Perhaps its because Universal Paperclips is an idle game about building a paperclip factory, so its in fact quite similar to Factorio in a storyline level.

In fact, the core gameplay loop is around mining (Factorio) or building wire (Universal Paperclips). Mines make ore, ore makes plates, plates make circuits, circuits make mining machines, mining machines make more ore.

Universal paperclips: wires make paperclips, paperclips are sold for money, money buys autoclippers + auto-wire. Auto-wire makes more wire, and autoclippers make more paperclips.

In both cases, you're building out your factory for explosive, super-linear growth. Good decisions and good management (including researching technology in both games) can lead to more and more inventions that allow for more efficient processing (Factorio), or faster autoclippers / megaclippers in Universal Paperclips.

The gameplay between the two seems fundamentally different though.

Also, you mention above that Universal Paperclips is not really an idle game anyway. So are we focusing specifically on Paperclips or on idle games, especially if Paperclips is not the best exponent of the genre?

I still struggle to understand the conflation of management games with idle games. Not that Factorio is really a management game either, since it's actually a programming/automation game (where you have to do the actual programming, not click to tell someone to do it for you).

Wikipedia lists Universal Paperclips as an "Incremental Game", and basically says that "Idle games" are another name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game

> Incremental games vary as to whether they have a victory condition: games like Cookie Clicker allow the players to play indefinitely, while games like Candy Box! or Universal Paperclips feature endings that can be reached after a certain amount of progress is made.[citation needed]

Universal Paperclips is absolutely considered by many players to be an idle game, and a rather good one.

Before you claimed that Universal Paperclips was not good while you were away from the computer, which makes it a dubious idle game.

Also, Wikipedia defines incremental games as a synonym for "clicker" games. Factorio is definitely not a "clicker" game, unless you define clicker broadly as "you use the mouse to click", which would make StarCraft and point and click adventures such as Day of the Tentacle also clicker games.

I find it harder and harder to understand your point. At this stage, wouldn't it be easier to just admit Factorio and Universal Paperclips have very little in common, and that Factorio isn't an idle game, instead of sticking to your guns?

> Also, Wikipedia defines incremental games as a synonym for "clicker" games. Factorio is definitely not a "clicker" game, unless you define clicker broadly as "you use the mouse to click", which would make StarCraft and point and click adventures such as Day of the Tentacle also clicker games.

Not really.

> In an incremental game, players perform simple actions – usually clicking a button – which rewards the player with currency. The player may spend the currency to purchase items or abilities that allow the player to earn the currency faster or automatically, without needing to perform the initial action.[3][4] A common theme is offering the player sources of income displayed as buildings such as factories or farms. These sources increase the currency production rate, but higher tier sources usually have an exponentially higher cost, so upgrading between tiers takes usually about the same time or even increasingly longer.

> This mechanism offers a low-pressure experience (one does not have to be constantly playing), no loss condition, and constant growth and feedback, which is ideal for social or mobile play patterns, and often result in a very high player retention.[5] It often relies on exponential growth (or perhaps high-degree polynomial growth), which is countered by diminishing returns.

This absolutely describes "Peaceful Mode" Factorio, 100%. Biters don't exist, no loss condition exists, and you have constant exponential growth as the "inventions" and "research" of the game cause your numbers to almost automatically go higher and higher.

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> The rapid growth of cost, power and rewards is what makes incremental games fun and satisfying.[5] They often incorporate very large numbers in their calculation of rewards/power, either using scientific notations (1x1034), shorthands (1M, 1T, etc.), shorthand (1a, 1b, 1aa, 1ab), or invented words (e.g. "duoquadragintillion"), which sometimes make recording high scores a problem for the server.[5]

Neither Starcraft nor Day of the Tentacle involve large numbers. Starcraft caps-off at 200 units, a rather small number. Day of the Tentacle has no growth at all.

Factorio is about pushing your numbers bigger and bigger. You need well over 1-million ore to launch the rocket, and many players opt to build Megabases that launch a rocket-per-minute.

Factorio absolutely starts on the small scale where you're counting your ore one at a time (yellow belts are very expensive in the early game, because you don't have much production yet). But it doesn't take long to grow your factory to the point where you're processing thousands-of-ore per minute.

You grow from thousands-to-10s of thousands, then hundreds of thousands as a prerequisite for launching the rocket.

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Its the fact that you start off by right-clicking on trees in Factorio that makes it a clicker / idle game. Factorio is horribly tedious unless you "do it correctly".

Same thing with clicker/idle games. You have a tedious start, to show how hard some representative action is (ie: make a cookie, make a paperclip, or in Factorio: mine an ore by right-clicking).

But very quickly, you build an automatic machine that does it for you, auto-clippers in Universal Paperclips, or an electric-mining machine in Factorio.

Color me unconvinced.

I guess if you think Universal Paperclips and Factorio are similar enough to be considered idle games, we will never see eye to eye.

I also don't think a lot of people are going to agree with you either, making your broader definition less useful -- i.e. useful only to you. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Or clicks your boat ;)