The multiplayer part of Bientôt l’été is quite open-ended. I imagine it’ll be a little bit like improvisational theater or music. But with complete strangers. Who may or may not be very talented or inspired. So sometimes a session will go very deep and move both players. While other times, it’ll be dull and awkward.

To me, this is all part of the experience. I don’t want to guide the play much. I like it when nobody knows how things are going to play out. And I think being aware if this, makes even the bad experiences interesting.

It’s part and parcel of the interactive medium to me, that players make their own amusement to some extent. I just provide the instrument and the score. You should play the music.

And yes, sometimes it will be odd. But that’s how conversations go. Sometimes they feel good, otherwise not so. And I hope the artificiality of the context will render even failed conversations moving. And perhaps contribute to our appreciation of our imperfect yet so wonderful species.

The main reason why Bientôt l’été will be in French is that I find it important to point out that different cultures exist. For the same reason, the song in The Graveyard is in Flemish, the language spoken in the part of Belgium where I live. In the Anglo-Saxon corner of the internet that I inhabit, one may sometimes get the impression that we all share the same culture, that the only difference is that Americans and Brits are smart and everybody else is stupid, since they talk funny.

But there’s another reason for this specific choice. I decided to do the game in French when the Flemish nationalist party won the elections. They won because they succeeded in rekindling the ancient hatred in Flanders of Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium. In line with the global trend of fundamentalism and populism that plagues our post-modern politics, this is hardly remarkable. But I live here and I find the situation incredibly petty and sad.

So, in protest, I started taking French lessons again, even considered moving to Wallonia and decided to celebrate the beauty of the French language in a videogame. Amusingly, the arts funding for this project comes from the Flemish government, since some genius in the past figured it would be a good idea to split these things up in our already tiny country. Of course most artists oppose this segregation, but what do they know about culture?

The most painful part if all this is that I come from a family of Flemish nationalists, and that they don’t see how their anti-immigrant attitudes are rather upsetting to somebody married to one.

I visited Trouville-sur-Mer to find Marguerite Duras but found something completely different, yet surprisingly related to the project nonetheless.

I think I had more or less ruined any fan-boy experiences I might have had in Trouville by obsessing over the place on Google Earth, through pictures and even in Duras’ own films. I had already designed an entire game world largely inspired by this seaside town (before I decided to have an empty beach instead). So I was actually quite familiar with it. When I saw Trouville in real life, I recognized everything, I knew my way around.

In a way this is kind of horrible and it somewhat confirms Walter Benjamin’s fears regarding photography: that the technological reproduction of images takes away from the “aura” of the photographed objects. A theory that was extended by Baudrillard when he claimed that these objects no longer really existed. That we are now living in a world that consists only of images.

But I digress.
Or do I?

What I did find in Trouville was something that is completely unphotographable (but that might be reproducable, or at least evokable, through an interactive medium). What I found was the sea. And the wind. The tide and the clouds. The enormous sky that surrounds our planet. And the moon.

What I found was a planet, a solar system, floating around in an unimaginably large universe.

I had never spent this long a time at the seaside before. To see the day turn to night and to day again, to witness the tide come in and then float back, to stare at the sky endlessly, to wait for the moon, follow the sun, to sleep in the roaring noise of the ocean and the continuous tearing at man’s constructions by the restless winds of the sea. The seaside is the place where this planet connects to its surrounding universe most palpably.

I had already decided that Bientôt l’été would take place on a remote space station. For me this is a symbol of how we inhabit and communicate through the internet. A fond memory of meeting my wife, too. But now, after this overwhelming confrontation with the universe, the space station situation is suddenly starting to trigger other emotions as well. No longer just looking inward and to each other, but looking out, at the planets, together, sitting next to each other on a rock hurled through an immense universe at immeasurable speed.

Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, died yesterday, aged 73. This reminded me of my admiration of his work. He worked in a popular medium (comics and movies), in a popular genre (science fiction and western), but managed to infuse his art with beauty, clever humour and intellectual depth. I work in a popular medium as well (video games) but I’m far less comfortable with it. I keep fighting what I cannot accept to be the nature of my medium. While Moebius simply became a Master of his.

