Videogames are a popular medium. What I am trying to do with Bientôt l’été is ridiculous. I’m approaching the medium wrong. I’m too idealistic. I’m looking at the technology and seeing its potential and then acting upon that as an individual. This individual happens to have greater love for high literature and deep art cinema than for pop music or television. So when I follow my heart I make stuff that doesn’t really fit in a popular medium.

It’s a bit embarrassing. Like reading poetry on MTV. Or a comic strip in which only ordinary things happen. Or an honest pop song. One might think it is heroic to do such things. But they miss their effect on the audience of such popular media. And if one is not willing to address its audience, one shouldn’t use a medium.

A medium is more than a technology. It’s also a group of people with access to it. It’s still possible to create meaningful art in a popular medium. One should just not be too up front about it.

To be effective, there needs to be a clear appeal to the sensitivities of the audience. Clear, and simple. Don’t overwhelm them, don’t confuse them. Give them a rich top layer that can be thoroughly enjoyable without any thought or reflection. Chances are, more of your art will get through to them this way than if you simply confront them with it (even if they are part of the intellectual connoisseur elite!). And even if not, at least they enjoyed the ride.

I don’t regret making Bientôt l’été. I’m immensely proud of it. It’s something I needed to do. Maybe even something that needed to be made. But I think after this I’m ready to address the medium with its baggage. I think I have found an approach, an attitude, a state of mind to use this medium, in a sense, more respectfully. More respectful of the audience that already exists for it. And I don’t think this requires violent graphics or rigid game structures. People have been sick of that for ages.

Chances are no one will notice the difference. But for me it’s night and day. Instead of fighting the medium, I’ll just use what it already does well and mould that to serve my purpose. It’s a happier way of working, more positive, additive. To make something nice, and add a little bit of spice.

I think I am now old enough for that. And I will lean back in my rocking chair and nod encouraging smiles to a new generation of creators who will make fools of themselves, like I did -at least I hope they do, because somebody should!

Having pre-orders that allow access to an unfinished version of the game removes some of the nervousness I tend to feel before release. Usually I’m very eager to show our work to the world. This is probably one of the reasons why we are so good with deadlines. It’s not that we’re that great at scheduling. We’re simply very curious to hear what people think of what we’ve made.

I do want to get Bientôt l’été out of the door. If only because I want to move on to the next project. But I’m a lot more relaxed about it than usual. And if I need more time to get the game sufficiently polished, I will take it. And I won’t let that stop me from starting other projects anyway.

The people whose opinion I’m most eager to hear already have access to the game. It’s nice if other people can have a look as well. And they will. All in good time.

Of course the current alpha is not finished. But when is a game ever finished? The bulk is there. The finished version will be better. But not radically different. So the responses we get now should be representative of how the final release will new received. And I’m quite satisfied.

One of the questions that came out of the feedback on the alpha version of Bientôt l’été was if there was going to be a sort of conclusion to the game, an end, closure.

When thinking about it, I cannot but agree that this would most probably improve the emotional impact of the game. I have fond memories of playing videogames that end. A satisfying ending gives the entire experience that happened before a sense of depth in meaning. And it tells players they can stop now, they have seen what there is to see, the show is over, hope you liked it.

But this conflicts terribly with how I think as a creator of these things. I make systems, creatures, little machines that are either on or off, alive or dead. And when they are alive, they just do what they do, ad infinitum.

There’s no story, no reason. It’s just a situation, a construction, designed for inspection. I like creating worlds, systems, things that live and that respond to your presence. But I have no point to make. On the contrary. I design these devices in order to find points. And any points I find are always only temporary. It’s about playing with meaning. Not about finding the truth. But about imagining “What if this or that were true?”

Attaching an end to this, exhausting the possibilities, stopping the experiment seems incongruous. And yet I cannot deny the potential emotional impact of closure, even if it is utterly false. The choice between honesty and beauty is one of the hardest I know.

I had to describe our company the other day and for the first time I couldn’t bring myself to call Tale of Tales an independent studio. I just said the truth and called us a small studio instead.

Independent always was a proud way of saying small for me anyway. But today, every other studio is calling itself independent. Indie seems to have become a synonym of cool, disregarding whether you’re big or small or whether publishers or investment firms fund your production.

At the same time, the regular games industry has become as lot more accepting of small development teams. Probably because some games developed by small teams have become commercially successful. And maybe also because there is no end to the fast descent of AAA towards the deepest possible boredom, encouraging each and every employee of such a studio to at least consider “going indie” once in a while.

Maybe we should give the term back to the hobby game developers. The creators who are truly independent, who work without budgets, live off the goodwill of partner or parents and give their games away for free.

Since it doesn’t seem likely that independent will ever mean the same in games as it does in music or cinema. We’re just too much of a business for that. We just have too little artistic blood in our veins. We’re not adventurous enough. We like numbers too much.

I’m very happy with how many people have pre-ordered Bientôt l’été so far. Despite zero advertising or publication, 140 people have done so. And surprisingly to me, most of them have purchased the “Extravagant” package that costs 4 times more. I really feel supported and encouraged by this display of trust. Thank you all!

This makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to indeed make games for a very small group of people and sell them simply at the price that is required to cover the production cost. A game that costs 50,000 Euros to make would only need 500 players willing to pay 100 Euros for it. Imagine how special a game could be if it is made for such a small group of people! Maybe nobody outside of this group would get it, but who cares? It would be wonderful for those within!

