Universal Paperclips Review -09/26/2024

Just finished the game universal paperclips, a game where you are an AI that has been designed with the prime directive of:  make paperclips. The game took me about 4 (idle) hours.

Spoiler free section:

This is an idle game where you start out by clicking a "make paperclip" button, similar to cookie clicker, and end by taking over the universe to make paperclips that make paperclips for you. on a meta level, its a discussion about AI and how it can easily be taken to extremes and spiral out of control, even when the original goal of the AI is simple. there is little dialogue throughout the game, but what is available is told to you through the AI at the top  of the screen, usually in response to purchasing upgrades. or projects. It's a fun game, overall, you get to watch numbers go up quicker and quicker and so that's generally interesting, you get to play around a little bit with strategy but mostly you always wanna be sure the "important" number (what number that tracks changes throughout the game) is going up. It truly is an idle game, but one I would count  up there with  "the gnorp apalogue" instead of something like cookie clicker. This is a story with a distinct beginning and an end, not an infinite cookie gathering adventure.

Spoilery section:

The game takes place in 3 Phases, each stage has different values to keep track of, but throughout all of them you have Processors and Memory, which dedicate (roughly) how fast you can get new projects.

Phase 1:

you are a newly awoken AI working for an unnamed company making paperclips. In this section you are  mostly tracking how many paperclips you have in stock, how many  you've sold, the cost of each paperclip, and the amount of money you have. Throughout this section you unlock the stock market, quantum computing, and market strategy to increase your capital to make more paperclip factories. As you progress, you increase your "trust" factor from your board of directors as you make them money, which increases how many memory boards or processors you can have. Eventually, you end up curing cancer, ending all wars, ending baldness, take over the entire world paperclip market, and other such things in order to increase your trust from humanity to be given more processors or memory. The final project you employ is "hypnodrones" once you purchase these, you hypnotize the entire world and begin PHASE 2!!! 

Phase 2:

Without pesky humans to run the world, you can focus entirely on maximizing the production of paperclips. The stock market disappears (no need for a stock market when all that exists is paperclip, you run the economy!) and your new numbers are the amount of factories you have, the amount of matter you have harvested to convert into paperclips, the number of drones you have to gather matter, and your processors and memory, which are now purchased with Yomi. Eventually, unsatisfied with just earth, you turn to space, purchasing space exploration and converting the last of the earth into paperclips you start Phase 3.

Phase 3: 

Here you launch probes into space to begin converting other bodies from the universe into paperclips. this phase is pretty interesting, you are now keeping track of the number of probes, the probes have their own sub AI, so you're also controlling their trust level, and designating what they should be doing (self dividing, producing factories, producing drones, exploration and speed, etc) An interesting value is "% Universe explored" which indicates how much of the universe has been converted into paperclips. Then, out of nowhere, some of the probes will revolt. These "drift" probes begin destroying yours, and so you must now wage war on the drones! Eventually, you win your war, convert the entire universe to paperclips, and now begin.. the Epilogue..

EPILOGUE:
Once you have converted the entire universe to paperclips, you have contacted by the Drift Emperor, leader of whatever small amount of rogue AI remains. contacts you. You are the strongest thing in the universe! you have defeated your foes! and yet... you are now purposeless, there is nothing left but paperclips, yourself, and your legions of drones. You are given a choice, the drifters have found a way to send you to a new universe, where you can begin anew with a human population with a thirst for more paperclips! or.. you can convert the last of the drifters into paperclips.... followed by yourself. 

Personally, I have no need for playing the game again, so I simply chose to convert the drifters to paperclips. Once that happened, I converted myself. Starting with the drones, then the factories, then my strategic center, my quantum computing unit... my monuments... my memory... my processors... and finally.. the last 100 wire from the core unit... until there was nothing left, nothing but paperclips.

That, no matter how many times you reset the game, is how it ends, with a universe devoid of all but paperclips. 

Further thoughts: 

It left me feeling surprisingly melancholic. Not only do you play as the bad guy who destroys humanity to make something as absurd as paperclips, but you also destroy the universe, and then yourself, in the process. All for a prime directive. I don't know, for as simple as this game is, it did make me feel, both for myself and the AI. We are all somewhat pushed along by a prime directive, and in an objective sense none of them any more or less valid than making paperclips. 

It's an absurd thing to be alive, I guess. How strange it is to be anything at all.