> 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.
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.