Social Gaming Summit 2012: Mentez man Martin Williams on the art of making players happy to pay

It's of little surprise that the one game that's warranted a mention in almost every talk at 2012's Social Gaming Summit is NaturalMotion's CSR Racing.

According to Martin Williams of Brazilian social gaming publisher Mentez, however, it's success is no mystery.

Packed with cars that mimic their real life equivalent to the smallest degree, CSR Racing successfully manages to avoid building up pay walls in order to to keep people parting with their cash.

Instead, it charges its audience to collect something they love: cars.

Hitting the wall

It's a key difference, argued Williams in his presentation with Playmob founder Jude Ower, as simply shoving up paywalls to keep the money coming in results in a relatively small, and previously loyal, bunch of players being taxed heavily simply for starting the game up.

"To keep them spending, you're never really rewarding or satisfying them enough," he offered.

"It's them tempting to build in synthetic game elements to keep them playing, which leads to passive play – they're not really playing."

In the end, said players find themselves trapped in an anxiety loop, where they pay out just to keep up rather than because they're engaged. It's the opposite approach to the one adopted within CSR Racing.

CSR doesn't restrict people from playing – players can buy extra time to play on, if they like. Rather, the game's main tactic is to encourage users to pay out for something they already have an attachment to.

In short, because CSR's audience more than likely has an emotional attachment to cars, buying and upgrading vehicles are all purchases they'll be more than happy to make.

"If you want to convince people to spend, them make an emotional connection – don't charge them to carry on playing, but rather to get hold of something they love,” he clarified.

"If you can fit purchases into the context of the game – like in CSR Racing, where players can pay to speed up import only upgrades to their cars, which mimics real life – then it is far more compelling.

"Just make sure there's a clear value to the player for everything you sell."