We are not a commercially motivated studio. We are driven by artistic curiosity and a sense of obligation to explore a new medium on the one hand and create art that is relevant to our age on the other. But we have no interest in leaving the potential impact of our work solely up to chance. We want to reach as many people as possible. The fact that we know that only a small minority will actually enjoy what we make, makes this all the more important.

Since the major peak in sales is always at the launch of a game, it makes sense to attempt to maximize that peak. Not only for the sales on those days, but for the exponential effect on the rest of the sales of players spreading the word. The more sales a game has at launch time, the more it will have per day throughout its life time.

The few more artistic games that have done well commercially, all had extensive periods before launch in which people would be talking about the game. Sometimes this “hype” lasts over a year, before the game is released. A similar thing happens in the AAA sphere: games are talked about a lot a long time before they come out, and as soon as they have, the talking stops, the game disappears from the discussions.

Given this phenomena, it would make sense to sit on Bientôt l’été for a while before we release it. This is completely counter-intuitive. I’m eager to share my work with the world. But if I do this too early, apparently this world will be very small. I don’t mind as such, since Bientôt l’été is, strictly speaking, not a commercial game. But I think we should do our best to reach the biggest audience possible. If only to get the biggest possible amount of response, to inform our further evolution as artists and designers.

One could say that the “hyping” can already start now. In order to reach maximum potential by launch time. But that’s not how things seem to work in the indie sphere. Talking about a game only really takes off when the game looks and feels finished, through screenshots, videos and even playable versions. Anything else simply does not spread very far. And given the organic way in which we create our work, a representative version of Bientôt l’été will only exist on the day that it is finished.

I doubt if we will have the good sense to wait when the game is ready. It will have been a very long time since we published anything new. Surely we can all wait a bit longer. And yet, I can only imagine how eager we will be when Bientôt l’été is done.

I start building a game before knowing what it is going to be. Because in my experience, most of the ideas I have on paper don’t work out in practice. It’s better to just build the basic blocks of the game world and then see what I can do with them. Often inspiration comes in spades when there is something to look at and play with.

At some point, however, the game may be giving me ideas that do not seem compatible with my original vision. As a strong willed creative person, I reject such ideas. But that is dumb.

This is a very new medium and we don’t have a lot of methods and wisdom to fall back on yet. At least when trying to use this medium for artistic purposes. As a result, we may have great ideas but not know how to express them in the medium. The brute force of iterative prototyping seems to be the only way we have to slowly try to hack our way towards our goal.

But this is potentially endless. And always frustrating. A more fruitful way of achieving nice results is listening to what the game is trying to tell us. Certainly, in the beginning we may need to lead things in a certain direction. But at some point our initial intent will intersect with what the technology allows us to do, what we know ourselves capable of and what simply feels goods and what doesn’t. A number of paths will start to appear. One of those paths, inevitably the hardest and most unclear one, is the path that leads to accomplishing your goals. Other paths are easier and clearer, but they may seem simplistic or empty.

At this point, I know I need to reject my instincts to stubbornly follow my will. It’s strangely difficult for a creative person to choose the simple, easier path. But, I know from experience that that is the right one to follow. There will be plenty of opportunities along it for expression. And this path will lead to results. Maybe not the results I envisioned. But maybe interesting, surprising results. The other path, the path of the will, leads nowhere. It just keeps going and going, becoming broader and broader, and ultimately dissolves into nothing.

I missed a post yesterday. It was a busy day. Part of it was spent listening to music for Bientôt l’été.

After a wonderful experience on our prototype project Cncntrc, I asked Walter Hus to compose music for Bientôt l’été too. Part of my motivation was that, next to being an accomplished composer, he is also an enthusiastic piano teacher. And piano teaching is an element in Moderato Cantabile, the novel by Marguerite Duras that provides for the initial situation in Bientôt l’été.

One of the peculiar things about Mr Hus’ recent work is that it almost always involves a monumental computer-driven Decap pipe organ. When I visited his studio yesterday, he just switched on the device and I was welcomed by a low throbbing sound coming from the biggest pipes of the organ that made everything in the small room vibrate. From there, the sound evolved into a fascinating surreal seascape with waves coming from the motorized breathing of an accordion, ethereal voices flowing in the wind, subtle piano tingles and amusing references to 70s synthesizer ambiance.

