The shuffling of papers and documents/computer screen correlating looked interesting and I thought there could be a fun game there. After a few times of this, I paid extra attention to what the immigration inspector was doing. Pope: I'm an American living in Japan and pass through international airport immigration a couple times per year. Reason: What inspired you to make a game out of the process of checking border paperwork? A few years ago I left the big leagues to focus on these kinds of games. Contributing to AAA projects was great but I've always had a mind on smaller, more experimental games. From there I ended up at larger studios, including Naughty Dog during the Uncharted 1 and 2 years. We survived for a while but eventually ended up going our separate ways. I started working at a small studio started by me and a few friends. Lucas Pope: I've been making games since leaving college ages ago. Reason: Could you give us a quick biography of yourself? As the game took off, Reason contacted him for an e-mail interview about his game’s success, the growth of independent game development, and bringing political concepts and messages into game design. Though Pope has a background in working on major studio games, this was an indie labor of love. The game is the creation of a single man, Lucas Pope. The game has many possible endings, depending on your choices. You will deal with government corruption. You will be recruited by terrorists looking to liberate the country.
Doing your job perfectly may result in you breaking up families or detaining a person trying to smuggle in medicine. The relentless complications of the ever-shifting paperwork demands affect the travelers as well as yourself. Interwoven through this process-oriented gameplay are brief little stories surrounding the people with whom you interact. Eventually, every approval or denial is followed by seconds of tension while the player waits in dread for the sound of that printer. Every mistake you make is revealed by a citation from a dot matrix printer in your station that tells you what you missed. And it’s all timed, so the more papers you’re given, the less time you have to review. If his weight doesn’t match what’s listed or his gender doesn’t match, then you have to subject him to a humiliating (for both of you) strip search to make sure he’s not smuggling in contraband. If an immigrant’s face doesn’t match his or her document picture, then you have to check fingerprints. Diplomats have their own papers, as do those who seek asylum (yes, apparently some of the other nearby countries are even more oppressive). Additional documents like work visas, entry permits, and immunization records are tossed at you to examine. Fail to bring home enough pay and they can die off.Īs the game progresses, the paperwork game grows more and more complicated. At the end of each day, the player returns home to ration the pittance he’s earned on food, rent, heat and sometimes medicine for his family. The player is pushed to do the best he can because he’s paid according to how successful he is at properly sorting who is and isn’t allowed into Arstotzka.
If the paperwork is accurate, they’re good to go. The player must analyze the paperwork of each person attempting to get through the checkpoint into your homeland, the fictional country of Arstotzka. The game puts the player in the role of a customs official at the border of an oppressive Eastern European country during the cold war of the early ‘80s. €œA video game where players check the legitimacy of people’s immigration paperwork†sounds like some horrid concept a Department of Homeland Security employee might come up with as a way to funnel some of the agency’s public relations budget to a crony in the gaming industry.īut in August, a little indie game called Papers, Please charmed the pants off reviewers and players with exactly that pitch.
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