Skip to content
Hallway
0:00 / 0:00

#gdc#appstore#shovelware

1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality

GDC Festival of Gaming

555K subscribers • 54 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

YouTube
  • Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott, game developers
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 7 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

183K views7 years ago3 recommendations

Game developmentCareers and interviewsGame designGame programmingThe tech industry

Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott explain how they flooded mobile app stores with over 1,500 auto-generated slot machine games to explore the market's low bar.

In this 2019 GDC talk, game developers Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott explain how they set out to determine the lowest bar for success on App Stores. Take a fantastic tour of the weird, dark underbelly of the mobile app market, and learn what the pair discovered when they flooded the market with over 1,500 auto-generated slot machine games. Register for GDC: ubm.io/2yWXW38 Join the GDC mailing list: gdconf.com/subscribe Follow GDC on Twitter: twitter.com/Official_GDC GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a hilarious and insightful look into the dark underbelly of mobile app stores and the economics of shovelware.

cyber_kinetiston Hacker News • Recommends

On “Unity merges with IronSource”

There was a GDC talk telling a a story where two bored indie game devs made an AI that churns out throwaway low-quality slot machine games as a joke, but actually earned much more money they they’ve expected (thousands of dollars per day). They jokingly told that the reason for high CPU numbers was their “anti-retention” model, where people get so bored by their game that they would literally click ads to escape into another game! That talk was hilarious, here’s the link: link to this video
View on Hacker News

jordanwallworkon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Google requiring Android apps on Play store to use its billing system next year”

Reminds me of this brilliant GDC Talk - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality link to this video
View on Hacker News

chaoraceon Hacker News • Recommends

On “A bit on scaling chess.com's database”

If you think that's bad, check out this GDC Talk: link to this video They procedurally generated 1,500+ different iterations on top of the same Unity-based slots shovelware using noun/adjective pairs. The general success they enjoyed is as sad as it is hilarious . For the record, the most enticing descriptor categories were: "3D", "Luxury", "Casino/Gambling", and "Sexy".
View on Hacker News

BbzzbBon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Study: Effectiveness of Apple's app tracking transparency”

Sorry I was just being snarky with the trash app mentioned, I could've done without it I just had a talk 0, fun one in the back of my head when writing. There must indeed be hundreds (dozens?) of companies which fall in a grey area that Apple wouldn't be inclined to ban straight up at first offense. 0: link to this video
View on Hacker News

XCSmeon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots”

If the internet is dead, is there anything left that's "alive"? The mobile app stores are also filled with crap0 and it seems that the ratio of spam content vs real content is getting close to infinity. 0: link to this video - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality
View on Hacker News

refactor_masteron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Stop Thinking of AI as a Coworker. It's an Exoskeleton”

Here’s a talk about leaning into the garbage flow. And that was a decade ago. link to this video I can’t imagine the number being economically meaningful now.
View on Hacker News