I was delighted to hear how evocatively he had captured the idea of a beach simulation running on the holodeck of a remote space station. I could feel the engine of the craft, hear the wistful sighs of the ocean and lonely cries of man and machine in empty space. I was pondering changing the entire game so everything in it would be triggered by the music alone. Because all I wanted to do was listen to it. But then we came to our senses and decided to mix the music dynamically in the game, as we did in Cncntrc -and The Path.

So even if all else fails, I feel the music for Bientôt l’été alone is sufficient justification for this project to exist. I’m looking forward to implementing some tracks in the game and seeing where the music leads the design and aesthetics.

Since the production of certain aspects of a game follows a linear path, I need to now step up my reading of Duras’ novels. Because this is required for me to compile the text that the voice actors will read that needs to be recorded and processed and then implemented in the game. So now reading novels has become the highest priority on my to do list.

And since I’m reading them in the original language, and French is only my third language, this is a slow process. Especially some books require quite a bit of concentration. In fact I’m going to re-read Moderato Cantabile and L’Amour, before I decide on the final text for the game. Even though I’d love to still read Yann Andrea Steiner, Des journées entières dans les arbres and Le Square, and re-read L’Amant and La Maladie de la Mort. Duras has produced so much beautiful prose!

I have read, and will probably include quotes from Emily L., Dix heures et demie du soir en été, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein, L’homme atlantique, La Douleur and L’amant de la Chine du Nord, next to Moderato Cantabile and L’Amour. The latter is especially interesting because it almost entirely takes place on a beach, a beach that has a lot of similarities with Trouville-sur-Mer, which we visited for this project the other day.

Last week, I removed two features from the game design that I really liked. Both would take a lot of time to fine-tune and polish. And frankly I’m not even sure how much they would contribute to the whole. But removing certain features gives me more time to work on all the others, so they can become better.

The continuous exercise in minimalism when creating a videogame can be very frustrating at times. There is never enough time, there is never enough money, and the technology is never good enough to make what one really wants to make. But in my experience, this is the only way to come to a finished project. And it is of the utmost importance that projects are finished and released. Without that, there is no progress. Even if the game is not as good as one envisioned it, and not as rich, a released title will always be better than an unreleased one. The former can make a difference, the latter cannot.

I do believe in the aesthetic value of a videogame that is as sparse as it can possibly be: where everything in the game is essential and beautiful and nothing is excessive or badly implemented. But such minimalism goes against my creative nature. I keep having ideas and often only know if they are any good after implementing them. But that takes a lot of time, so I need to continuously reject ideas at the risk that some of the few sparse features that I do decide to keep, turn out to be completely uninteresting. Minimalism may be the only way to come to a finished product, but it’s also terribly risky.

The only solution for this dilemma is to accept the possibility of failure. Let’s make this one project as good as we can and if it turns out to be bad, so be it. Then we simply move to the next project, older and wiser.

I have started this blog to post all sorts of things that come up during the production of our new game Bientôt l’été. I will try to post something every day. This will give insight into our development process and hopefully get you interested in the final result.

We are usually somewhat shy about sharing details of our games before they are done, simply because we create them in such a non-linear, sometimes chaotic fashion. For all our talk about using this medium to express something, the actual production process is far less under our control than we might want. We always change our minds about certain ideas even after we felt quite sure about them. And then after we have rejected them, sometimes we can’t help coming back to them. As a result, we really can’t tell what the game we are making will be like, until it is published.

So you will see all sorts of things on this blog that will never make it into the final product. Some of these might be things that you (and we) really like. So not seeing these in the final game may lead to disappointment. That’s a risk we’re taking with this experiment.

On the other hand, we hope that what we talk about here will arouse your excitement about our new project, and stimulate you to share your feelings with your friends. Because, even though Bientôt l’été is not intended for a mass audience, we would like for it to reach all the fine people who might have a taste for it.