The creator of Papers, Please wants developers to make weirder, more personal games

Lucas Pope astatine GDC 2025.

Lucas Pope, the solo creator of games similar Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, received the Pioneer Award from the yearly Game Developers Choice Awards this year. It’s a large accomplishment that puts him successful a league with manufacture giants similar Gabe Newell, Yu Suzuki, and Roberta Williams.

“Now that I’m an authoritative pioneer, I person immoderate requests,” helium said successful his brief acceptance speech. “World peace, obviously. But for this crowd, I’d beryllium blessed if you kept making the kinds of unsocial off-beat, experimental, creative, and particularly idiosyncratic games that I love.”

It was akin to thing Pope had said to maine earlier — particularly the idiosyncratic part. I had asked him what proposal helium mightiness person for developers conscionable starting out. “Make thing personal, marque it small, merchandise connected [Itch.io]. Try to find the radical who similar the aforesaid things you bash and past marque the things you enjoy.”

Games, for him, person ever been astir “making thing that I privation to play,” Pope said. With Papers, Please, wherever you person to marque pugnacious decisions portion moving arsenic an migration inspector successful a fictional country, “it was, â …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.