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

The Nugget

The journey of automating the creation of 1,500 slot machines resulted in over 1.6 million downloads and significant ad revenue by leveraging incredibly low-quality games, which played into a unique anti-retention model for monetization.

Make it stick

🤖 Automation led to over 1,500 unique slot titles generated quickly, showcasing the power of technology in game development.
💰 They earned around $50,000 from numerous low-quality ad-driven apps, revealing the lucrative potential in quantity over quality.
📈 A staggering 27% ad click-through rate was achieved, indicating that players were bored enough to escape to better games.
🎶 They created custom theme songs for each slot machine game using text-to-speech technology, adding a unique touch to low-effort designs.

In 2013, discontent in the mobile gaming space led two indie developers to experiment with creating low-quality slot machine games.
An automation robot designed to build slot machine games became central in producing a staggering 1,500 games quickly from a template.
The decision to create low-effort slots challenged traditional game development principles both ethically and economically.

The team flipped the conventional retention model, creating low-quality games meant to quickly frustrate players into clicking on ads for other games, effectively monetizing dissatisfaction.
Ads became the primary revenue source, thanks to high click-through rates born from the contrast between their games and higher-quality alternatives.

Increasingly difficult Google Play Store compliance rules made the operation burdensome, leading to a reduction in activity over time.
Despite initial success, the developers acknowledged their desire to walk away from the project, realizing their true passion lay elsewhere.
They concluded that sometimes the journey and experience of creating something—even if it’s low quality—can be more valuable than financial success.

"What are video games and why do people show ads? We've turned the retention model completely on its head."
"We never took their money... only took money from ad providers and felt proudly like a cut above the rest."
"This whole project was an itch that felt so good to scratch; the attempt made us happy, not the result."
"If you spend four years making a game that nobody wants and I spend four seconds, who squandered more of their precious life?"
"Be prepared to walk away even if it is successful, because it may just be the attempt that made you happy."

This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.