I’m especially fond of the Incal series, and World of Edena. Perhaps as a tribute, I will increase the science fiction aspect in Bientôt l’été. Not to copy Moebius’ style, but to learn from his comfort with working within a popular genre. Both Jean Giraud and Marguerite Duras are French, so that should work out, shouldn’t it?

It’s kind of titillating to think of this combination of high literature and pulp entertainment. Duras in space. Why not? Less holodeck, more space station. Maybe you travel through space in the beginning of the game, or you awaken from cryogenic sleep. Then you boot up the holodeck for a morning scroll by the seaside. Maybe the café table where you meet another player is not virtual. Maybe it’s a kind if space station phone booth. I was already planning to depict the other player as a holoprojection.

I like the idea of combining sci-fi style technical language of futuristic computer interfaces with the dry and subtle phrasing of Duras’ amorous prose. Maybe the machines can start sounding poetic or romantic at some point.

My aim with this project has always been to make the beauty of Duras’ art more easily accessible. Maybe science fiction offers a way to do this.

PS: Interestingly, the music teacher in Moderato Cantabile, the novel at the basis of Bientôt l’été, is called Giraud.

I don’t want to see your face. Turn away from me. You are me. I don’t want to see me.

When making the kinds of games that we do, it’s common to think in terms of expression, meaning and narrative. And while it is important to at least guide the player a little bit towards an interpretation that makes sense, I believe that a videogame should allow for as much freedom as possible for the player to play how they want to. Often technical limitations prevent us from offering all the possible interactions and features a player might desire. But sometimes reducing the amount of features can lead to more ways of playing.

My best experiences in multiplayer games are often the ones in which I “abuse” the system for my own story. Having our avatars intersect with each other in A Tale in the Desert is a beautiful romantic memory. Having Jin and Xiaoyu tackle each other in Tekken turned into an erotic fantasy. We didn’t need our avatars to play animations of hugging or having sex. In fact, it was more fun to attribute our own meaning to what we were doing. It made the activity more personal.

I remember adding such personal layers to table top games as well: inventing stories that are only vaguely related to what the board and the pawns and the rules represented. It’s a fun thing to do together.

So rather than defining the meaning of certain actions that a player can do in Bientôt l’été, or figuring out how to implement a wide range of recognizable gestures and interactions, I think I will offer simple, rather meaningless things to do instead. Putting an object on the table and moving it around means nothing. Until you do this while another person is watching and when this other person can do the same. Then a communication can develop. This communication may not have any specific meaning. But does that matter? How many of our conversations in real life are actually exchanges of information? Is communication often not simply testing how much we like each other and expressing these feelings? Even when we might not really feel all that fond of someone, it’s often simply fun to act as if we are.

If I could say “Read Duras the way I have,” there would be far less reason for me to make this videogame. But I can’t say that and believe that you will. Some people, sure. But from what I read about her here and there, many not.

Bientôt l’été is not about Marguerite Duras, it’s not a videogame version of one of her novels, nor is it an attempt at a faithful presentation of her style. Bientôt l’été is driven by my experience with reading Duras. The things I have learned while reading her work. The beauty I have felt. Not only the literary beauty of the text, but also the beauty of the real world that her work points out.

Bientôt l’été is also an expression of admiration for the artist, and a posthumous nod of sympathy for a woman whose flamboyance served as both the flame under her extraordinary gift as the target for mockery and derision by the less talented, the less interesting.

I would like to say what it is that I enjoy so much in her work. But I can’t. So I’m making this videogame to try and capture and express the feeling.

Not just that. I also want to share these feelings. To inhabit this world with you. With words, one can never be sure. But in a videogame, I feel we can get closer. It’s about experience, about shared experience. And videogames can be poetic on a sub-rational level that is far easier to share than the joys of French literature.

