When Game Discovery Has a Deadline
Allocating attention during a short discovery event

Published: 22 October 2026
Report version: 1.0.0
https://jasondoyle.ie/whitepapers/when-game-discovery-has-a-deadline/

This bundle contains the report and its synthetic discovery study. It does
not contain Steam user records or measurements of Steam recommendation
quality. All response probabilities and attention budgets are modelling
assumptions.

Contents

paper.md
    The published report.

artifact/
    The frozen protocol, simulation, analysis, tests and captured results.
    Read artifact/README.md for exact reproduction commands and the
    protocol amendment. The matched continuation comparison was added
    during manuscript QA using existing runs.

BUNDLE-MANIFEST.json
    SHA-256 digests and sizes of every payload file. This file is generated
    inside the ZIP by build_artifact_bundle.py.

Quick verification

Use Python 3.12 and the NumPy version pinned in artifact/requirements.txt.
From this directory:

    cd artifact
    python -m unittest -v test_study

The 13 focused tests do not rerun the full experiment. To reproduce the
captured 512 worlds and 5,696 policy runs, follow artifact/README.md and use
a fresh output directory. Analysis verifies the protocol and simulation
hashes before producing summaries.

Bundle reproduction

From the directory containing this README, run:

    python build_artifact_bundle.py

The builder uses fixed ZIP timestamps, permissions and file ordering.
It recreates discovery-study.zip from the publication files.

Read LICENSES.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt before reusing the contents.
