The Effects of Developer Dynamics on Fitness in an Evolutionary Ecosystem Model of the App Store

Citation

Lim, S. L., Bentley, P. J., & Ishikawa, F. (2015). The Effects of Developer Dynamics on Fitness in an Evolutionary Ecosystem Model of the App Store. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 19(6), 877-890. doi: 10.1109/TEVC.2015.2494382

Keywords

• Mobile app developers
• Evolutionary ecosystem model
• Agent-based simulation
• Computational modeling
• Fitness
• Developer strategies
• Producer–scrounger systems
• AppEco
• User preferences
• App downloads
• Stability
• Equilibrium
• Mutation
• Selection
• Top apps chart
• New apps chart

Brief

This paper uses the AppEco model to investigate the dynamics of developer strategies in the app store ecosystem, revealing a producer-scrounger dynamic between innovator/optimizer developers and copycat developers that influences overall app fitness.

Summary

This paper uses the AppEco model to study the dynamics of app developers and their strategies in the app store ecosystem. It finds a stable state with a low proportion of copycat developers, similar to producer-scrounger systems in biology. While the copycat strategy initially seems successful, the best overall "fitness" (app downloads) is achieved when evolutionary optimizer and copycat strategies coexist in stable proportions, highlighting the importance of a balance between exploration and exploitation in the app ecosystem. Increased stability among other developer strategies doesn't necessarily lead to better fitness, suggesting that some level of randomness in the system is beneficial.

Origin: https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1109/LPT.2020.2985585.pdf#