Papers, Please

In Papers, Please, the player takes the role of a border-crossing immigration officer in the fictional dystopian country of Arstotzka, which maintains a longstanding state of mutual political hostility with its neighboring countries. The player must review travelers' passports and other supporting paperwork against an ever-growing list of rules using a number of tools and guides. Tasks include allowing in those with the proper paperwork while rejecting those without all proper documents, detaining those with falsified information, and balancing personal finances. Positively received on its release, and it has come to be seen as an example of an empathy game and a demonstration of video games as an art form. The game earned various awards and nominations from the Independent Games Festival, Game Developers Choice Awards, and BAFTA Video Games Awards, and was named by Wired and The New Yorker as one of the top games of 2013.

• Title — Papers, Please • Developer — 3909 LLC • Publisher — 3909 LLC • Released — * Windows, OS X • August 8, 2013 • Linux • February 12, 2014 • iPad • December 12, 2014 • PlayStation Vita • December 12, 2017 • Android, iPhone • August 5, 2022 • Designer — Lucas Pope • Platform — Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, PlayStation Vita, Android • Genre — Puzzle, simulation • Modes — Single-player • Engine — Unity

Papers, Please depicts the life of an immigration inspector at a border checkpoint for the fictional country of Arstotzka in the year 1982. Arstotzka has recently ended a six-year-long war with the neighboring country of Kolechia, yet political tensions between them and other nearby countries remain high. As a checkpoint inspector, the player must review the documents of arrivalsallowing legitimate travelers through the border, denying entry to those with insufficient or expired documents, and arresting suspected criminals, terrorists, and entrants with forged or stolen documents. For each in-game day, the player is given specific rules on what documentation is required and conditions to allow entry, which become progressively more difficult over time. One by one, immigrants arrive at the checkpoint and provide their paperwork, which must be reviewed against the scheduled rules. If discrepancies are discovered, the player may interrogate the applicant, demand missing documents, compare the applicant's fingerprints against identity records, and order full body scans. If incriminating evidence is discovered, the player may order the entrant arrested. The player ultimately must stamp the entrant's passport to accept or deny entry, or order an arrest. If the player has violated protocol, a citation will be issued via in-game fax to the player's booth shortly after the entrant leaves. The player has a limited amount of real time, representing a full day shift at the checkpoint, to process as many arrivals as possible. • Illustration — The player's immigration checkpoint workstation shows the current arrival (left center), the various paperwork the player is currently processing (bottom right), and the current state of the checkpoint (top third). A body scan of the arrival reveals a concealed firearm. At the end of each in-game day, the player earns money per entrant that is properly processed as well as from any bribes collected, lowered by citation penalties for protocol violations. The player then must decide on a simple budget for rent, food, heat and other necessities for their family; if the player goes into debt, the game ends with a game over. Accepting bribes risks being discovered and imprisoned by the government. As relations between Arstotzka and nearby countries deteriorate, new rules are added such as denying entry to citizens of specific countries or demanding new types of documentation. The player may be challenged with moral dilemmas as the game progresses, such as allowing the supposed spouse of an immigrant through despite lacking complete papers at the risk of accepting a terrorist into the country. The game uses a mix of scripted encounters interspersed between randomly generated entrants. Over the course of the game, the player encounters members of an organization called EZIC which plots a coup d'état against the Arstotzkan government. Decisions made to grant or deny entry to EZIC agents have consequences on the ending of the game. The player can also choose to escape to a neighbouring country, Obristan, to start a new life, with or without their family. The game has a scripted story mode with twenty possible endings depending on the player's actions, as well as some unlockable randomized endless-play modes.

