Ils n’ont rien à se dire. Personne ne parle. C’est le silence. Personne ne s’en étonne, n’en est gêné.

The contrast between nature and man is enormous at the seaside. There is the obvious difference in scale between the immense mass of water (playing with the moon of all things), a sky above that stretches out in all directions and the insignificant human body and the buildings and infrastructure created for its comfort. But what struck me even more is the inadequacy of the human senses when confronted with the raw natural elements.

Outside, there is too much noise to hear anything and too much light to see anything. It’s only when we find shelter in a café that we can use our senses again. Inside, we can hear and see.

This maps very nicely to the situation in Bientôt l’été. Outside, you are on your own, endlessly seeking, cold, exposed to the elements. And inside you find another human being, to see, to hear, to touch.

Another strange effect of the seaside is that spending time outside makes one dizzy. Maybe the sea air contains more oxygen or some other gas that affects us. Or it’s the continuous motion of the sea that gets to us. The waves, the clouds, the seagulls, the wind: all is in motion all the time, spinning around the poor human head. The roar of the ocean, the hissing of the wind and the shrieking of the gulls seem almost designed to drive a man mad. Not to mention the blinding light reflected by the enormous surfaces of sand and water.

Seeking refuge in a mundane man made establishment suddenly becomes refreshing, soothing. Nature may be beautiful, but it’s also terrible. We seek comfort with each other, warmth, love.

This afternoon we are leaving for a short trip to Trouville-sur-Mer, a small town on the coast of Normandy where Marguerite Duras lived for long periods of her life. Aspects of Trouville appear in several of her novels and films. The sea, the beach, the boardwalk, a villa, a hotel, a casino, seagulls. So this trip is a bit of a pilgrimage. Trouville is only 4 hours away from where we live in Belgium.

I’m sure the hearts of people who have read Duras skip a beat when I mention S. Thala and T. Beach. Places that recur in her novels, the descriptions of which reminds strongly of the pictures I have seen of Trouville.

Duras’ writing warms my heart so much. I want to share this. A lot of the subtle beauty of her work gets lost in translation (especially to English). I hope our little videogame can cross that U. Bridge at least a little bit.

Duras was not the only artist enamoured with the fishermen’s village turned tourist destination. The place also inspired Dumas, Proust, Monet and Flaubert. In fact, Duras lived in an apartment in the same building Proust had more than half a century before.

Places along a river or the sea play an important role in Duras’ work. Memories from her childhood along the Mekong delta in Saigon mix with experiences from old age at the seaside in Trouville. Along with people encountered or imagined, who all get similar names, as if they belong to the same family, or doll house in the writer’s mind. Climaxed by the strange mirroring of her teenage experience as the lover of a rich Chinese man in Saigon, in her own love affair with a young man in the last years of her life, here in Trouville. Both of which are described beautifully across several of her novels.

The weather report says it’s raining in Trouville. Perfect!

I have been asked the question a few times: whether it will be possible to form same sex couples in Bientôt l’été.

Answer: no.

There will be two avatars in the game: a man and a woman. Each will have a voice: a male voice and a female voice. You choose which you play. Since players will be matched anonymously, you will not know the gender of the person you are playing with. But his or her avatar will always appear of the gender opposite to yours. If you play a man, the other player will look and sound like a woman. If you play a woman, the other player will look and sound like a man. That is the story.

There is an economic reason for doing this: allowing for same sex couples would require 2 male avatars and 2 female avatars, doubling the amount of work. But even if our budget were sufficiently large, this would create a design problem that runs contrary to the artistic concerns of this project: we would have to design avatars with specific characteristics. To differentiate the men form each other, one would have to be tall and the other muscular, one would have a beard and the other a lip piercing, etc. That is not the story. This story is about a man and a woman. Not a specific man or a specific woman.

That being said. The love of which Bientôt l’été speaks is specific. It’s about cet amour-là. It’s about love how I have experienced it in my life. And how I recognize it in Duras’ work. Sure I’ve kissed with boys when I was young. But I would never be as presumptuous as to make any statements about how it feels to be in love with another man. I cannot talk about this. I simply assume that it feels similar to being in love with a woman. And I hope that gay players can extrapolate from there.

Bientôt l’été is about something very specific. It’s about cet amour-là. About the feeling. Not about the people involved. I don’t know how many people will recognize this feeling. Or what their sexual preference will be. I’m curious to see it. I’m trying to share something here, not appeal to the desires of the masses or conform to their demands.

We’ve already made a game that features only male avatars. So those who feel like sniffing the face of another male, rubbing against his fur or sleeping in the sunshine with him, should go and enjoy!

Meanwhile I’d like to encourage gay designers to create videogames about their experiences. Instead of counting on the bland political correctness of their hetero colleagues, I want them to tell their stories, express how cet amour-là feels for them.

When we fall in love, we are overwhelmed with strong emotions, we feel so very much alive. The blood races through our veins, we are short of breath. And we don’t mind if other people see us cry -in fact we’re secretly proud of our deep emotions.

But this intensity never lasts. It couldn’t. It would probably kill us.

Most love stories are about this period, the beginning of a relationship, about falling in love. Bientôt l’été is no exception. But I still hope to capture part of what it means to be in love, to love. Steadily, far away from the distractions of falling in love.

To be grounded in life, to live with love as a permanent presence, a tenderness that makes us feel at home. And a little bit sad too, somehow. A smile holding back tears. We know that even this will not last forever. But it’s the very best we can do in life.

Sometimes it feels strange to be working on something that I doubt will find a large audience. It feels wasteful to be spending so much energy on something only a small group will appreciate. Not to mention self-indulgent, self-important.

There seems to be a correlation between popularity and convention. The more popular something is, the more conventional it turns out to be. I’m not opposed to many conventions. I quite enjoy them, like everybody else. But creatively I get impatient with building things that have already been built before, and much better than I ever could.

Some of our games are more popular than others. The ones that sit more comfortably with the conventions of the medium. Bientôt l’été will not be one if those.

Sometimes I wonder what the point is of making something that only myself and a handful of people will enjoy.

I guess such things contribute to diversity. And I do find diversity important. Especially now, in a time of Following and Liking, when we’ve all become numbers to each other. Maybe Bientôt l’été, simply by existing -even if not many play it-, can function as a reminder of being human. Which is not necessarily something lofty, something grand. But it is more than being a number.