I think it became a hit as a natural consequence of being so good. He had to do almost no work on promotion, iirc. But I think he was a fairly popular gamedev (or at least not-unknown) before he made Papers, Please.
One thing to realize is that game reviewers like Yahtzee and especially TotalBiscuit always have their eyes open for new games that have new gameplay. That is, games with game mechanics that have never been thought of before. So if anyone here happens to make one, and it's fun, then you'll probably be able to get picked up by TB. And since he has >1M YouTube subscribers, that's quite a lot of publicity.
(Papers, Please was picked up by TB. It's how I heard of it.)
> I think it became a hit as a natural consequence of being so good. He had to do almost no work on promotion, iirc. But I think he was a fairly popular gamedev (or at least not-unknown) before he made Papers, Please.
Looking at it a little cynically for the moment ... in the old days, the main bottleneck that prevented everyone from having their own commercial computer game was money and juice with publishers, while the second-place bottleneck was juice with console manufacturers. Now those factors are much less restricting than before, so everyone has their own indie game. ;) But that means there are many, many more games than the maximum number that can ever achieve significant sales and attention. So the new bottleneck is public attention, and the new king gatekeepers are the gaming media (including Penny Arcade, Let's Players like Totalbiscuit and so on), who can direct the public's attention to your game. So which players are ahead in the new game? Guys with gaming-media juice, either through having gaming-industry recognition or being ex-journalists themselves. Step forward Tom Francis (PC Gamer -> Gunpoint), Jim Rossignol (Rock, Paper, Shotgun -> Sir, You Are Being Hunted) and Lucas Pope (Naughty Dog -> Papers, Please). Now that is a little too cynical, because the new game does seem to be significantly fairer to people who simply make (or would be able to make given funding etc.) a game good enough to deserve attention, and certainly Gunpoint and Papers, Please are notably good games (I haven't played Sir yet). (I should also emphasise that I'm not any kind of expert here, I'm just looking at the situation from the outside.) But I think there's likely some truth to it.
I learned about it first from the Haxe/Openfl mailing lists. They're usually where the language users go to promote some of their games and pet projects like this. However, even on that group there was very little in the way of information on the game. It really did feel like this grew entirely by word of mouth.
Not to deny that Greenlight is important but that seems to be overstating it. There was lots of buzz about Papers, Please back when it was still just a free-download beta on Lucas Pope's website; now it's on not only Steam but also GOG and the Humble Store. Of the notable "indie" hits from the past 3-4 years, most were probably (or certainly) in development before Greenlight was even announced, several got on Steam without going through Greenlight at all, several were successful on other platforms before going onto Steam (Amnesia, SpaceChem (initially rejected for Steam) ...) and some have kissed off Steam completely (famously Minecraft). If anything Greenlight looks a bit like Valve's late entry to the Humble Bundle/XBLA party.
One thing to realize is that game reviewers like Yahtzee and especially TotalBiscuit always have their eyes open for new games that have new gameplay. That is, games with game mechanics that have never been thought of before. So if anyone here happens to make one, and it's fun, then you'll probably be able to get picked up by TB. And since he has >1M YouTube subscribers, that's quite a lot of publicity.
(Papers, Please was picked up by TB. It's how I heard of it.)