Game Theory in Universal Paperclips
*Contains spoilers for Universal Paperclips
As I was playing through Universal Paperclips, each of the various projects seemed to make logical sense - most were an effort to improve the capacity of certain items or increase the frequency of paperclips per second. However, the project that made me stop and scratch my head was the ‘strategic modeling’ operation that is used to generate Yomi. Having studied Game Theory more formally as an economics class, I was certainly surprised to see the addition of such a project within the game, especially as the various tactics were never explained (e.g. Tit for Tat, A100), and in contrast to other projects, the amount of Yomi only seemed to vary by minimal margins (around +/- 100%) compared to some of the other choice factors the player has agency over the game.
As a means of making sense of its inclusion, I continued to progressively add on the strategies - if for a sense of completionism, even though some of them I wasn’t sure I would ever use within the actual strategic modelling game. Thankfully, the number of rounds increased after each strategy I purchased, and so it wasn’t all in vain working through the additional projects. Simply based on experience, I knew strategies such as minimax and random would not yield me the same results as Greedy for example. Especially with the auto-tourney feature, I also didn’t feel that invested in whether or not I was able to maximise my Yomi after each successive round.
Ultimately, I think that the inclusion of Game Theory acts as an ironic metaphor for the greater game as a whole. After reading Bogost’s Procedural Rhetoric, he writes that “No decision is straightforward and the is the interaction of multiple successive decisions proud complex social, educational, and professional situations.” This made me think of the strategic modelling as game theory, better than most other models, primary objective attempts to account for these interactions as a means of offering a conclusion. At its heart, Universal Paperclips continually begs the player for choice - wanting them to increase the rate at which paperclips are made through strategic decisions and continuous bettering of production. However, the ironic moment comes in the definition of Game Theory as involving ‘rational decision makers’ (Wikipedia). The irony is that a player working through Universal Paperclips, especially at the beginning, believes they are this rational decision maker. But as the game evolves, the drones begin to emerge and the players decisions affect the universe to a point of lunacy, drifting away from any such definition as a ‘rational’ game. This essentially helps the game compound, what I deem to be its purpose. Like game theory, whilst it may appear rational, following things through to their seemingly strategic confusion can result in compromising decision making and an improper exerting of control.