A noble subversion.

After the experience of feeling out of place at IndieCade, I started doubting whether we should submit Bientôt l’été to the Independent Games Festival as we had planned. Every title in the IGF is selected by a jury and the IndieCade jury had rejected us. IGF does not have an “Official Selection” to highlight works the organizers find important.

But the chance of rejection didn’t matter much. It hurts to be rejected. But since our games are so different, we can always blame any rejection on conservatism in the jury. So we have an emotional shield in place. That’s the advantage of making art. You can always tell yourself that the public doesn’t understand your work.

A stronger deterrent was the realization that even winning the IGF would be completely meaningless to us. Usually, I imagine, people are overjoyed to win, because they have been chosen among their peers as the best. But I don’t see what our work has in common with most of theirs. So any recognition by the IGF would only mean that perhaps the games industry is now a little bit more open to artistic experiments like ours. It wouldn’t say anything about the quality of our work. Because there’s nothing to compare it to.

But while moaning over email, I started thinking about Dear Esther. And how happy I was that it got nominated for so many awards. Not so much because it’s a recognition of the immense talents of its creators. Because there’s no competition for them either: there’s nothing out there to compare Dear Esther to. I realized that it makes me happy because people are choosing beautiful art over fun entertainment.

So you can blame Jessica Curry for talking me into submitting Bientôt l’été to the IGF.

I was reminded of our early position with regards to commercial distribution of our work -long before we even considered independent development. I was imagining the shop shelves in the games stores with all the fantasy games and the gun games and the driving and sports games. And in the midst of all that, there would be our game, a silent, gentle game, a game that was just beautiful, that didn’t challenge your competitive instincts but created space to think, to connect, to feel.

Simply offering the players an option, a choice. That was our goal. We didn’t need to conquer the games industry, we didn’t even need recognition. We just wanted our work to be there, on the shelves, for people who might want an alternative, something different.

That should be enough.