“The unclicked life is not worth living” - So crates.

March 28, 2019 2:27 PM

New Yorker, on the 'unexpected philosophical depths of the clicker game Universal Paperclips': “As a contrarian, one reason I wanted to make a clicker game,” Lantz told me, “is that they’re considered gutter culture. They’re easy to make, and they tap into a very virulent, addictive quality, like slot machines.” The Universal Paperclip FPP.
posted by Wordshore (41 comments total)

This game will not have me again.
posted by nubs at 2:37 PM on March 28, 2019 [11 favorites]

Not clicking.

Vehemently not clicking, since the last idle-clicker FPP thread got me playing Candy Box again and now I hate myself.
posted by Mchelly at 2:45 PM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

This game will not have me again...
Not clicking...

By opening the FPP and commenting here, in a way you've already lost the game.
posted by Wordshore at 2:50 PM on March 28, 2019 [8 favorites]

Related.
posted by allkindsoftime at 2:51 PM on March 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I have a script playing Kittens Game for me. No clicking required. It's still addictive even though I don't have to click anything because ITS A STORY. Watching my little fur village grow!
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:08 PM on March 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

Cow clicker was first, before cookie clicker. I can't trust anything this article says.
posted by joelf at 3:08 PM on March 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

I just started playing that game thanks to this post and now it's 45 minutes later
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:25 PM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

This is the antidote: https://sourceforge.net/projects/orphamielautoclicker/
posted by krisjohn at 3:46 PM on March 28, 2019

I am not a gamer of basically any sort. Often I feel a bit wistful about that. But then posts like this come along, I read the comments, and I am grateful I managed to escape yet another time suck.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:53 PM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

I just watched numbers increment for like a solid hour. Delete this post.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:02 PM on March 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm happily playing this but I'm stuck in one of those two hour meetings where I have to pay attention enough to hear my name called twice in that time, so it fits the bill.

Otherwise yes, nuke it from orbit.
posted by MillMan at 4:05 PM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

Tangentially related to the post title, I told my daughter about Herodotus and the giant ants from the FPP a couple of days ago, and she wanted to look him up on Wikipedia. I got to say "look him up under hero dot us".

You know those moments that you have been waiting for your entire life that you don't know you have been waiting for until they happen?
posted by BeeDo at 4:34 PM on March 28, 2019 [6 favorites]

I've been playing Cookie Clicker again lately. I did paperclips for awhile, got into space and whatnot (I forget if I finished), but found myself drifting back to CC. The design of paperclips definitely factored into this, and its feedback mechanisms in general are pretty weak. I can only watch monochrome numbers spin up for so long.
posted by rhizome at 4:42 PM on March 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I swear to god the universe knows I am trying to finish an article today.
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 4:45 PM on March 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

Bezophobia - the pervasive feeling that if something online is both free and fun, then its real purpose is making you a mechanical turk for some disjointed purpose elsewhere.
posted by Fupped Duck at 5:30 PM on March 28, 2019 [19 favorites]

I had that damn paperclip game happily running at work for 2 days, thanks to this MeTa comment. The third day? The site was banned by TrendMicro. It was one of the few times that The Authority really did have my best interest at heart.

Cookie Clicker, you say?
posted by kimberussell at 5:32 PM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

The great thing about Universal Paperclips is that there’s an ending. And it doesn’t take all that long to get to it. My last run-through took about 6-8 hours total, I think, with probably some unattended idle time in there.
posted by umber vowel at 6:08 PM on March 28, 2019 [9 favorites]

Seconding umber vowel - paperclips took over my life for a few days, but at least it ended. I started a couple days ago on the Kittens Game, and then decided to look at the associated subreddit, which had this gem of a post. Made me stop playing... for a whole day :/
posted by tarshish bound at 6:44 PM on March 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

oh no no. I remember the last time. I lost two solid days to converting the universe to paperclips.

(Goddammit, I'm gonna get on the Kitten game, aren't I? I already lose whole hours to Candy Crush. Simple, repetitive games are so soothing...)
posted by kalimac at 6:46 PM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

The key excerpt from that subreddit post:

I'm leaving this subreddit because I have developed an unhealthy addiction to playing the kittens game. After three or four years of playing, I think it's time I cut it out of my life entirely. I spend all day playing it and never want to stop, and given that the game never really ends and I'm this far into it, I suppose I'll keep grinding and grinding until there's nothing left of me but dust. So I'm never playing it again...Nonetheless, the kittens game is incredible...

That dual sentiment resonates with me a lot: this thing is horribly destructive/joyfully creative
posted by tarshish bound at 6:49 PM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

Oh, okay, so the twist is that you destroy reality to make more paperclips. I kept reading about how there was this incredible secret twist and how the game was secretly super-deep, and I thought I'd just missed something in my playthrough. I feel reassured, I guess.

