Lucas Pope won't reveal new projects, fears AI will 'slurp up' his creative work

Return of the Obra Dinn Developer Hesitant to Share Creative Work

Lucas Pope, the celebrated indie developer behind Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, is keeping his next projects under wraps due to concerns about AI. During an appearance on the Mike & Rami Are Still Here podcast hosted by No More Robots co-founder Mike Rose and Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail, Pope revealed that he no longer feels comfortable discussing his work-in-progress games 1

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. "You don't really talk about stuff when you're working on it, because I don't know that it's going to get slurped up by AI or people are going to copy it, or something else like that," he explained 2

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. This marks a significant shift for the Papers, Please creator, who previously enjoyed being open about his creative process.

Intellectual Property Concerns in the Age of Generative AI Tools

The indie game creator's reluctance stems from well-documented concerns about how generative AI tools are trained. Popular GenAI platforms and large language models have been trained on data essentially ripped from creators' work online, raising intellectual property concerns across creative industries 2

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. Pope described himself as "production-focused," wanting to finish projects efficiently and produce something meaningful at the end 3

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. However, the current landscape has changed his approach to sharing during development. "I also like to talk about the stuff I'm working on, and I think now the situation just feels different to me," Pope stated, adding that he hopes this feeling "breaks" so he can relax about discussing his work again 1

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Why AI Tools Don't Fit His Solo Game Development Process

Pope also addressed why he personally avoids using AI in his workflow. "People talk about using AI for programming or art or something like that. And that's the kind of thing where it would probably make things faster for me, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm not interested just in the end product. I want to enjoy working on it," he explained 2

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. As an indie developer who works alone, Pope emphasized that he's not set up to delegate tasks to others—or to AI. His creative process relies on mixing programming, design, and art together organically. "If someone else is doing it, I lose all that context. I lose that sort of ingredients in this stew to actually come up with something," he noted 2

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Success and Fear of Not Matching Past Achievements

Beyond AI concerns, Pope revealed another reason for his caution: the pressure of following up two critically acclaimed titles. Papers, Please launched in 2013, while Return of the Obra Dinn arrived in 2018, with the latter landing at number 74 on IGN's list of the top 100 games of all time 3

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. "Do I really want to maybe just go out on a high note? Why drag myself down with the next thing that people may not like?" Pope questioned during the podcast 1

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. Despite these doubts, he remains "100% obsessed" with making games and continues to work on new projects from Japan, where his previous success has allowed him to live and create independently 2

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. Pope also created browser games like The Sea Has No Claim and Unsolicited, and most recently released Mars After Midnight for the Playdate console in 2024 1

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