Meaning and closure?

Some people seem to have a problem with Bientôt l’été being meaningless and lacking closure. I honestly don’t know how to respond to that criticism. Other than admitting that perhaps the whole design is a mistake and it’s probably just bad art. This would be unfair, however, towards other people who thoroughly enjoy the game, despite its lack of closure, etc.

What can I do? I can’t add meaning where there is none. That would be dishonest. I can understand the human desire for closure, but I somehow feel that closure is perpendicular to the nature of the interactive medium. It’s one of the reasons why I love this medium. There doesn’t need to be an end, a conclusion, a final word.

I actually see this desire for lack of closure in a lot of modern literature, not in the least Marguerite Duras’ own work. But the novel, while perfectly fine in many ways, remains a form that is limited by the linearity of language and even the physicality of its medium, the book. At some point, the reader will reach the last page, read the last word and close the book. It doesn’t matter how unfinished the writer might think the story is, how open-ended, how much there remains to be said. The end happens, undeniably.

No so in videogames, not if you let them be what they are: computer programs. A computer program is something that a user starts up and shuts down. We do this without thinking when using an email client or a web browser or a word processor. But when we’re using software for entertainment or enlightenment, we suddenly lack the willpower or the sense of responsibility to do the same. Suddenly we cannot decide anymore for ourselves when we’ve had enough, when we’re done. We want the program to tell us that it’s over, that we should close the application.

Given the desire in a lot of art in other media and the unique potential of this medium, this seems a shame. But people are people, and “we cannot want what we want” as Schopenhauer knew. We just want. And when we don’t get what we want, we are disappointed.

Would Bientôt l’été be better with an ending or with a clear meaning or a story? It would certainly feel better, it would make us, as players, feel better. But would it be better? In my experience, deep aesthetic joy is always accompanied by a sense of mystery. Something lacking in my understanding, something that goes beyond what I know, something that I do not know and that I cannot really learn but only be aware of. The awareness of this lack, of this mystery, greatly heightens the aesthetic pleasure. I guess it is the opposite of kitsch, where extreme familiarity renders something that in and of itself may be pleasant to look at, a thorn in the eye.

I think the lack of meaning and the lack of closure makes Bientôt l’été more beautiful. Less satisfying, perhaps, but more beautiful. And more memorable. There will always be a reason to return to the beach or the café, a sense of lack, of missing something, of incompleteness. Maybe that will be the ultimate “message” of Bientôt l’été. Who knows?