For this week’s Critical Play, I had the displeasure of revisiting the game that took up all my time in the summer of least year: Legend of Slime: Idle RPG War. This game was developed for mobile platforms by AppQuantum. The game is rated E for Everyone 10+, which is wild to me because of the predatory nature of its monetization system. In any case, LoS is a live service incremental game in which you play as a slime on a quest to defeat the evil humans who have invaded the monster forest. As an incremental game, LoS relies on a simple set of mechanics: endless waves of enemies that progressively get stronger with each stage, as well as an upgrade system that uses in-game currency obtained from defeating enemies to increase the slime’s abilities and equips it with tools and allies to meet the demands of the increasing difficulty.
LoS presents itself as a fun and colorful game that anyone can play. But as a live service game, the game designers pressure players to spend money at every step in the gameplay, often obfuscating information with multiple independent in-game currencies and leveraging chance to encourage more spending and more spending. As a game that appeals to young children through cute and colorful designs, these game designers, whether intentionally or not, lure these susceptible children into spending their parent’s money on what is essentially a cash grab.
To be clear, this game’s primary objective is to take your money—the actual gameplay is secondary. In fact, when I logged onto this game for the first time in months, I had to close out of over a dozen pop-ups asking me to spend money to get a new perk, item, slime, etc. Before I could even get to the game itself, the game already wanted me to pay up.
The screenshots above show two separate membership systems in addition to screens urging me to pay for premium in-game currency and exclusive slimes, as well as three separate battle pass systems. While the game definitely markets itself as free-to-play, the game designers seem to be doing everything they can to get me to fork up cash.
Once I am able to finally get to the game itself, I am greeted by pages upon pages of stores where I can get in-game currency using real money.
Worse yet, these monetization schemes are promoted by the ways in which the game uses randomness to urge players to buy and become addicted and buy. During game play, a player’s slime and their companions do have a certain probability of either landing or missing attacks, as do whatever enemies are in the player’s way. I think this kind of mechanic makes sense because this kind of incremental game would be largely deterministic otherwise, which may be less fun for players. I think part of the enjoyment of playing comes from the idea that although a player lost this time, there is a chance that they might win if they play again. This creates more of an active role on the part of the player compared to most idle incremental games. I do see the appeal of this in the sense that determination could be rewarded with success, but I do also recognize that this could lead to addiction wherein players continue challenging the same levels with the hops that the RNG works out in their favor eventually to give them the win.
Where I find problem with this game, however, is that it uses this mechanic to urge players to spend. When a player loses, they are met with a screen urging them to spend more money to get in-game currencies, items, and other perks. This presents the idea that paying more money will give the player a better chance to win. For players who become addicted and really want to be reach the next level, they may even be so enticed as to want to spend money. By repeating this formula, the game designers could continue generating profit at the expense of the users. Leveraging this idea of “near misses,” the game designers can make away with more money as they get their players hooked.
This kind of game is contrasted heavily with other games that use chance or probability but lack micro-transactions. For example, in the mainline Pokémon games, whether a player is able to capture a Pokémon depends on a number of factors—the kind of Pokéball they are using, the HP of the target Pokémon, whether the target Pokémon has any status effects—but is still ultimately governed by a formula that follows some probability distribution. Additionally, each move has a probability of either landing, missing, or landing a critical hit. Both the capturing and battling mechanics of these Pokémon games use probability, but it feels more permissible in this case because instead of using randomness to incentivize spending money, these Pokémon games use it to introduce chaos and variability into gameplay, which makes for more fun for the players, specifically in terms of challenge. These games do not even have a robust micro-transaction system, which means players could not pay to win, even if they wanted to. This is where I find it okay to use chance and probability, specifically when there are no pay-to-play or pay-to-win mechanisms. If paying more money gives you a better chance of winning, however, I would say that is morally reprehensible.
On the other hand, LoS uses chance and probability to incentivize players to spend, which is problematic. This is exacerbated y the fact that a lot of the game’s player base must be younger children, as evidenced by the cute and playful, almost cartoonish art style that the game employs, which can appeal to kids. And although there are screens that directly call on the player to pay with real money, there are also some purchases in the game store that can only be made using premium in-game currency. This currency, of course, can only be obtained through in-app purchases. Thus, the game designers effectively obfuscate and abstract away the notion of paying with real money by reframing it as paying with in-game currency, which is not real. This tactic is effective for getting people to pay, which can work even better on younger children. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that there are multiple premium in-game currencies that are each used differently, further prompting players to spend.
Perhaps what is the worst part is that unlike a game like Fortnite, which does feature many cosmetic-only in-game purchases, paying money in LoS does equate to the player getting stronger. In the game, players play as certain Slimes, each of whom have their own strengths and abilities. Unfortunately, most of the very strong, SS-tier slimes are locked behind a paywall. And in a game where there are PvP competitions, the players who pay are the players who win. One competition in the game is called the Angry Giant Newbie, where players fight against an Angry Giant Newbie. This game mode does have a leaderboard that gives rewards to the top-performing players and punishes the lowest-performing players, which more often than not are the players who have spent money for premium Slimes, items, weapons, etc. This, in turn, further urges players to spend money if they want to not only win but not lose.
These kinds of entrapping mechanisms make LoS successful at its goal of making a ton of money. In fact, I am ashamed to say that LoS is the only free-to-play game I have ever spent money on ($40), and that decision haunts me forever. While the game designers certainly have satisfied their goal, the players and their wallets do suffer.
Please don’t play this game.
