Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers Please creator Lucas Pope has a lot of ideas and is working on a few projects right now. However, he's not sharing much about what he's working on at the minute, largely due to fears of AI or other people stealing his concepts ahead of him being able to fully realise them.
Speaking with Mike Rose and Rami Ismail on their Mike & Rami Are Still Here podcast (transcription via VGC), Pope made it clear that he's still working on games and hasn't taken a step away from the industry. Instead, he just wants to keep his ideas behind closed doors until he's ready to share them.
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"I mean, it's not a hard rule. It's just, I got the kind of feeling about that, and I just didn't feel as comfortable talking about the stuff I was working on again. So I hope that sort of breaks and I can feel comfortable talking about the stuff I'm working on," Pope said.
He's also a bit more wary of releasing new games, after Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn's success made him a household name for indie game fans. "I feel lucky with those two games. You know, I can do the same things again. I can sort of focus on narrative and and gameplay and mechanics and stuff like that, but who knows, it could be a total miss. And I don't really want to push my luck too much in that sense," Pope explained.
AI fears and internal pressures can be a dangerous combo, but here's hoping that Pope can feel satisfied with a new project soon enough, and let us have a glimpse at what's cooking in that brain of his.