CSR 2 Realistic Drag Racing is a simple game, even by smartphone standards. Players compete in short street races — tapping a button on-screen to change gears at just the right time — for virtual currency that lets them buy new parts to make their hot rod a few tenths of a second faster.
It does not take long for the races to seem like distractions from the more consequential activity — scrolling through menus looking for new spark plugs or a better set of tires.
Players who want to upgrade their vehicles more quickly can spend real money. And many do. The series has generated more than $1 billion in revenue since the first game was released in 2012.
To keep people splurging within mobile games such as Custom Street Racing, FarmVille and Words With Friends, their publisher Zynga uses a secretive VIP programme that treats players like royalty. It is a tactic borrowed from casinos, which may offer a free meal or show tickets when they notice a player is losing more than usual on a slot machine.
“We really have to cultivate these players and let them know they are connected to a person as well as a game, that we’re here to fix any issues they have, and reward them for their loyalty,” said Gemma Doyle, who helped build Zynga’s VIP programme and now works in the finance industry.
Retaining big spenders, she said, is essential in the competitive world of mobile gaming, where roughly 90 per cent of revenue can come from less than 5 per cent of the player base.
VIPs at Zynga, which is based in San Mateo, California, US, get regular check-ins from personal account managers and are entered into exclusive monthly cash sweepstakes. Other perks have included private concerts with Wynonna Judd, day cruises to Alcatraz and personalised dog training sessions at celebrity trainer Cesar Millan’s ranch.
Beverly Hamilton, a retired schoolteacher who plays FarmVille games for about an hour a day, won $15,000 in one of Zynga’s sweepstakes last year. Though Hamilton is not a big spender, she is a consistent one, typically paying $20 a month for virtual gems that can be used to unlock new crops or upgrade her farms. She has been a VIP for the past five years and said her account managers were always responsive when she encounters technical issues.
Zynga’s account managers keep detailed files on players’ preferences — whether they would rather solve puzzles alone, compete online against others or just socialise with new friends. They also track past complaints and make notes about life events, like a sick pet or recent wedding. An account manager is expected to contact at least 125 players a day.
Zynga did not respond to requests for comment. Take-Two Interactive, which bought Zynga for $12.7 billion in 2022, declined to comment.
Players who pour hundreds or thousands of dollars into a game are known as whales, a term borrowed from the gambling world that many people in gaming avoid. (“The size and shape of the animal is not a compliment to anybody,” Doyle said.) If a game stops feeling fun, those valuable players can pick up an alternative and help keep it afloat instead.
Some players grumble about the VIP programmes, saying they give unfair benefits while further transforming games into elaborate money traps. A player who has not been courted as a VIP said that since 2016 he had spent between $40,000 and $50,000 on mobile games like Star Trek Fleet Command and Raid: Shadow Legends. He asked not to be identified because he feared his wife might leave him if she found out the extent of his spending.
Despite the perks and privileges, many VIPs can feel exhausted by the games.
During an online chat about Star Trek Fleet Command, a self-described VIP despaired about changes that felt like they were designed to encourage more spending, pointing to a noncombat zone where ships would automatically take damage unless players paid for special upgrades. Another player said keeping up with new content felt like a full-time job, one he would wake up for at 4 or 5am.
At Zynga, Doyle knew she had built something that was working when she overheard an employee she had trained talking a VIP out of quitting a game altogether.
“The account manager said, ‘Listen, we’re not getting divorced over this’,” Doyle recalled. “‘We’ve been together for so long, we’ve been through thick and thin’.”
NYTNS