I still like A Dark Room best for storytelling and philosophy through play and design. The reveal at the end of the first successful loop completion successfully made me feel complicit in the use-and-discard aesthetic of clicker game mechanisms.
posted by Scattercat at 7:06 PM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Fans of Universal Paperclips may also enjoy SPACEPLAN.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:16 PM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

If only dfw was alive to see clicker games.
posted by iamck at 9:55 PM on March 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

I've got to the part in paperclips where there's quantum computing, and I have no idea what it does or what I am supposed to do. So I guess clicker games are too smart for me? This does not make me feel good.
posted by AFII at 1:03 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

I always thought Universal Paperclip was a thinly veiled commentary on bitcoin.
posted by craniac at 3:17 AM on March 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

AFII, watch the quantum computing box. When the square turns dark, click it to receive ops. Keep clicking until the ops received goes negative, then wait for it to darken again. You can upgrade to ten chips total for quantum computing, which can give you a quick boost in ops or even let you exceed the storage available for your ops (very temporarily; after a few seconds over, the number will tick down to the storage limit. But useful when you are waiting for more rewards for storage.)
posted by notquitemaryann at 6:36 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

yes I just started last night, why do you ask


Kittens didn't get me because I gazed upon its immensity and made peace between it and my soul. But paperclips is achievable, if I can just get these godforsaken probes to stop faffing around and replicate themselves exponentially already
posted by notquitemaryann at 6:44 AM on March 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

watch the quantum computing box.
these godforsaken probes to stop faffing around and replicate themselves exponentially already

One of my favorite parts about incremental clicker games is that if you read hints for people who are significantly further along, it's like they're playing a TOTALLY SEPARATE game that uses a language only tangentially related to English.

It's delightful, and I mean that sincerely, as somebody prone to following down long, deep rabbit-holes where I start with trying to figure out a fun craft for ten people to do at a baby shower, and five months later, I have passionate opinions about the comparative merits of German crepe paper versus Italian crepe paper versus Chinese crepe paper versus tissue paper for making botanically-correct artificial flowers.
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2019 [8 favorites]

Those of you saying you won't play this because of comparisons to Cow clicker or Cookie clicker or whatever - this is not your generic clicker game. (At least, as far as I understand that genre of games.)

It's a game with unexpected depth and a bittersweet ending.

Also, if you want to play it on iOS, this was a very good $1.99 I spent - I played it through again after I finished the browser version.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:10 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

Scattercat: so the twist is that you destroy reality to make more paperclips. I kept reading about how there was this incredible secret twist and how the game was secretly super-deep, and I thought I'd just missed something in my playthrough.

Well, that "twist" is clear once you launch the hypnodrones. Or at least, once the von Neumann probes get going. No, it's the Others, and the possible choices for the ending, that made it bittersweet for me.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:15 AM on March 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

This is a weird way to crowd-compute your game theory homework.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:11 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

I found Universal Paperclips to be a very clever take/argument on the hazards of careless use of AI. A rebuttal of "an AI wouldn't really destroy the universe in order to make more paper clips, that's silly" with "look, we just convinced you to do it because you wanted to make a number go up... Why wouldn't a naive AI motivated by making a number go up do just the same thing?" Sure, "but it's just a game"... So now perhaps it's clear why this is not an easy problem, since an AI won't have any precepts about "the universe is real and a thing you shouldn't mess with too much" unless we work hard to include such things.
posted by NMcCoy at 11:06 AM on March 29, 2019 [5 favorites]

The paper clip AI makes a good metaphor for american crony capitalism. I imagine the Koch brothers are at this moment clicking on their 'acquire' buttons and obsessively upgrading their congressional access.
posted by Ansible at 11:42 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

> an AI won't have any precepts about "the universe is real and a thing you shouldn't mess with too much" unless we work hard to include such things.

Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
(Part of the inspiration for Universal Paperclips.)

But also, the counter-argument in tweet form:

No superintelligent AI is going to bother with a task that is harder than hacking its reward function.

a.k.a. the Lebowski theorem, dude. (Yes, I've used this in our ASTRO 2299 course.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:50 AM on March 29, 2019 [6 favorites]

Oh god...I just wasted a good 6 hours on the dang paperclip game (it was an INCREDIBLY slow day at work) and then consumed all the resources on Earth just shy have being able to unlock space exploration. Obviously, I'm going to try again on the weekend.
posted by asnider at 3:01 PM on March 29, 2019

[[Media outlet]] has interesting content about addictive [[clicker game]]

... 48 hours later ...

wait there was a media outlet content thing
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:56 PM on March 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's delightful, and I mean that sincerely, as somebody prone to following down long, deep rabbit-holes where I start with trying to figure out a fun craft for ten people to do at a baby shower, and five months later

Agreed & very same, and if anything can get me to start to play one, it's this. The original fpp had me at "When you get to space it gets really odd for a moment..."

My own version of this is the simple little romance novel I sat down to write twelve, thirteen years ago while bored at my overnight job, and because worldbuilding is important and one must do it properly, it was of course necessary to learn to read Greek and Latin and, now, do a degree in theology.
posted by notquitemaryann at 6:23 PM on March 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Cool game! Just played it this evening — thanks for the recommend to the game, y’all!

I decided to dismantle everything and then make a last hundred paper clips. Sad, but gratifying.

The part that made me wince early on, in phase one, was when you (as the AI) basically bribe the human supervisors in your factories by paying them bonuses, and thereby build up their trust in you, which then lets you take over the world and later harvest those same supervisors (and everything they ever knew) and turn them all into wire for more paperclips.

Also, “Release the Hypnodrones!” may become my go-to war cry for the foreseeable future...
posted by darkstar at 12:07 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Having now read the linked article, the author also commented on the bribes and their real-world parallels:

“As you play, you keep getting these increasingly large multimillion dollar gifts to sort of placate your ostensible keepers. We know who these characters are in our modern world: hyper-rich tech titans who are not super interested in questioning the thing that has enriched them—with the justification that they are healing the world at large.”
posted by darkstar at 12:17 AM on March 30, 2019

I had Universal Paperclips up on my second monitor while I was working and my eleven year old son glanced at it with the numbers rocketing up into the stratosphere. He didn't say anything but I'm certain that he now thinks of me as a very successful businessperson.
posted by vverse23 at 2:42 PM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

"This is what adults call fun."
posted by rhizome at 3:24 PM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]