Other Marguerite Duras-related seaside features in Bientôt l’été include the pier and the tennis court. The pier is modeled after one of the twin piers in Trouville-sur-Mer, the coastal French town where Duras spent the last decade of her life. Impressive wooden constructions with a small metal lighthouse at the end.

I don’t have any recollection of a pier in the Duras novels I have read. But tennis courts occur often, especially abandoned tennis courts. There’s a fenced off tennis court on the beach not far from her home in Trouville. But I’m sure they appeared in novels from before she lived there. A lot of her work refers in some way to class distinctions (Duras had been a member of the communist party in France). And in her book, tennis is a sport for the idle rich, more specifically for the embassy personnel in the colonies.

I remember a trance-inducing repetition of references in Le Vice-Consul to Anne-Marie Stretter’s lone bicycle leaning against the fence of the abandoned tennis courts in the park of the French embassy in Calcutta. I don’t believe anyone ever actually plays in her novels. The purpose of the tennis courts is to be abandoned. As I’m sure they are in Trouville, most time of the year, when there’s no tourists.

There’s something beautifully melancholic about out of season tourist towns. Especially at the seaside where the cold wind continuously tugs at the closed off attractions while the gulls shriek there terrifying cries.

Gulls. Dead. After a storm. On the beach. Another recurring element in her novels. Also a dog. Also dead. As in L’Amour, where the man had gone to utter an inhuman scream after frustrating encounters with the woman.

The black rock on the beach refers to the Vaches Noires cliffs, a remarkable rock formation on the beach of Villers-sur-Mer, neighboring Trouville, and possibly what gave Duras’ residence its name.

The harbor crane is not necessarily a seaside feature. But it refers to the industrial harbor town in which Moderato Cantabile takes place, the novel that forms the basis of Bientôt l’été. Another class symbol, if you will, contrasting with the tennis court.

The row boat refers to the harbor as well. But a gigantic cruise ship was added because I was very impressed with them in Venice, surreally towering over the delicate stilt constructions. A cruise ship takes the elder brother, and later the rest of the family, back to France at the end of L’Amant de la Chine du Nord. So there’s still a link with Duras.

The seaside scene in Bientôt l’été is based on a mix of influences. The dike is a typical element from the Belgian coast line that I’m very familiar with. But Trouville-sur-Mer, the French coastal home town of the writer whose work inspired the game, Marguerite Duras, doesn’t have a dike. Instead, a row of buildings is planted straight on the beach, including Duras’ residence, the majestic former hotel, Les Roches Noires.

This building was the direct inspiration for one of the exteriors of the café on the dike in Bientôt l’été. In front of Les Roches Noires is a boardwalk, referred to on several occasions in Duras’ novels and also present in the game.

Another building typical of the Belle Epoque coastal towns is the casino. There’s a casino in Trouville and one of the buildings in Bientôt l’été was inspired by it.

A coastal casino is a recurring feature in Duras’ novels. It hosts the ball room where Anne-Marie Stretter breaks Lol V. Stein’s spirit by seducing her financé. And the café in Bientôt l’été, sometimes.

As a seaside resident, Duras often refers to the ocean in her novels. Seldom as the typical romantic environment, though. And having spent two nights in Trouville, I understand. The sea is a violent monster, as mysterious as it is indifferent.

One of her novels, L’amour takes place almost entirely on the beach. It’s about a confused love triangle. And of course there’s Moderato Cantabile, written long before Duras lived at the seaside -it’s one of her early successes- that takes place in a small industrial harbor town at the Atlantic coast. The character design and the entire talking at a café table come straight out of that book.

You can collect two types of items on the beach in Bientôt l’été: “Things” and “Thoughts”. Thoughts are quotes from Marguerite Duras novels (280 phrases from a dozen or so books). Things are physical objects.

In the beginning I was thinking of both Thoughts and Things as items washed up on the shore. Collecting is a common activity when walking along the seaside. So it felt natural. Indeed, I did mean to include all sorts of shells. In the early versions of the game, I used several objects from our Vanitas app. The bird skull worked particularly well. At that time, the Thoughts were written in the sand (albeit it in a clean typeface, not hand drawn, to refer to the artificial nature of the presentation).

To collect these items, you had to stand close to one and close your eyes (by holding a key). Then the item would be shown in the middle of the screen against a black background. You were required to keep your eyes closed for a little while until the object or phrase was collected. The motivation for this interface was that I wanted the player to focus on something and then remember it, in tribute to Duras’ precise and concentrated writing. Your memory was represented as a classic inventory that you saw any time you closed your eyes. Things on the left, Thoughts on the right. You could collect a maximum of 16 of each.

The problem with this design was that it pushed the player towards a sort of mechanical behavior that was all about the act of collecting, irrespective of the nature of the object or phrase that was being collected.

To reduce the emphasis on activity (and hopefully move it to content), I decided to show the phrases that were written in the sand also on the screen when you walked past them. So when you were close to a Thought on the beach, the phrase would appear in the middle of the screen, without requiring closing of eyes or any other action. To collect the item, you would stand still near it and wait a while. The phrase would fade out and when it was gone, it was considered memorized, collected in your inventory and removed from the beach. I especially liked how the phrases slid from the top to the bottom of the screen or vice versa as you passed by. I called this system Passing Thoughts.

I didn’t want to use this mechanic for Things because I thought close ups of objects in the middle of the screen wouldn’t look as good as the nice clean text. This started me thinking about the nature of these objects. So far, I hadn’t really considered what they were going to be. And since I apparently didn’t care much, I decided to remove the feature. I still wanted the player to have physical objects because they were fun to play with on the café table. But instead of having them brought in by the waves, like the Thoughts, I moved them to the “Apparitions”.

Apparitions are larger objects or landscape features that appear on the beach as a sort of glitches or dreams. There is always only one Apparition, a different one each time you leave the café. Analogous to the Thought collection, you would stand still next to an Apparition to make it disappear. When it had faded out, the avatar would spontaneously walk towards an item lying near to it and pick it up. These items were related to the Apparitions. So the magnolia tree would give you a magnolia blossom (referring to Chauvin’s memory of the huge flower in Anne Desbaresdes’ cleavage at an awkward business dinner in Moderato Cantabile).

The problem with this interface was that players didn’t understand that they were required to stand still and wait. This is very unintuitive. And subtle hints on screen didn’t help everyone. So many ended up in the café with nothing in their pockets and all they could do was talk about drinking wine.

In the latest alpha version, the phrases still appear on the screen when you are near the sea. But they animate up and down with the waves that roll in, unrelated to your position. Every Thought you see is remembered. Without having to do anything. To fully enable this, I removed the limit of 16 items. The inventory was removed as well. Instead, every phrase that was remembered is written on the beach (instead of removed). The stand still and fade out collection mechanic for the Things was retained, but as to be expected, didn’t work very well.

So the last change I made was another simplification. If you close your eyes while facing the building on the dike, you see a button that says “Enter”. You see this button no matter how far you are. You can always enter the café. You don’t need to walk towards it. I have added a similar button for Apparitions now. If you close your eyes, you can see the Apparition from afar, because it’s bright pink and emits lots of particles. A button hovers over it. When you click that button you see a close up of the Apparition feature and then an item falls out of the sky for your avatar to pick up, while the Apparition disappears.

All of the Things are now chess pieces. So there’s 16 of them, for a full set (white if you’re playing the man, black if you’re playing the woman). Well, there’s actually 17 Things. But I’ll keep the last one a secret, just to tease you.

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One way of making interfaces unobtrusive is to present them as completely uninteresting actions. True immersion doesn’t really exist. We are always somewhat aware of the system that we are running the program on. Holding a controller, seeing a screen, the light in the room, the position of the speakers, the seat of the chair we’re sitting in. The reason why these elements hardly disturb our enjoyment, is that we’re not interested in them.

So perhaps this is an inspiration for interfaces. Just make them dull and simple, so we can all but ignore them. Showing a picture of the button we’re supposed to press to do something in a given context works really well for me. As long as this doesn’t come with extra demands, like pressing the button repeatedly, or doing it within a short amount of time. Then my attention shifts to the system too much and away from the fiction.

Showing an icon for the button to press is sometimes even better than hoping that the player remembers. Because when he doesn’t, he is sent straight back into the system level, out of the fiction (since it is the player who doesn’t remember, not the character). This feels somewhat counter-intuitive since clearing the screen of all clutter seems like the best choice for immersion.

Of course dry interfaces only work with simple mechanics. But I believe simple mechanics are a first requirement anyway to pull players into the fiction. Carefully chosen and designed mechanics can help the immersion. But it’s very tricky, may not work for all players, needs to suit the fictional context very well, and requires instructions that may break the spell. I think it’s often a smarter choice to let the computer do the work: simple player interface for complex character action.

I don’t believe in emotions triggered by mechanics much. These emotions too happen on the system level and even if they are similar to those the character might be experiencing in the fiction, they are certainly not on par. When you feel victory over winning a fight, the character might feel relief about barely escaping death instead. Dry interfaces will bring you much closer to the character’s emotions.

There’s a man on a beach. The beach is empty. Empty as his heart. A heart alone, abandoned love. Love was left. Left in the warmth. The warmth of her digital breath. Her breath as neon glow. Glow as the sun. The sun sleeping in pillows. The pillows of clouds. The clouds form a bed. A bed for my soul. A soul that is restless. Restless like the gulls. The gulls on the beach. The beach in my heart. My heart pushes waves. Waves of blood through my veins. Veins pulled by the moon. The moon, cold heart of the galaxy. The galaxy at the end of the boardwalk. The boardwalk she used to walk on. Walking slowly, an old woman. A woman, alone, a woman studying love as a scientist. A scientist experimenting. Experimenting in the laboratory of her heart. Her heart, an ocean, waves of life. Life is cherished in the harshness of space. Space embraces us, crushes us with its hollow breath. Breath of a lover. A lover at the table. The table with the chess board. A board receives your move. Move me with your moves. Move me with your moves. Move away. Then move away. Away from the warmth, the silence inside. Inside disappears when we are on the beach. The beach caressed by the waves. Waves as fingers of the moon. The moon, heart of emptiness. Empty full empty full empty full heart. Heart to conquer, heart to move. The move again the move. To move the piece with words. Words from the writer. The writer, the woman. There’s a woman on the beach. The beach is empty. Empty as her heart. A heart alone, abandoned love. Love was left. Left in the warmth. The warmth of his digital breath. His breath as neon glow. Glow as the sun. The sun sleeping in pillows. The pillows of clouds. The clouds form a bed. A bed for my soul. A soul that is restless. Restless like the gulls. The gulls of the sea. The sea gulls of the moon. The moon of the sand. The sand of the moon. The moon of the water. The water of the waves. The waves of the veins. The veins in the body. The body that you touch.

I feel protagonists in videogames are very different from protagonists in other media. And as a result, the kind of fictions that fit well are different too.

In a film, a novel, or a comic, protagonists are other people. You can empathize with them and enjoy observing the fiction they live in. But you never imagine being in their shoes, not really. A videogame very often puts you firmly in the shoes of the protagonist. You control where they go, you control what they do.

As a result, to be enjoyable (for me, at least) the fiction of the videogame needs to be one that you can imagine being in yourself. Not one that you simply enjoy looking at. There’s many situations that are amusing in movies or books, that I wouldn’t want to find myself in. As such these situations are plain intolerable for me in games. For example, the moments where the fiction makes the protagonist responsible for something grave (the death of a friend, killing innocents, self-mutilation, etc). In a film, you sympathize with the protagonist, and given their context, their life, their story, you understand their choice, or it cements your disgust with the character. In a videogame this doesn’t work. There’s a conflict between the fictional reality and the reality of the player in such moments. The game is making the player responsible for something bad that happens in the story. This shatters the fourth wall and breaks the fiction and the believability of the protagonist.

For the same reason, books and film can get away with clichés much more easily. There is a certain distance that allows us to accept yet another zombie apocalypse in a film. But in a videogame that puts us in the middle of such a situation, we cannot take it seriously.

I think to the player, the fiction of the videogame is more real than the fiction of a film is to the viewer. Because you have power in the game world. You can change things in it. You affect things. And because it feels more real, it is much harder for people to accept certain fictions. The amount of stories you want to be a part of is always smaller than the amount of stories you can tolerate reading or watching.

The only reason why videogames have been getting away with so many trite and cliché stories is the prominence of gameplay. If the attention of the player is sufficiently moved to the mechanical level of the game, they will just accept the characters and world as backdrops, as mood. But as videogame stories are becoming more prominent, it becomes painfully clear that what works in movies and books, does not work when players have control.

The mechanics in a game are like the interfaces in software. They allow you do to things. The aim of good interface design is oblivion. A good interface is one that you are hardly aware of. One that just lets you do what you want to do without having to figure out how. One that feels natural.

I believe the same applies to videogames. Mechanics should be transparent. They should offer you access to the fiction of the game without demanding any attention for themselves. They should feel natural to do, logical, spontaneous. It should feel like they don’t exist.

There is, of course, another school of thought. There are people who love interfaces. They love sliding things around on their iPhone screen, pressing buttons and flipping levers. They are not particularly interested in what they can get done with the software. They just like to play with the interface.

A similar thing happens in many videogames. In fact, it happens in most. And often even to their detriment. There is a group of games that is almost nothing but mechanics. All games that are derived of traditional games fall in this category. Others are more focused on the emotional experience of the player, on narrative, characters, moods, places. They are the games that have made a medium out of videogames.

Many of those “media-videogames”, however, are still partly stuck in the mindset that considers mechanics design equal to game design. So instead of making transparent interfaces that allow the player to enjoy the fiction, they are often still riddled with obtrusive designs that pull you away into the abstract interface level. Shooting an unlikely amount of enemies while picking up ammunition that happens to be spread around all over, pulling a lever in one room that makes some gears turn in another which opens a valve that makes a heater go one in the basement that leads to the release of a key from a metal clamp on the roof, jumping on conveniently placed platforms, picking up gold coins spraying from fallen enemies, and so on and so forth. Fiddling with buttons and sliders instead of actually doing something.

A videogame should take its fictional universe seriously. And the experience of the player should take place entirely in that universe. The interface to that universe should aim to be as invisible or seemingly non-existent as in the real world. Any interactions that do not pass the transparency test should be removed.

(unless of you course you cheat like I do in Bientôt l’été and make the interface part of the fiction)

Designing interactions in a game is fun until you realize that your players don’t find them or can’t figure out how to do them. Despite of the instructions. This can seriously handicap the experience. And even if it doesn’t, they’re missing something that you worked hard to implement.

One way to deal with this is to make all interactions optional and implement so many of them that it doesn’t matter if they miss a few. Then randomly trying all sorts of things can be part of the game. But in a serious and minimal game like Bientôt l’été that isn’t really an option.

I can only see two solutions.

Either the interface needs to be conventional. But that excludes everyone who doesn’t play games. Which I know is not a lot of people. But I still want to be nice to them. Also, I personally dislike many conventional game interfaces as they often don’t express the feeling I’m going for.

Or the interaction is simply removed. Which is probably ideal. Interacting with a virtual world should be fluent. Interruptions, such as instructions, are undesirable because they move the attention of the player from the fiction level to the system level. Especially since such instructions need to be in the player’s face, otherwise it’s too easy to miss them.

This is only logical, really. Some interactions are fun to do. But the joy happens on the mechanical level. Even attempts to map the controls to the fiction (as famously done in Heavy Rain) , often end up drawing more attention to the system layer. Videogames that focus on content are best served by transparent controls. Convention can serve transparency. As can absence.