At least that’s what I hope to achieve, what I aim for. It’s probably far too ambitious or hopeful to be realistic, let alone find a significant audience, but if even a fraction of this comes across, it’ll be worthwhile. If only because knowing that there’s people out there that can share this emotion, will make me a happier person.

In a way, Bientôt l’été is fan art.

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 I started working on Bientôt l’été, I was trying to find a style that was vague, blurry and perhaps a bit glitchy. At the same time, I did want the 3D simulation to feel real, and tangible. A big part of the effect I wanted to achieve could be done in post-processing the rendered image. But for an image to be processed, it needs to exist first. So I figured I should build a game world first and then mess it up visually.

I designed and blocked out the exterior area over several iterations. There’s the sea and the beach, a dyke with a row of houses, a pier and an industrial harbour on one side and a villa on a cliff on the other, and there’s dunes. A lot of elements were inspired by my Google-enabled virtual visits to Trouville-sur-Mer, the city on the coast of Normandy where Duras lived for some time, aspects of which one can encounter in several of her books and films.

As the game environment started feeling like a real place, I also started to realize how much model and texture work was going to be needed to achieve a near photographic illusion. And what for? To mess up the rendering of this reality in post-processing. I realized that I was taking the long way around and that this was stupid considering the small scale of this project.

And then it came to me: why should I show anything in the game that is not important, that is not pertinent or poignant? So I swiped it all of the table and started, almost literally, with a blank slate. I had developed a fondness for photographs of early urban development at the seaside around the turn of the previous century (like this and this). I like the emptiness in those scenes. Not much had been built yet, but what was there was wonderful Victorian seaside architecture.

I decided to start from an empty space, a white room. And only add detail to elements that were important. In fact, make those elements as beautiful and “realistic” as possible.

It’s very liberating to think of my game environment as empty. Instead of worrying about how to get all those models and textures made, and where to make the unavoidable sacrifices, I can now work in a purely additive fashion (and accompanying positive mood). If I need a tree, I’ll add a tree and make it beautiful. But I don’t start from the assumption that there will be trees. Maybe there will not be any.

This idea also connects well with the artificiality of the holodeck context as well as with the gravitation towards silence in Duras’ work. And it’s something that is always on our minds at Tale of Tales: the desire for an aesthetic style that emerges from the medium’s own strengths rather than its capacity to imitate.

This new game started by combining two older ideas. One is the desire to create something interactive with the atmosphere of certain passages in Marguerite Duras’ novels: when lovers sit next to each other and stare into the distance, silently, or speaking words that seem dry or unfeeling or irrelevant or even cruel, while the reader knows the passions raging inside. The other idea is for an ambient multiplayer game set in a virtual park: you sit down on a bench and another player sits down next to you, you don’t speak, you don’t interact, you just enjoy each other’s company.

Duras’ novel Moderato Cantabile provided us with the basic situation for Bientôt l’été: a man and a woman meet in a seaside café. We do not plan to tell the story of the novel. We will just borrow this situation and combine it with other elements from other novels and add to this ourselves. In the café, you will meet another player and communicate with him or her in the awkward-yet-precise style of Duras’ dialogs. Ultimately we want you to fall in love with your partner, an impossible love. You might need to build up to that. Maybe over several play sessions. The elements you can use in the conversation will be found on the beach, outside. This is the single-player part of the game: strolling along the beach, collecting thoughts and things that wash ashore.

This entire world is presented as a simulation. You are not actually in a seaside town on the French Atlantic coast. You are in a space station, god knows how far away from the nearest inhabited planet. The seaside only exists on some kind of holodeck. And the people you talk to are far away, probably also on a space station, somewhere in the universe. This may not always be apparent in the game. We’re not sure yet how much of this science fiction framework we will actually display. But the assumption is definitely there.

For us, the holodeck and the communication in space is a metaphor for the actual situation of the players: on their computers connected through the internet, a situation very familiar and dear to Auriea and I since this is how we met and fell in love.

Maybe you will too.