Universal Paperclips

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JaySevenZero
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Universal Paperclips

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Universal Paperclips for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Quiet Paul
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Re: 535: Universal Paperclips

Post by Quiet Paul »

A fun and strangely addictive little game. It didn’t go the way I thought it might. Or at least I didn’t get the impression it did. I had a feeling early on that it would go the way of Skynet and the AI would eventually become self-aware and kick me off and take over all jobs and the complete domination of Earth but it seemed to go down the route of me and my buddy AI taking over and dominating Earth and space together like a team. All in the name of making Paperclips!

I imagine one could, if they wanted to, stay on level one and continue to make a profit and eventually rule the Earth after many many hours of making and selling Paperclips(?). I think the time it would take achieve that though would put anyone off.

On my first three play throughs I picked to continue on another world and start again. This grants a little extra token to get you through things a little faster and by the end of the third play through I’d knocked about two hours off compared to my first play through. At the end of the fourth I picked Decline and broke down all my machines and then a little credit sequence played at the top. That felt like a nice ending.

One thing I will say is that it’s quite a hard game to sell to anyone verbally. At least I found it so. Trying to recommend my fiancé try it by explaining “well you make Paperclips and invest in the Paperclip stock and make money, then eventually it all becomes about making paper clips and using the finite resources of the planet to make more and…” - and by this point she’s staring longingly at the wall behind me.

Would recommend though!

3WR: RELEASE THE HYPNODRONES
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KarlDaFrog
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Re: 535: Universal Paperclips

Post by KarlDaFrog »

I have the web version of Universal Paper Clips open as I start typing this. I had some background on the game having watched Jacob Geller’s excellent youtube video “The Horror of Universal Paper Clips and Space Engine”, but it’s been a while so the details were foggy.

I immediately ran the business into ground fiddling with the Price Per Clip to see what would happen. This prompted a button asking if I wanted to give up to “gain trust”. Weird. Having effectively already lost, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to also give up.

I’m a web developer so I popped the Browser Developer Tools to see what was happening. I knew that the game had something to do with very large numbers so I was curious to see if I could understand the code. Of course, I accidentally spoiled myself by seeing the HTML page without the styling, hiding the text yet to appear. I can see that there’s an entire file dedicated to combat, which is unexpected. The javascript isn’t even minified which means it’s quite readable.

I’ve only dipped my toes into the Universal Paper Clips experience, but I get the feeling that constant growth is probably not good for me or society. This is about as low a level of visual polish and interactivity you can get for a game, which also makes it interesting from a “why is this compelling?” standpoint. For some reason “Number go bigger” works on our brains better than expected, and when the game is popping out quotes from Napoleon, Kenneth Arrow, and Louis Kahn, it’s asking to be examined. It’s also memorable for me for being the first game that I have opened the code up and can somewhat understand.
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Alex79
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Re: 535: Universal Paperclips

Post by Alex79 »

I downloaded this the second it was mentioned on the series reveal show back at the start of the year. I've always tended to get a bit addicted to clicker type games I've played, and I was immediately hooked by this one. I played it through in its entirety three times I think, and it managed to stay interesting all the way through, slowly adding new mechanics and bizarre situations. I found it really satisfying getting the perfect balance between production and profit - make the clips too fast and you'll be running at a loss, but make too few and you'll sell out which equally runs profit in to the ground. There is quite a sinister undertone to the game when you think about what you're actually doing, and where these paperclips are coming from, and I'm not sure it serves as a genuine tutorial on how to run a business, but I had a lot of fun with this and it really did dominate my thoughts for a couple of days. Halfway through day three I had a moment of clarity whilst hunched over my phone frantically tapping away and deleted it immediately. But it was great whilst it lasted!
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