1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality
1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2020–2026.
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.
What HN commenters said
6 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
cyber_kinetistJul 2022Strongly recommends
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
in “Unity merges with IronSource” · View on HN
chaoraceJan 2021Recommends
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".
in “A bit on scaling chess.com's database” · View on HN
jordanwallworkSep 2020Recommends
Reminds me of this brilliant GDC Talk - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality ▶ this video
in “Google requiring Android apps on Play store to use its billing system next year” · View on HN
refactor_masterFeb 2026Cites it
Here’s a talk about leaning into the garbage flow. And that was a decade ago. ▶ this video I can’t imagine the number being economically meaningful now.
in “Stop Thinking of AI as a Coworker. It's an Exoskeleton” · View on HN
XCSmeMay 2022Cites it
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
in “Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots” · View on HN
BbzzbBFeb 2022Cites it
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
in “Study: Effectiveness of Apple's app tracking transparency” · View on HN