Frank Lantz

Frank Lantz is an American game designer, writer and teacher best known for Universal Paperclips, the 2017 browser game in which the player is an AI that turns the universe into paperclips. Born on December 17, 1963, he is also the founding chair, now chair emeritus, of the New York University Game Center, and a co-founder of the studios area/code and Everybody House Games.

Lantz has worked in games since the 1990s, as director of game design at Gamelab, lead designer at Pop & Co and creative director at R/GA Interactive, with credits including Gearheads, Junkbot and Diner Dash. In 2005 he co-founded area/code in New York, which made location-based, cross-media and social games and designed the hit puzzle game Drop7; Zynga acquired the studio in 2011 and it became Zynga New York. The New York Times called him a reigning genius of the mysteries of games after Drop7. For over twelve years he also taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Parsons and the School of Visual Arts.

Universal Paperclips started as a weekend project to teach himself JavaScript and grew into a nine-month obsession. Inspired by Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment and by Kittens Game, it starts with a single button and escalates into a meditation on optimisation and AI risk. His wife, software designer Hilary Lantz, helped with the maths, and Bennett Foddy contributed a combat feature. Lantz announced it on October 9, 2017; the site buckled under the traffic and about 450,000 people played in the first 11 days. Paid mobile versions followed.

With his family he runs Everybody House Games, which has released the smart-speaker party game Hey Robot, the word battle royale Babble Royale and Q-UP in 2025. In 2023 MIT Press published his book The Beauty of Games, and he writes the Donkeyspace newsletter. Lantz shows how a respected designer and academic can still ship a viral solo project.