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

GDC Festival of Gaming · 183.7K views · 2019-06-25 · 1:00:27

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2020–2026

Topics

Indie game developmentGame designTech industry & business models
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mobile appsslot machinesprocedural generationgdcapp store spam

What people said

cyber_kinetist · 2022-07 · Strong recommendation

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: [VIDEO]

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chaorace · 2021-01 · Recommendation

If you think that's bad, check out this GDC Talk: [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".

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jordanwallwork · 2020-09 · Recommendation

Reminds me of this brilliant GDC Talk - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by GDC Festival of Gaming, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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