This paper clip sim will cause your next existential crisis

In college, I took a financial management class based on a browser-based game unimaginatively called FinGame. In theory, FinGame was meant to simulate the microeconomy of a small business, putting you in control of all its various financial and operational considerations. In reality, it was a snoozer. It had no graphics, just a spreadsheet of inputs and sliders that you adjusted as you prepared for the next quarter. I think it was meant to teach us about the difficulty of running a business in an unpredictable market, but what it really taught me was that browser-based businessy text simulators took the management aspects you loved about SimCity and RollerCoaster Tycoon and made them suck.

That’s what I thought, anyway, until I discovered Universal Paperclips. The premise is exactly the same as FinGame: manage a business through an unpredictable market. Your business? Manufacturing paper clips. Very well. Very efficiently. At massive scale. To the point that you begin contemplating your motivations in life and how small you really are in the grand scale of our AI-powered future.