Lucas Pope is currently working on a very unique indie game titled Papers, Please. We did a write up about the game, but we were not able to get all of his quotes into the story. The full interview is below.
Papers, Please is one of the most unique games I’ve had the chance to play. Can you describe how you came up with the idea?
I’ve done a fair bit of international travel in the last few years. Even though everything’s always in order, the whole immigration process is loaded with tension. In most places you can watch the inspector fiddling around with your documents and their computer. I enjoy finding games in unusual places and it just sorta entered my head that there could be a game here. Something that captures the power of the inspector, the rigmarole of the actual inspection, and the tension for the immigrants.
Did the thought ever cross your mind that playing as an immigration agent would not appeal to gamers?
Maybe. I often hear about players’ surprise that the game is actually somewhat fun to play. People play and enjoy a lot of weird stuff though so I guess I wasn’t too worried.
Why did you choose to set in the game in a fictional dystopian country?
I find it easier to come up with stories and characters when set against such a background. It’s also fascinating to me how a bureaucracy can come out bad even when the individual actors have no evil will.
While it is described as a dystopian world, it has this huge feeling of an eastern European country set during the Cold War. Was that intentional, or just a natural way the design of the game went?
Part of the feel is just me trying to keep things dreary and part of it comes from how I imagine Berlin Wall checkpoints would’ve been. Eastern Europe during the Cold War is fertile ground for bureaucracy, nationalism, and overbearing security in general. All good topics for a game about immigration.
One thing that really stood out to me was when you have to strip search some immigrants entering Artotzka. It felt like a huge invasion of privacy when viewing the nude photos of these immigrants. Why did you decide to include this in the game?
Foremost, it’s a game mechanic that builds on the “search for discrepancies” gameplay. Looking at text is all good fun but I wanted to introduce some variety. Strip-search photos seemed like a good way to do that. Including them in the game also highlights the issue of security over privacy. If you compare what the game shows to what a typical backscatter x-ray shows, you’ll find they’re not that different.
What was the reasoning for including the mechanic of having to take care of your family?
I have another shorter game called “The Republia Times” that uses a similar mechanic. It’s basically a way to apply pressure on the player in order to make their decisions less clear-cut. I intentionally keep the interface basic so the player can project their own family onto it.
Right now you can play the first eight days of Papers, Please. What does the future hold for the game? Do you see the game ever being finished, or is this a game that you will be working on for a long time?
Man, I hope not. The final game will have around 30 days of gameplay and I’m planning to wrap it up in a month or so. Time estimates are not my forte though, so maybe double that.
Are there any plans in the future for putting the game on a large distribution network, like Steam?
I’d love to put it on Steam, but I’m not thrilled about my prospects on Greenlight. We’ll see.
The beta of Papers, Please is available as a free download on Pope’s website, which you can find here.
