Taboo No More – Gambling Scenes In Popular Video Games
The recent wave of legalization gave rise to the popularity of online gambling games, which improved in both inventiveness and graphics. The influence of the video game industry is obvious – it takes just one look at slots in online casinos to see they’ve taken on the successful video games for their themes.
Image Source: playgwent.com
But that influence also goes the other way as you can find gambling within many video games. No longer a taboo, gambling experience even deserved its place as a part of some storylines. The goal of designers was to make video games more life-like, exciting, and enjoyable, so we’ve made a list of ones in which they’ve achieved the best results.
A Deserved Brake
Final Fantasy series is famous for introducing Japanese role-play games to the West, and the 8th installment introduces an equally exotic card game called Triple Triad. This gambling game has a place in Final Fantasy lore – the psychic Orlan invented it using Tarot cards – but it mostly serves as a break between quests. Nevertheless, that brake needs to be deserved as you need to defeat the monsters to add cards to your deck.
The game itself is fairly simple – the player lays cards on a 3×3 grid, taking turns with the AI. Then the values are compared and the higher value captures the opponent’s card that changes color. The goal is to have the most cards in your color in the end.
The Witcher 3 takes the same concept where you collect the deck of cards to play the game called Gwent. Although it’s also a break from all the monster-slaying, it’s integrated into the storyline as the competition of some side quest demands winning the game.
It is a one-on-one card dueling game where players in the roles of generals lead their armies on the battlefield. Although it’s a medieval fantasy, the game draws inspiration from poker and its great popularity gave birth to a standalone version.
Slice of Life
We retreat from the fantasy realms to a quiet, everyday world of The Sims. Of course, that doesn’t mean there is no excitement in this game, and one of them is certainly a Lucky Simoleon Casino, an extension that includes great ways to test your character’s luck. Indeed, in The Sims 3, you can gamble, however, the gameplay is deprived of the detail and decision making that accompanies real-life gambling.
Although The Sims is well-known for faithfully mirroring real life, games that include real money, with all the choices associated with responsible play, are reserved for real online casinos. Nevertheless, the game features slots, roulette, blackjack, and poker, and does a great job in simulating the mechanics to the last detail. Therefore, it’s a great opportunity to brush up your skills in a friendly environment before taking real odds.
High Stakes in the Old West
If you’re searching for higher stakes, you’ll certainly find them in the stunning Old West environment of Red Dead Redemption. This game offers several gambling scenes. There are classics such as Blackjack and curious obscurities like Liar’s dice, but gambling in the Old West wouldn’t be it without the good old Texas Hold’Em.
What is special in these gambling scenes is the fact that high stakes are incorporated in the storyline. As a protagonist with a specially tailored suit, you have an opportunity to cheat and get away with a large profit, but being discovered will result in a deadly showdown.
Vegas Still Stands
If you’ve ever wondered how gambling will look in the future, the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout: New Vegas could paint one version of the picture. In the open-world environment of nuclear-desolated Nevada, California, and Arizona, one of the things that still stand Vegas.
Image Source: fallout.bethesda.net
Inside one of the six retro-futuristic casinos in New Vegas, you can try your luck at slot mini-games, roulette, and blackjack. The game offers a very engaging gambling experience since luck is an important part of the overall mechanics and one of the primary stats. Winning will bring you hospitality, but you can also get scammed by the house, and winning too much will get you booted and banned from the casino under suspicion of cheating.
As if that’s not enough, outside the casinos you can also play a card game called Caravan, exclusively designed for the game. Caravan has its own flexible rules, decks put together from stray cards, and improvised currencies.
The inclusion of casino games into video ones has certainly boosted the popularity of both, so there’ll be more to come. Until then, no matter if you’re an avid gambler or just searching for an occasional game of luck, these five will definitely keep you satisfied.