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

GDC Festival of Gaming
8 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2019–2026
YouTube
184K views · 7 years ago · talk · evergreen

A GDC 2019 talk about a studio that churned out more than 1,500 slot-machine apps from the same Unity-based shovelware, generating the variants procedurally. A humorous account of quantity over quality in the app stores, including their joking anti-retention model.

HN people call it one of the best GDC talks, recommended as a funny way to see how bad the app-store and ad-driven game market could get.

“All of this reminds me of one of the best GDC talks ever given”
Game designDesign ethics & dark patterns
#slotmachines#shovelware#appstores#gdc#proceduralgeneration#quantityoverquality

11 comments from Hacker News

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@stefan_bobev2021 · in “Google banned almost 120k spam developer accounts in 2020 for the play store”
All of this reminds me of one of the best GDC talks ever given: ▶ this video
Strongly recommendsView on HN
1
@10000truths2024 · in “1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity over Quality (2019) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
s
@stefanpie2024 · in “Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity over Quality [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
c
@cyber_kinetist2022 · in “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: ▶ this video
RecommendsView on HN
f
@freemint2022 · in “Ask HN: Has anyone made any serious money selling Android apps?”
If you wanna get an idea how really bad the situation was/is i recommend this GDC talk. ▶ this video
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c
@chaorace2021 · in “A bit on scaling chess.com's database”
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".
RecommendsView on HN
j
@jordanwallwork2020 · in “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 ▶ this video
RecommendsView on HN
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@ttctciyf2019 · in “Adventures in Quantity over Quality [2019 GDC Talk]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
r
@refactor_master2026 · in “AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton”
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.
CitesView on HN
X
@XCSme2022 · in “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 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
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B
@BbzzbB2022 · in “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: ▶ this video
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