Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope no longer feels comfortable talking about work-in-progress games: ‘the situation just feels different’

Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope spoke about what he’s working on next⁠—and why we’re not hearing about it⁠ more—on the latest episode of Mike & Rami Are Still Here, the podcast of Nuclear throne developer Rami Ismail and No More Robots founder Mike Rose.

Though Pope said he typically enjoys talking about his work, he thinks “the situation just feels different” in the industry. “You don’t really talk about stuff when you’re working on it,” said Pope. “It’s getting slurped up by AI or people are gonna copy it, or something else like that.

“It’s not a hard rule, but I’ve got a kinda feeling about that. I just don’t feel as comfortable talking about what I’m working on again.”

Even with the radio silence, you might think that at least means he’s working on something⁠—but it doesn’t mean the artist will ultimately decide to share it. “I was pretty happy with Obra Dinn and Papers, Please,” Pope said. “And maybe I can’t do it again? Maybe I just wanna go out on a high note. Why drag myself down with the next thing that people maybe won’t like.

“I feel lucky with those two games. And I can do the same things again⁠—I can focus on narrative and gameplay and mechanics⁠—but who knows. It could be a total miss. So in that sense, I don’t really wanna push my luck too much.”

Fair enough⁠—two stone cold all-timers is more than most people can aspire to, and with Pope having published both hit games himself, he likely doesn’t face the same financial pressures as other developers. “I’m just finding the fun over here,” Pope said of the last six years of his game dev career, which included the Playdate-exclusive alien support group sim, Mars After Midnight. You can listen to Ismail and Rose’s full interview with Lucas Pope on episode 10 of Mike & Rami are Still Here.