their last production together was a 2020 adaptation of the game series Monster Hunter - and we share the same stunned reaction of "wait a second, there was a Monster Hunter movie?!" And yeah, that happened, it existed. Anderson has never been a great director, but who can deny the appeal of things like Event Horizon or Mortal Kombat or even Resident Evil 1? Alien vs Predator sucks but he understood the pop-corn-ball assignment in a way. He's never made a truly great movie, and has made many movies few will remember (Pompeii, The Three Musketeers, In the Lost Lands). As hacky and frankly, unambitious as Anderson is, I cannot find the rhythm to dance at his grave. 

I feels the environment is not going in a healthy direction if we cannot have a space for garbage like In the Lost Lands and garbagemen like Paul W.S. Anderson. If they are extinct, the entire food chain is in trouble.