Return of the Obra Dinn and Paper, Please are two incredibly iconic indie games, both critically acclaimed, and both of them come from the same creator, Lucas Pope. He’s worked on several other titles since, either in small ways, resulting in a ‘Special Thanks’ on titles like Twelve Minutes, or his recent work as a designer on a Playdate game, Mars After Midnight. He is currently working on something, but it’s doubtful he’ll share what it is before it’s ready to release because he fears it will “get slurped up by AI” in our new Generative AI (GenAI) world.

This comes from Pope’s recent appearance on a podcast (via VGC) hosted by fellow indie developers, Mike Rose and Rami Ismail, where the three talk about Pope’s games, how he works, and the current state of the video game industry across a number of topics. On the topic of AI/GenAI, Pope first explains why those tools are not for him with an answer that is fairly typical for anyone who has made creating things their bread and butter.

“People talk about using AI for programming or art or something like that,” Pope begins. “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. And, a lot of times, I don’t even know what I would tell someone else to do.”

“AI is kind of like you had a bunch of people working for you, basically, and I work alone, so I’m already not set up to be telling other people what to do. And a lot of times, I don’t even know what I’m doing, and it takes the programming, and the design and the art, and all that stuff kind of mixed together to get me to where I need to be. So 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.”

Again, it’s not surprising and fairly typical to see someone who likes to make things isn’t a fan of pressing the ‘make something for me’ button that is GenAI. It’s later on in the podcast that Pope gets into his concerns about the tech, and why he’s reluctant, to say the least, about sharing his work online.

“I have this kind of curse that I really want to finish things, actually. I’m very production-focused in the sense that I want the production to work. I want it to be efficient, I want to finish it. I want to actually produce something at the end,” Pope says.

“But I also like to talk about the stuff I’m working on, and I think now the situation just feels different to me that you don’t really talk about stuff when you’re working on it, because I don’t know it’s going to get slurped up by AI or people are going to copy it or something else like that. And it’s not a hard rule, it’s just got the kind of feeling about that and I just didn’t feel like I’m as comfortable talking about the stuff I was working on again.”

Pope also shared that part of his reluctance towards releasing anything new comes from fears that he won’t be able to top what he’s already accomplished with Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers, Please. He shares how the success of those games has allowed him to live and work in Japan, on his own, just creating things that he wants to create, as he is still “100% obsessed” with making games and spending his time doing that.

That’s what makes it unfortunate, to say the least, to learn that Pope is uncomfortable sharing his work, but his fears aren’t exactly unfounded. It’s well-documented that popular GenAI tools and LLMs were trained on data that is essentially just ripped from other people’s work online.

In GDC’s State of the Game Industry 2026 report, on the topic of GenAI, one of the respondents who is made to use these tools at their job made the rock-and-a-hard-place issue quite clear, saying, “AI is theft, I have to use it, otherwise I’ll get fired.” And while it’s easy to see that and say, ‘find another job then,’ but that’s far easier said than done, and not exactly an option for anyone lucky enough to be employed in today’s video game industry.

About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech’s gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry’s movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he’s done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.

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