The Artificial Life of the App Store 106
mikejuk writes "How does the Apple App Store actually work? What is the best strategy to employ if you want to get some users and make some money? There are some pointers on how it all works from an unusual source — artificial life. A pair of researchers Soo Ling Lim and Peter Bentley from University College London, set up an artificial life simulation of the app store's ecosystem. They created app developers with strategies such as — innovate, copy other apps, create useless variations on a basic app or try and optimize the app you have. What they found, among other things, was that the CopyCat strategy was on average the best. When they allow the strategies to compete and developer agents to swap then the use of the CopyCat fell to only 10%. The reason — more than 10% CopyCats resulted in nothing new to copy!"
Re:Useful Fitness-Function? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is why I refuse to use any Zynga owned game. Even if they purchased the original rather than copy it, they'll use the profits to copy others.
Re:Useful Fitness-Function? (Score:2, Interesting)