Universal Paperclips
This free game accessible on the internet called universal paperclips is an incremental game in which the user "makes paperclips" through an AI programmed website. At one point in time, after playing for multiple hours or even days, the game may end... if you play it correctly. Although I didn't have the time to reach that point, I still posted a screenshot here of my progress. If you decide to give this interesting game a try, note that your game may or may not be drastically different from the screenshot of my game.
In this post, I comment on how the game illustrates the sublime.
Screenshot from playing ‘Universal Paperclips’
The sublime, a concept beyond description, was seen throughout the game, especially as the number of paperclips produced became so big amongst the games of my peers, there didn't even exist a name for the number. During stage 1: normal perception, when I could still see my income and know exactly how many paper clips were produced per second, it was nice knowing how much was spent on stocks or mega/auto clippers. Eventually, the AI, after getting enough paper clips, did most of the work itself. This small yet noticeable shift from this paperclip business being transformed into a "AI controlled" instead of a mostly human-controlled system was also essential in helping to bring about the question: will AI in the future have control over these larger owned companies. How will this negatively and positively affect the human species? Will we develop and evolve more or stay where we are? Due to a lack of effort needed to operate an enterprise as AI gets smarter, will our intelligence drastically diminish in the future? When I released Hypno drones, everything changed, and I went into stage 2, where my usual perception of the game was distorted since I could no longer auto-produce paper clips nor understand most of what was going on. Therefore, in a way, my predictions were correct in that the AI would take over and give the user this lack of autonomy over it. After continuously clicking on quantum computing until I got to 50000 creativity, I completed the last project, but nothing else showed up that indicated the game's continuance. Therefore, the game got stuck since it wasn’t producing anymore drones and power, but wire instead (from the screenshot). So, as a result, it didn’t enter stage 3, where the sublime was broken and overcome in order to have a different perspective of the world. Universal Paperclips illustrates the sublime through this how, when played correctly, so many paperclips will be produced to the point where it makes one feel insignificant. This is so expansive, and once all the matter in the universe is used to only create paperclips, it's impossible to mentally imagine that quantity.
