The best games come from people who understand what it means to play
Out of Seoul, a studio that made one of gaming's most celebrated surprises is now asking a quiet but consequential question: can the act of playing games be considered a professional qualification? Round8 Studio, emboldened by the global resonance of Lies of P, is expanding its workforce not merely in size but in philosophy — insisting that the empathy born from thousands of hours at a controller is something no algorithm or credential can replace. In an industry increasingly tempted by automation and scale, Round8 is placing its bet on the irreducibly human experience of losing, learning, and trying again.
- Lies of P's unexpected global success left Round8 with a rare problem: too much momentum and not enough people to channel it into six simultaneous projects.
- The studio's hiring process is disrupting industry norms by demanding applicants submit gameplay histories and logged hours alongside traditional portfolios, treating play as a form of expertise.
- Round8 is openly challenging AI's expanding role in game development, arguing that the intuitive, felt knowledge of a seasoned player cannot be synthesized by machine learning.
- Six distinct games are now in active development under separate creative leads, each empowered to originate and own their vision from the ground up rather than execute from above.
- The studio is scaling globally while anchoring its identity in a deceptively simple conviction: that the best game designers are, first and foremost, deeply committed players.
Round8 Studio, the South Korean team behind Lies of P, is in the middle of an ambitious expansion — six games in development, each with its own creative director and distinct identity. But the studio's most telling move isn't the scale of its pipeline; it's the philosophy driving who gets hired to build it.
When Lies of P launched in 2023 — a punishing soulslike built around the Pinocchio fairy tale — few predicted it would become a global phenomenon. Round8's post-mortem conclusion was unconventional: the game succeeded not because of superior technology or budget, but because the developers genuinely understood what it felt like to play a soulslike. They had died to bosses hundreds of times. They knew, from the inside, where difficulty becomes unfair.
That insight now lives in Round8's job postings. Applicants are asked to submit gamer credentials — titles played, hours logged, formative experiences — alongside their professional portfolios. The studio believes that calibrating difficulty, sustaining player engagement, and sensing when something feels broken are skills that only come from lived play, not technical training alone.
Internal culture reflects the same values. Round8's 'Three Kings' principle — quality over quantity, full developer ownership, and honest communication at every level — means creative ideas rise from the floor rather than descend from executives. Lies of P itself originated as director Choi Ji-won's personal pitch. He now leads one of the six new projects, joined by other creative leads on titles including Project Rubicon and Project Windi.
As AI reshapes what game development looks like, Round8 is making a pointed claim: the irreplaceable ingredient is still a human being who has learned through play. The studio is expanding globally, but its wager remains intimate — that understanding games from the inside out is not a soft skill, but the hardest one of all.
Round8 Studio, the South Korean game developer behind the surprise global hit Lies of P, is on a hiring spree. The studio is building out a pipeline of six games in active development, each with its own creative director and distinct vision. But what sets Round8's recruitment approach apart from the rest of the industry is what it's actually looking for: not just programmers and artists who know how to build games, but people who play them.
Lies of P arrived in 2023 as a full-priced action game on PC and consoles, drawing heavily from the Pinocchio fairy tale while borrowing the punishing difficulty and boss-fight structure of FromSoftware's Souls series. It became a phenomenon—the kind of unexpected success that makes studios sit back and ask: what did we actually do right? Round8's answer was unconventional. The studio concluded that the game's resonance came not from superior technology or a massive budget, but from something harder to quantify: the developers themselves understood what it felt like to play a soulslike game. They weren't just coding difficulty curves; they were tuning them from the perspective of someone who had died a hundred times to a boss and knew exactly when frustration tips into unfair.
That insight is now shaping how Round8 hires. Job postings from the studio ask applicants to submit their gamer credentials alongside their portfolios—a list of games they've played, how many hours they've logged, which titles shaped their understanding of game design. It's an unusual ask in an industry that has traditionally separated the craft of making games from the experience of playing them. Round8 believes that separation is a mistake. The studio argues that certain aspects of game development—calibrating difficulty progression, spotting the moments where a player feels frustrated or lost, maintaining the rhythm of moment-to-moment engagement—require lived experience as a player, not just technical skill.
The studio has also articulated what it calls the "Three Kings" principle: prioritize quality over quantity, give developers full ownership of their work, and foster direct, honest communication at every level. That last point matters. Round8 says major creative decisions often bubble up from the development floor rather than trickling down from executives. The original concept for Lies of P—marrying Pinocchio's story to soulslike mechanics—came from director Choi Ji-won as his own pitch. Now Choi is leading one of the six projects in development, alongside other creative leads like Jin Seung-ho on Project Rubicon and Lee Sang-gyun on Project Windi.
Round8 is also making a claim about what artificial intelligence cannot do. The studio says that the kind of human-centered design insight required to make a game feel right—to know when something is broken or brilliant—cannot be replicated by algorithms. That's a statement worth watching as the industry grapples with AI's expanding role in development. Round8 is betting that the irreplaceable part of game-making is still the person holding the controller, learning through play what works and what doesn't.
The studio is expanding globally, but its core philosophy remains rooted in a simple idea: the best games come from people who understand, at a cellular level, what it means to play. As Round8 scales up to deliver six new titles, it's wagering that this gamer-first approach will prove as successful as it was with Lies of P.
Citações Notáveis
Certain aspects of game development—calibrating difficulty progression, spotting player frustration, maintaining engagement—require lived experience as a player, not just technical skill— Round8 Studio
The kind of human-centered design insight required to make a game feel right cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence— Round8 Studio
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does Round8 think playing games matters more than just knowing how to code them?
Because the difference between a game that feels right and one that feels broken often comes down to intuition—knowing when a difficulty spike is challenging versus when it's just punishing. You can't teach that from a manual. You learn it by dying to a boss fifty times and feeling the exact moment the game stopped being fair.
But couldn't a designer just study other games and learn the principles?
Maybe the principles, sure. But there's a gap between understanding a principle and feeling it in your hands. Round8 thinks that gap is where the magic happens—and it's why they're asking applicants to list their playtime.
That seems like it could exclude people who are talented but haven't had time to play much.
It could. Round8 is making a bet that the cost of missing out on that lived experience is higher than the cost of excluding some talented people who haven't played enough. Whether that bet pays off depends on whether their theory is actually true.
Do they think AI could eventually learn what gamers know?
No. They're explicit about that. They believe the human element—the person who has felt frustration, joy, and flow while playing—is irreplaceable. That's a strong claim in an industry increasingly interested in what machines can do.
What happens if one of their six new games flops?
Then the theory gets tested. If a game fails despite being made by experienced gamers, it suggests that gamer identity is necessary but not sufficient. If it succeeds, Round8 will have proven something the industry has mostly ignored.