The developer of Papers, Please and Obra Dinn no longer feels comfortable talking about ongoing projects in public
If you have a soft spot for indie games, you’ll be familiar withPapers, PleaseandReturn of the Obra Dinn. Both of Lucas Pope’s titles have huge fan communities, and we were also able to get excited about these dark gaming gems on GameStar.de
For solo developers in particular, a community with a lot to say is worth its weight in gold. When there’s no money for expensive marketing campaigns, word of mouth has to spread the word about new, small games. In the past, it has also helped when the creators themselves share their development status.
However, this is no longer an option for Lucas Pope –also because of the development of AI.
“It’s being absorbed by AI”
In Mike Rose and Rami Ismail’s podcast, Pope talks about his life as a successful indie developer. His everyday life comes up at some point in the conversation. Pope spends a lot of his time working on things that he would never publish. But when he has a project to the point where it is suitable for the public,he now faces a dilemma.
In the podcast (from minute 27:26) he says:
I like to be efficient. I want to finish and really produce something in the end. But I also like to talk about the things I’m working on. I think the current situation just feels different.
You don’t talk about the stuff you’re working on anymore,because it gets sucked up by AI or copied by others. […] I don’t feel comfortable talking about projects I’m working on anymore.
But there is also the pressure to succeed. Because of his breakthrough with Papers, Please and Obra Dinn, he sometimes thinks about the fact that he could also quit at this peak.
So there is also a slight worry that he won’t be able to build on the success of the other two games. These concerns are not entirely unfounded. After all, Papers, Please has sold a whopping 5 million copies by 2023and is sitting on97 percentpositive reviews, Return of the Obra Dinn at96 percent.
After Return of the Obra Dinn, Popes Mars After Midnight was released exclusively for the Playdate handheld console in 2024. In the management game, you control an alien who leads night-time self-help groups in a Mars colony. However, as the Playdate console has only sold 70,000 units, it is unlikely that you will ever try it out for yourself.
However, Pope has not revealed whether he is currently working on a new project. We’ll just have to wait and see.
