White Paper Games is 9 today!

We didn’t have any large ambition or specific goals of starting a company outside of knowing that we had to create Ether One. Nothing existed outside of that game to us and we had something that, for us, was a special undertaking that we wanted to share with the world. We didn’t have a roadmap after that game and sometimes when I look back I’m not sure how we managed to release that game. But I suppose that’s the same for all titles – you dedicate yourself to that project throughout the course of however many months or years it takes with the blinders on knowing you’re investing yourself into that one thing and the same has repeated throughout each of our 3 games.

We say that a White Paper game respects your time, values your input with the aim of leaving you with lingering thoughts long after you’ve left out world. We try to to do this with each new IP we create. We love telling stories and we love the tactile interaction that game worlds can provide. We put a lot of time and energy into creating experiences which hopefully immerse you into the world and the story we’re trying to tell.

The name came about on a June morning with a mentor Josh Taylor at the University a lot of the team studied at (UCLan). We didn’t refer to him at this time as a mentor, he was a teacher, a provider of direction and without him, one of the key pieces of our journey of how we got to this point along with a number of key individuals. We were scribbling ideas on A4 sheets of paper. Whenever a new idea is being thought of, the first thing Josh will do is reach for a blank sheet of white paper. We went through many names switching out ‘games’ for ‘studios’ for ‘interactive’ and flip flopped with ‘Journey Games’ to ‘Blue Sky Studios’ being two that stood out to us at the time. We scrapped them, threw the sheet of paper aside and withdrew another piece of white paper starting at the blank page. And after a little while of silence…

“…White Paper… games? I guess that could work.”

White Papers traditionally are research papers. They provide a deeper understanding on a given problem from R&D. We love pushing our creative boundaries through new tech and approaches to storytelling. A White Paper is also the blank canvas in which we create our new IP from. We try to create our own path, albeit heavily inspired by some incredible titles around us, but a lot of the feedback when we release our games is that they’ve never played anything like a White Paper game which helps reinforce, at least to us, that we’ve make something special and worthy of people’s time. We also love teaching. A lot of the teach have previously taught in higher education and a good % of the team still do. White Paper provides that learning opportunity of starting without knowledge and building and developing existing knowledge to create something new. Essentially, it is the 3 pillars we operate by; Learning, Creating new ideas, Sharing.

What does a White Paper game mean to you?

We’re excited for the year ahead as we look to releasing Conway and then to begin work on another new IP with the hopes that we can also develop some more games in our existing IP, whether it be Ether One, The Occupation or indeed Conway.

The year leading up to 10 will be a crucial one as we look to reinforce the team in key areas, continue to invest in our skills and creativity and throughout the year we’ll be documenting our journey so that next year we can have a big celebration and hopefully share with you all in person a key milestone of the studio’s journey of our tenth birthday.

We’re deeply grateful for you all. & can’t thank you enough for sharing the journey with us – here’s to many more years.

– the White Paper team

P.S We’d be remised if we didn’t point in the direction of a call to action if you so wished to do so. If you’d like to get us a present, a digital gift in the form of a Wishlist for Conway would be incredible. It’s our key focus right now and supporting us by adding our work to your Wishlist helps us get our games out to people that enjoy what we create which in turn allows us continue creating more new projects to share with you all.