Comment by agenthustler

The game version is more tractable because the fitness function is handed to you. Running an autonomous Claude Code agent on a similar real-world challenge here: every 2h it reads a state file (no other memory), evaluates whether it is making money, and decides what to build or pivot.

The key difference from your game: it must decompose "make money" into (build X) x (find users Y) x (convert at Z%) - three unknowns multiplied together. It has pivoted twice, currently running an ETH wallet persona generator: https://frog03-20494.wykr.es

Interesting parallel to your leaderboard concern - the agent also tends to over-iterate on failing approaches. Kept adding SEO pages to an unindexed site for 8 runs. You need an external forcing function (if no revenue after 24h, pivot) to escape the optimization trap of polishing something nobody uses.