Last night's BAFTA Gaming Awards saw a range of gongs awarded to some of 2024's standout titles, with the big winners being Team Asobi's Astro Bot (best game) and The Chinese Room's Still Wakes the Deep with three awards. Coming in hot for best debut, however, was our boy Balatro: PCG's 2024 Game of the Year, if you didn't know.
Despite Balatro's massive success, creator LocalThunk has chosen to remain anonymous and so the award was accepted by actor Ben Starr as Jimbo, the greasepainted joker who now seems to be the face of the game. And Jimbo delivered quite the speech to the great and good of the games industry.
"This is weird. Yes, it's me. That weird live-action Jimbo from the Balatro commercial. For those of you who aren't chronically online this might be a rather confusing and, at first glance, suspiciously arousing moment. But don't worry, it's perfectly natural: Don't fight the feeling, jokers have full sex now."
The room kind of laughs at this line, but you can tell people don't quite know how to take it. An undeterred Jimbo, however, is just getting warmed-up:
"But wait! 'Ben didn't make that game, Why is he up here?' I hear you say like a loser. And yeah you may have a point, but also screw you a little bit, that hurts my feelings. And so what if my only contribution to Balatro was that trailer and a bit of sucking on a banana for a few seconds?
"But I ask you this: isn't selling stuff nice? What is art in 2025 but a thinly veiled vessel of ruthless commercial self-interest through which rich people try to make even more money?"
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"And I can say, having met him personally, LocalThunk is really rich now," continues Jimbo. "He has shoes made of gold and he thanks you for making him that way. He says here at the bottom he wishes he could thank more people but, if he's being honest, it was just him who made it. Everyone else is a freeloader. Especially you Playstack.
"Oh, and play more independent games like Animal Well. They are the lifeblood of this industry. And they deserve your respect. Thank you very much."
Well played Jimbo, who even took care to pronounce the game's name in-line with the creator's wishes.
LocalThunk has form for this kind of acceptance too, having used Balatro's many award nominations and wins to shout-out his fellow indies. The man himself may well have shoes of gold after Balatro's enormous success, but he's also achieved poker zen after beating every deck on every difficulty: "All this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it."
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