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.

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.

The idea of videogames as a medium has certainly not won over all hearts yet. The desire for game-like videogames, and indeed even non-video games, has never been as strong as now. This is fine and understandable in and of itself. But it’s also kind of lazy and, sorry, childish.

But maybe the games industry has ultimately no interest in becoming as broad as to allow one strand of it to be a medium, while many others go off in different game directions. Maybe this medium truly is too new, too disruptive to fit within the old industry and its rigid academic supporters and fun-loving journalistic fans.

This would be a pity. Because I don’t feel the distinction is so great. But maybe there simply is a line that cannot be crossed, no matter how much it can be bent. We would be doing ourselves, and humanity, a disservice not to recognize this if it is the case. There’s no point in stubbornly hoping to be accepted by an industry that has no interest in expanding in our direction. We had better go our own way, then.

When I look outside and get a glimpse of the fuzzy Belgian sun caressing the permanent cloud cover, I know that this is what I want to capture in Bientôt l’été.

It’s not the most glorious thing on the planet, not the most spectacular or surprising. But it is home. It is delicate and subtle.

No, the masses will not devour the game on launch day. Or shower it with paper stars and plus signs. But through the years, the decades, lone wanderers will come back to it. As to a simple source in the middle of a jungle. It’s not the only water in the world. But it is the only water of its kind. There is very little of it. But I have drank some. And so have a few other brave men that I am honored to call my brothers.

When the human spirit has finally collapsed under the pressures of its vanity, Bientôt l’été will still be there, dripping its feeble sunlight for unsuspecting mouths of unlikely survivors living like a hermit on the overgrown ruins of what was once a promising civilization.

It is for them that I want to achieve perfection. Not an awesome game, flavor of the month, indie darling, game of the year blah blah. But a solid, stubborn rock that doesn’t draw attention to itself but that is there for those who know how to find it to lean there weary bodies on for a moment, before they struggle on.

To capture the heart of will-free existence, the joy of everything, happy and sad. The pointless wonder over the absurd. Sharing in-jokes with the cosmos.

It’s frustrating how clearly I can judge the design of Bientôt l’été now. I know exactly what I would keep and what I would leave out. Why do I not see these things at the beginning of a project?

If I compare with the new projects we’re starting up, one of the reasons is probably uncontrolled enthusiasm about the concept. The idea itself is so exciting that practical execution seems like a minute issue. This is a mistake, though. Practical execution is everything. Ideas are worthless.

Another reason is probably that I have learned a lot during this project, and I am simply not the same designer any more. What seemed like a good idea six months ago, I now consider to be silly. Because I have learned a bit about me, a little bit about the public and a bit more about how to design towards that illusive dream about this medium. Or at least changed position a little, if only for a while, if only as an experiment.

Ironically, Bientôt l’été is already an old project for me. I’m almost starting to become nostalgic about it. We’ve spent so much good time together. And it’s not even finished yet. So I’ll take good care of it before I let it go. It almost feels like its birth will be a burial.

We are happy when other people like us. We are happy when other people like a thing we made. So we try to make things that other people will like. It makes us happy.

I assume there is some grand evolutionary reason for this behavior. But it doesn’t seem very productive in terms of civilization. Maybe civilization is a weak trait that evolution will remove in the long run. In the fight between nature and culture, nature always wins. At the expense of life itself, if need be. It’s for the best, I’m sure.

Maybe being wired for success is how nature tries to slow us down. The rapid evolution of civilization as a result of many people stubbornly going against the grain has lead to a very perilous situation. We are endangering the entire planet. If we would stop our revolutions and just do things that pleased other people, we would evolve a lot more slowly. And perhaps not endanger our environment so much.

Whether this is a good idea at this very moment is another matter. Maybe we should first do some more rapid thinking, before we can slow down in a world that isn’t threatening to wipe us all out.

It’s tempting to think that being forced to work so hard for acceptance, will make our work better. But is this really true? It might be if the audience we were trying to win over was the audience for literature, or film. But they don’t give a damn about what we are trying to do.

The audience we are working for is the games audience. And the only luck we will have is with people who like both games and what we do. Given the nature of these games, such people must be incredibly generous and open minded.

But who knows on what grounds our works are rejected by gamers? Or accepted for that matter. Will finding a way to please the gamer audience lead to the highest possible quality that this medium can achieve?

I worry about this. Because I care about this medium. Or what it could be. And maybe we should be more stoic in our dedication and not hold success with the gamer audience in such high regard. At this point it seems like a necessary step towards anything else. Which is a distracting pity. But we owe it to this medium, and humankind, to remain critical, both of our failings and our successes.