The piano in Bientôt l’été comes straight out of Marguerite Duras’ novel Moderato Cantabile in which the young son of the protagonist is learning how to play when the incident happens in the café. But there’s also a piano in Agatha. A black piano in an abandoned villa where the brother and sister make love.

One of the incarnations of the exterior of the café on the dike in Bientôt l’été is an abandoned building. The ruin of a colonial mansion refers to the many stories by Duras that take place in former Indochina, where she grew up, not as one of the idle rich she often describes but as a poor white person. The colonies are always a place of conflict in her work, romantic conflict, racial conflict, cultural conflict, class conflict.

The pile of coal in Bientôt l’été refers to the lower classes, back home, in Europe. The workmen in the factories. Working in the mine, digging for black gold. The rock is something else. It’s a symbol of pride, of majesty, of stubborn resistance, of faith, for me.

A black piano, blackened ruins, black coal, a black rock and a black lamppost. That calls for a rainbow, the ultimate symbol of naive hope.

There is no story in Bientôt l’été. But there are elements that could be featured in stories. It is possible to imagine stories about them. This possibility brings a kind of joy. Not the imagining as such, let alone the execution of such fantasies, but the pure potential.

There’s something beautiful about a story that isn’t told. We see the object, it looks like it could mean something, but we do not know what. We don’t need to know. In fact, knowing would destroy the pleasure. If only because this would collapse the possibility space.

An untold story is richer than a told story. This must be why this medium seems so suitable for the kind of art I tend to create. We can just create existences. We don’t need histories, stories, explanations, meaning. Just things. In all their mute mystery. The beauty of being.

Contrary to my ambiguous feelings concerning the multiple deadlines I’m setting myself during this late phase in the production of Bientôt l’été, I actually really like the idea of a videogame that’s never finished.

I think this harks back to my earlier love of the website as an artistic medium. A website is a living thing. It’s always up but changes all the time. As such it’s never finished. To finish a website is to kill it. A website is not built with finishing in mind. It keeps changing, sometimes from the top, by adding new content, sometimes from the bottom, in response to user interaction.

I wish videogames could be the same. Publishing early alpha versions feels a little bit like that. This process could go on forever. I would keep making changes and see how people react. Not, as now, with the purpose of refining the design towards some ideal state, but just for the sake of change itself.

Working like this could take the project in many unexpected directions. At some point I could introduce a storm. And then that would be the state of the game. And at some other time, perhaps a taxi arrives in front of the café, and we would go travel somewhere else. Or a giant wave hits the shore and throws us in the air where we develop wings.

To some extent, perhaps, the Apparitions in the game are crystallized suggestions of such possibilities. What if questions. What if this black rock would become a main feature of the game? How would the experience change? What if somebody would actually come and play tennis? Could we meet them? Join them? Have drinks with them after the match, in the café? What if the dead dog was actually a dog I had seen before, alive, and I would have petted it, or been afraid of it, or ignored it?

Possible worlds.

Maybe it’s for the best that practical reasons prevent this sort of endless production. But it’s a nice fantasy.

By releasing unfinished versions of Bientôt l’été, I’m creating a schedule where I find myself working towards a deadline often. Right now, I’m working towards a version of the game to demo at IndieCade. This will be the third alpha release.

The difference between regular production and working towards a deadline is a difference in priorities. Certain issues, which need to be dealt with for a final release, can easily be ignored in an unfinished demo version and are thus postponed. Other features, such as controls, require a certain, perhaps premature, optimization for demo purposes.

A deadline offers an extra motivation to get things done. That sort of pressure can be good and bad. But given that the deadline is not the final deadline, one can always minimize the stress. Perhaps unduly. Multiple deadlines add to the workload and thus extend the production time. But they also stimulate. So perhaps the work is done more quickly.

I have a nagging feeling that this constant priority of a deadline is pushing me to make rash decisions that are perhaps not necessary. Every form of prioritization has its victims. And when working under time pressure, shortcuts are often taken. On a good day, it feels like the game is rapidly approaching its final state. On a bad day it feels like building a cardboard house.

Steam’s Big Picture feature is wonderful news for us. Since the day we started Tale of Tales, we’ve always imagined our games on the television screen in the living room. Until now, the game consoles have offered the only way that allows for that and we’ve had trouble getting around to develop for those.

But thanks to Steam, we might not need to. The interface works remarkably well. And the consoles better take notes on how to create a couch-friendly online store. And of course it’s great to see our games on tv.

What is less great is the context. Thanks to the firm concentration of Steam on only games, it becomes once again depressingly clear how nerdy the entire videogame context is. Browsing the offer is a smooth experience through the Big Picture interface. So smooth that there is no possible way to ignore the extreme juvenile nature, trite narratives and silly visuals abundant in the medium.

I don’t mind too much to show our work in this context myself. Makes it easy to stand out. And I do respect videogames of any kind for their craftmanship. But I worry about how this looks to outsiders. Why would anyone not familiar with games be attracted to this atmosphere? How can we hope to ever broaden the audience for videogames if most of what we show them is guns and cars and arcade bleeps?

I worry about this of course especially because with our work we hope to reach out to people who are not interested in videogames yet. Our games don’t exactly cater to the desires of the average gamer. But we think that they might appeal to people with different tastes. But why would people like that ever visit a store like this?

