How does Zynga hunt for whales? | This Week in Business

gamesindustry.biz:

If you were to look around the industry these days, you might think whales had gone extinct. But they haven't, really. They've just re-branded.

These days, free-to-play publishers generally don't refer to the heaviest spenders in their games with the exceedingly cynical comparison to the largest animals on the planet. Much like the actual practice of commercial whaling, the term is so loaded with negative connotations that publishers typically don't use it, at least not in public. Instead, it's much more common they refer to their highest-spending customers by the more respectful euphemism "VIPs," which I will assume is short for "Very Important Placental-marine-mammals."

And while free-to-play publishers have found a nicer way to refer to their best customers, the tactics they use to separate these whales from their money are as cynical as ever, if not more so.

That was made abundantly clear to me last month as I sat through a Game Developers Conference presentation by Zynga vice president Gemma Doyle titled "Learn How VIP Management Can Change Your Company's Revenue Footprint."

Doyle runs the VIP Management operation at Zynga, a program where high-spending players are given a personal account manager they can call whenever they have an issue, access to special promotions and weekly sweepstakes for free vacations and luxury cars, early access to new game features, studio visits to provide feedback, and other perks.

If giving away a free Mercedes-Benz in a contest for a fraction of a fraction of your game's user base seems overly extravagant, it makes a little more sense in light of the free-to-play business model.

QUOTE | "When you look at your VIP base and how much they're spending right now today, it's a huge