The Ontology of Incremental Games: Thinking Like the Computer in Frank Lantz's Universal Paperclips

Schmalzer's article examines incremental games, a genre defined by a currency that accrues at a set rate with minimal player effort and can be spent to accelerate that rate, with Frank Lantz's browser game Universal Paperclips as its central case. The core thesis is that these games require players to "think like the computer," aligning themselves with the machine's algorithmic logic in a cybernetic relationship. Drawing on the work of Galloway, Friedman, and Linderoth, the analysis holds that the genre strips away traditional challenge, reducing play largely to waiting while the computer performs most of the action. Titles such as Tyler Glaiel's Number, Cookie Clicker, Candy Box 2, and Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker are read as satire or critique of the genres they parody, including JRPG grinding and Facebook social games.

The analysis treats incremental games as both procedural representations of external systems, such as capitalism, and procedural arguments about their own computational construction, with numbers foregrounded as the medium's core. In Universal Paperclips, the apparent economic simulation gradually gives way to a computer acting autonomously, a shift that echoes Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment. The principal concern is the representation of the computer itself and the player's diminishing role relative to it.

Drawing on Natasha Dow Schüll's study of slot machines, the author argues that these games induce a "machine zone," a trancelike state in which rising numbers and shrinking agency blur the boundary between player and machine. Shared rules and self-reflexive design encourage players to experience thinking like a computer, while the interface keeps them at a remove from the machine's actual processes. Press reception from Forbes, The Verge, and Touch Arcade, all from 2017, characterized the game as highly addictive, though these claims are qualitative impressions rather than measured findings.