Working in a popular medium as videogames where serious cultural consideration is rather scarce, I’m always torn between the desire to do the work I know I should be doing and to make things that are easier to enjoy for the existing audience of said medium.

Given that this audience already gets more than they can digest, and very few people do what we do, it seems wise to just continue on our path. To work for the happy few. Or for a time when our efforts will be appreciated by more. Or to influence the more skilful entertainers, to maybe slowly inch the medium towards its destination in some kind of rehash of the avantgarde dynamic.

The trouble with this option is that I am not entirely certain the human species has a future at all. I see a civilization in rapid decline, unwilling to give up its dogmas for its very survival. I sense no goodwill towards a better future. Just many attempts at hanging on to our impossible way of life.

These people need help! The people of Earth need help. Now. And while I’m not as presumptuous to think that art can immediately impact society -let alone the art that I produce- I do believe that the major problem of humanity is the lack of goodwill. In other words, the lack of imagination. I believe real changes happen when the spirit of people changes. And this spirit is exactly the terrain of the arts.

So do I work for a future that may not even exist? Or do I try to help people now so that, perhaps, there may be a future at all?

With Bientôt l’été I’m working for the future. But what if there is no future? Then I’d better work for the present. And maybe, in the process, help a future to exist after all.

I could be wrong. Maybe humankind is not threatened with extinction at all. But that is the more depressing thought for me. I do not wish it to continue this way. Change or die, humanity!

One could be forgiven for giving up after all this time. A decade. More maybe. A decade of confused yearning. For this medium to become Something. We could all feel it. We didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. But it felt obvious. Something will happen.

Ten years. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. You could be forgiven. For accepting that this is all the medium can do. Maybe we were dreaming. Maybe we were delusional. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe the dream will come true after all, through this continuous repetition of more of the same in an ever tightening spiral. Maybe Something will be squeezed out of it.

We must have been mistaken. The forest for the trees. This is not a Great New Medium. This is the most superb way to have fun. So much fun that nothing will ever hurt again. Or delight. Or make us wonder. Or dream.

Well, do go on without me. I’m staying here. You might not feel it. Or have what it takes to experience this. But I do. And if I don’t, I will.

Easy for me to say of course. I never liked The Fun anyway. Always stayed away from it. Never could The Fun Machine quench my Enormous Thirst. My Hunger.

I’m going hunting. I’m the hunter. I’ll bring back the goods. But i don’t know when.

All the animations that Laura Smith is making for Homme and Femme in Bientôt l’été make me want to create more games with the same characters. Why bother designing new characters for every game? Maybe we should think of them as actors and have them re-appear in multiple situations.

I guess we do something like that with the Girl in White. She made her first appearance in the original 8, then appeared in The Path and is now coming back in the remake of 8. And we have plans for her in other games too.

But every time she appears, we make a new model. And all animations need to be redone. That makes sense, though, because she’s a different age every time.

Femme and Homme could remain the same age. Their attire was specifically designed for the seaside situation. So that might need to change anyway. Although. It would be interesting to play with these characters, and even similar controls (like they always look away from the camera), in different situations.

Ah! If only game making were simpler. Then we could play with such ideas!

Next to the tennis courts, several other elements that refer to the life of the wealthy recur in Marguerite Duras’ work. There’s always a villa somewhere. Often inhabited, as in Moderato Cantabile, by the unsatisfied wife of a more or less invisible rich husband.

So one of the incarnations of the café exterior in Bientôt l’été is a villa. And when somebody enters to start a twoplayer session, a window on the first floor opens and we can see light through the curtains. Referring to the sleepless nights of the mistress of the house, spent gazing out, observing young couples taking nightly strolls under the dark shadows of the flowering magnolia in the moonlight.

This magnolia tree also makes an appearance in Bientôt l’été. Its almost nauseatingly sensual scent penetrating the nostrils of the doctors and lawyers and politicians and entrepreneurs invited to the dinner with their glamorous wives. One night, the lady of the house takes one of the giant flowers and ornaments her cleavage with it. Then she drinks too much and vomits. She had already been having cheap wine in the café with a factory worker.

Another open window is in a hotel, also present in Bientôt l’été. Through this hotel window, in several of Duras’ novels, a woman observes a man making love with his mistress. She does this hidden, lying down in a wheat field that grows next to the hotel, as in Bientôt l’été. The man knows she is there but he cannot see her.

No matter how generous I make my schedules, I always seem to lag behind. There’s always things that take longer than expected. And new things pop up all the time.

It’s making me nervous. I want to finish this thing already and get it out there. But when I play a test build, despite the numerous little issues, I become mesmerized. And I feel that Bientôt l’été deserves to be polished well. I need to be patient and take my time with it. So that this time I don’t release a game with a five page list of unfinished tasks and removed features.

I don’t expect Bientôt l’été to be a smash hit. But I think it’s going to be around for a while. And if it is, I want it to be solid. I want it to be exactly right, and finished properly. So that I don’t need to be embarrassed about this or the other clumsily implemented feature some years from now.

I had hoped to release Bientôt l’été in October. But that is not going to happen. November is more likely. Unless I decide it would make a nice Christmas gift.

In January we’re starting a new project. And shifting gears on one that is already running in the background. But there’s plenty of time until then.