In the interim between games, he and his wife Keiko Ishizaka spent two weeks to develop Mightier, a small game based around creating 3D levels from camera scans of a 2D drawing, and its title a play on the phrase " The pen is mightier than the sword". Īfter Uncharted 2 had shipped in 2009, Naughty Dog was set to continue onto the next sequel, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, but Pope wanted to spend more time on his love of experimental games. He was part of the people who saved the day." Specifically, Pope developed GUI tools for the games' menus systems, save systems, level layout to assist level designers, and a system to organize sound and text files for various languages. Former Naughty Dog President Christophe Balestra said of Pope's work on their design tools: "We were desperate to find a good tools programmer. He credited the director of the sequel Bruce Straley for teaching him how to focus a game's design around core concepts to make the game fun, even if this meant sacrificing work that had already been completed. Pope's strength in developing GUI tools augmented Naughty Dog's weakness at that time, with Pope stating that at the time of his hiring, "there was no full-time GUI tools guy at all.Just command-line, back-end tools people." Pope had been hired about halfway through the development of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and continued to work on the sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. While Pope did not have a strong programming background, he felt that Naughty Dog had hired him because of his interest in developing the tools and interfaces needed to help in programming their games. Pope moved to Santa Monica and got a job with Naughty Dog in 2007. While at Realtime, he was part of the team that developed the game Re-mission, a 2006 shooter whose goal was to encourage children with cancer to take their chemotherapy medication. Pope left Ratloop and joined Realtime Associates in 2003. However, none of these were published, and facing competition from other studios, particularly from Eastern Europe, that could make games at substantially lower prices, Ratloop became dormant. It was successful enough to be picked up by Activision for retail distribution, and gave Ratloop sufficient funds to try a number of experimental games, something which had interested Pope. After a first failed 3D game, Ratloop decided to develop a car repair game, Gearhead Garage. While Walmart would help distribute their game, the chain required Ratloop to have 5,000 copies ready to ship within 24 hours at any time, requiring Ratloop to secure a publisher to help. Ratloop struggled with distribution through retail channels. Pope and another set of modders decided to form their own studio, Ratloop, releasing the total Quake conversion mod Malice in 1997. Pope collaborated with other video game modders, including working on an officially-sanctioned mod by Sony Pictures to promote Anaconda. During this period, he got involved with the Quake community and helped to develop mods for Quake and other games, principally working on the art used for the characters in the mods. ![]() He found that the reality of what constituted the field was less desirable than what he wanted, but did take strong interest in the computer programming side of his coursework. Inspired to continue into the mechanical and robotics field, Pope attended Virginia Tech to study mechanical engineering. When he got to high school, he met a friend who was interested in robotics, and the two of them would take retail robot kits, take them apart, and reconnect them to their own computers to see how they could control them. His father was a handyman, which gave Pope access to a well-stocked array of parts and tools that led to an interest in mechanical engineering. Pope currently resides in Saitama, Japan. He is best known for experimental indie games, notably Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards. Lucas Pope (born 1977 or 1978) is an American video game designer.
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