• Illustration — Lucas Pope accepting an award for the game at the 2014 Game Developers Conference Papers, Please was developed by Lucas Pope, a former developer for Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series. Around 2010, after the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Pope left the company to move to Saitama, Japan, with his wife Keiko, a game designer herself. The move was partly to be closer to Keiko's family, but also driven by Pope's desire to pursue smaller, independent projects. While at Naughty Dog, he had been working with Keiko on side projects and wanted to move away from the "definite formula" of the Uncharted games to explore more experimental ideas. The couple worked on a few independent titles and briefly relocated to Singapore to assist a friend with another project. From his travels in Asia and return visits to the United States, Pope became fascinated with immigration and passport control work, observing that inspectors had "a specific thing they're doing and they're just doing it over and over again." He recognized that the "tense" experience of checking passports could form the basis of a fun game. Although he had designed the passport-checking mechanics early on, Pope initially lacked a narrative to support them. Inspiration came from films like Argo and the Bourne series, which feature characters infiltrating or escaping countries using forged documents. Pope decided to flip the scenario, casting the player as the immigration officer tasked with catching such individuals, complementing his gameplay mechanics. He created the fictional totalitarian state of Arstotzka, set in 1982 and modeled loosely on Eastern Bloc nations, with players instructed to uphold the country's glory through rigorous passport inspections. Arstotzka drew partial inspiration from Pope's earlier game The Republia Times, where players act as a newspaper editor in a totalitarian state. He also incorporated elements inspired by the Berlin Wall and the division between East and West Germany, admitting he was "naturally attracted to Orwellian communist bureaucracy." However, to avoid direct political commentary, he deliberately omitted obvious references like the word "comrade" in all translations. Using a fictional setting gave him freedom to shape the narrative without real-world constraints or assumptions. Work on Papers, Please began in November 2012, funded by Pope's personal savings from his time at Naughty Dog. He originally expected development to take only a few weeks before moving on to a more commercially viable project. He used the open-source Haxe programming language and the NME framework, building upon structures he and Keiko had developed for Helsing's Fire, an iOS game they created after moving to Japan. This allowed him to control how much information about a character was visible and to design random and semi-random encounters, ensuring each playthrough varied slightly. The game's "clunky" user interface was a deliberate design choice, inspired by Pope's earlier experiences with visual programming tools like HyperCard. Balancing rules and randomness without overwhelming the player proved challenging, leading him to scale back some initially planned randomness. Pope aimed for a non-judgmental narrative, letting players interpret events themselves. Even elements like the family status screen at the end of each day were kept simple to avoid swaying players' feelings too much. Throughout development, Pope shared updates on the independent game development forum TIGSource, receiving helpful feedback. He also released a public demo, which gained positive attention. In April 2013, he submitted the game to the Steam Greenlight program. Although initially concerned about its niche appeal, attention from YouTube streamers helped Papers, Please get greenlit within days. With increased visibility, Pope estimated six more months of development, though it ultimately took nine. He expanded the game by incorporating thousands of unique character names via a public submission process, although many submissions were unsuitable due to misunderstandings about the desired Eastern European style or joke entries. Following Greenlight success, Pope added features that introduced moral complexity, such as the controversial body scanner used to detect threats like suicide bombers. These additions served the narrative, explaining why the low-level inspector would be given such invasive tools. As Papers, Please gained recognition as an "empathy game," similar to Cart Life, changes were made to accommodate players who were less interested in narrative elements, such as an "endless mode" focused solely on processing immigrants, limited only by the player's error count.

Papers, Please was released for Windows and macOS on August 8, 2013, and for Linux machines on February 12, 2014. Pope later ported the game to iPad and considered a PlayStation Vita version, although adapting the interface for handhelds presented several challenges that would require revamps. The Vita version was formally announced at Gamescom 2014. During the iOS release process, however, Apple initially required Pope to censor the body scanner feature, considering it pornographic. However, Apple later commented that the rejection was due to a "misunderstanding" and allowed Pope to resubmit the uncensored game by including a "nudity option". The iPad version was released on December 12, 2014, and the Vita version was released on December 12, 2017. By March 2014, Pope admitted he was "kind of sick to death" of Papers, Please, feeling that he had spent far more time on it than originally intended. While he planned to continue supporting ports, he had no intentions of expanding the game or releasing downloadable content, though he did not rule out revisiting Arstotzka in a future project. On August 5, 2022, updated iOS and newly developed Android versions of Papers, Please were released, redesigned for smaller screens without the need for zooming. The iOS version was free for existing iPad owners. For the game's tenth anniversary, Pope released a free, browser-based demake styled as if running on an LCD handheld console.

As of March 2014, at the time of the BAFTA awards, Pope stated that the game had sold 500,000 copies. By August 2016, three years from release, Pope stated that more than 1.8 million copies had been sold across all platforms. By its tenth anniversary, the game had sold 5 million units.

Papers, Please is associated with Japan.