GDC Festival of Gaming
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2020–2026
1:00:27 · 184K views · Jun 25, 2019
In this 2019 GDC talk, Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott explain how they flooded the app stores with over 1,500 auto-generated slot machine games to find the lowest bar for success. They tour the dark side of the mobile app market.
HN commenters recommend it as a hilarious account of mass-produced app store shovelware and cite it in threads on spam and low-quality content.
6 comments from Hacker News
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: this video
If you think that's bad, check out this GDC Talk: 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".
Reminds me of this brilliant GDC Talk - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality this video
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: this video
If the internet is dead, is there anything left that's "alive"? The mobile app stores are also filled with crap[0] and it seems that the ratio of spam content vs real content is getting close to infinity. [0]: this video - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality