Not funny.

Maybe Bientôt l’été will be the first entirely sincere game that we have made. And perhaps this is why, despite of being highly artistic, personal and experimental, it inspires a new direction towards a more accessible style.

All of our games have had a humorous, ironic aspect. Even The Graveyard with its solemn theme pokes fun at gamers’ expectations and parodies the try-before-you-buy system. But adding such contrary, ironic things ends up confusing many players. And even if it amuses some, it does so on a meta level, outside of the fiction and the simulation.

So what is the point? It’s insincere. To create something and then to mock it. Players can do this on their own if they like.

Mixing humor and sincerity is confusing. I personally enjoy such ambiguity. But it always disappoints me when other people don’t. When they take things seriously that we added in jest. Or when they simply don’t think our jokes are funny. They are beside the point anyway. So I should just leave them out.

I don’t think Bientôt l’été is ambiguous. It was made from a much more confident position than any of our previous work. The notgames community has in no small way contributed to a certain feeling of comfort I now have with the medium of videogames. I no longer feel I should acknowledge the videogame context in some way by adding ironic references to conventional game design. I just use the medium for what I want to make. And I only care about things made previously in this medium that I appreciate.

As a wise man once said: “Irony is for cowards.”