Many people have also sent in feedback to the game, which has been very helpful. It’s giving me more work than expected but I do feel that the game will turn out better, clearer, more precise. It makes me feel a lot more confident that perhaps when the second alpha is ready, we should publicize it a little bit more, to spread the word.

Because there’s also something to say for reaching people outside of the elite. People unfamiliar with this type of game, with this type of pleasure. Or people who only know it from other media.

In any case, thanks to everyone who pre-ordered Bientôt l’été! It’s highly appreciated!

I’m afraid I might not care about interaction anymore. The thought came to me as I was tweaking Bientôt l’été in response to alpha-test feedback.

For some reason I cannot recall -or maybe there was none- you collect things in one part of this game which you then use in another. What was I thinking? What’s the point?

I’ve designed several ways both for collecting and using these items. It apparently doesn’t matter to me exactly how you collect or use them. I only care about the effect.

I wanted to create a conversation constructed with more or less random French phrases. That’s the entire reason why Bientôt l’été exists.

Not that only having this conversation would have satisfied me. I care deeply about the environment we have created, the mood, the sound, the visual appearance.

I’m happy enough with the walking activity on the beach. Though I couldn’t care less about how exactly you control the avatar. I wish players could just design and use their own preferred way of navigating.

Maybe we need another type of platform for this kind of work. A 3D world exploration platform that gives the author complete control over how the world and its inhabitants (including the avatar) look and behave. But that allows the user to do whatever they wish in it (within the limitations of their avatar).

Bientôt l’été has already been a very interesting learning experience for me. Here’s some of the things that I have discovered. These are not necessarily universal ideas, just things that are important for me, for the kind of work I want to make, within the limitations I have to deal with. And not necessarily things that will find direct application in Bientôt l’été, but more so in future projects.

Don’t do realism.
The closer you get to realism, the easier the graphics can be ignored. Plus realism always creates expectations that the game can not deliver on. And it is where the work deviates from reality that meaning is born.

Make one thing only, avoid structure.
Just make one situation, one environment. Otherwise you need some kind of structure to switch between the different situations. And that creates technical and narrative complications that are best avoided. Plus you spread your resources thin.

Avoid interactivity.
Designing interactivity is a pain in the neck. The player should not be required to do something in order to achieve something that is required to make progress or whatever. Design the environment assuming the player wil do nothing. And make that interesting. Any interactivity that flows logically out of the situation is fine. Just don’t assume that any is needed.

Schedule two production cycles.
One before and one after alpha-testing. For the kind of work that we do, in which the experience relies a lot on atmosphere, a videogame needs to have a certain level of completion before it can be tested and evaluated. If a lot of changes seem appropriate after testing, there needs to be sufficient time to implement them. Just assume that you will be making the game twice, or making two games.

Joy is more important than art.
Forget about being original or challenging players’ assumptions. This stuff always backfires. Just try to make something nice for people. If the work is made in sincerity, it will automatically contain worthwhile artistic elements. Ultimately, in all honesty, pleasing players satisfies me more than confusing them.

Don’t make a multiplayer art game.
For people to play together, there needs to be a sufficient amount of them. The more people play the game, the more chance a player will run into another player. If you make a game that wil not attract a large audience, multiplayer doesn’t make much sense. Not without a strategy to bring players together.

I’m reading Le Vice-Consul at the moment in which Anne-Marie Stretter plays an important role. Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of the ambassador of France in colonial India. Not unlike Anne Desbaresdes, the wife of the factory owner in Moderato Cantabile. The latter only has one lover. The former has several. She is mentioned as such in the beginning of L’amant de la Chine du Nord as well. Not much more is said of her. And the novel goes on, throwing a poor white school girl in the lusting arms of a wealthy Chinese gentleman.

In Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, Anne-Marie Stretter is the older woman who seduces the fiancé of the lead character away from her, casting her into a ten year long depression. The name of that fiancé is Michaël Richardson. In Le Vice-Consul, one of the lovers of Anne-Marie Stretter is called Michael Richard. She seems to prefer him.

I’m now in a part of the novel where Anne-Marie Stretter is on a beach (yes, a beach, as in many other novels of Duras and in Bientôt l’été). She is lying in a chair surrounded by her lovers. The men talk and she sleeps. She remains the sphinx, even when she is the center of attention. And she taints every other story with her presence, even if only featured casually, in the margins.

There’s also several films by Duras in which Mrs Stretter makes an appearance, highlighting other aspects of this elusive character. Makes me want to make a videogame about her. But I don’t know enough about her. That’s sort of the point and the beauty of Anne-Marie Stretter. Can we make a game about something unknown and yet familiar? How do we allude in videogames?

Aesthetically, videogames have more in common with figurative painting than they do with film. As long as videogames attempt to mimic film, they will remain inferior to it. And quite frankly, their output will always remain dangerously close to kitsch.

We need to accept that the images we produce are synthetic and not photographic. That moves our medium away from cinema but brings it closer to pre-photography figurative painting. Instead of watching films, we should be studying renaissance and baroque paintings.

I say “pre-photography” because I feel that photography has ruined the art of painting. And more problematically for us, photography has also ruined our capacity to enjoy realistic synthetic figurative images. But perhaps videogames can rekindle this.

Pre-modern oil painting is not so much about making pictures, it seems to me. It’s about generating sensations. It’s more about presenting textures and atmospheres than it is about representing visible reality. And this is what brings this art form very close to videogames.

What the synthetic image lacks in visual fidelity, it more than makes up for in the power of suggestion, in stimulating the imagination, in reminding of touch and smell.

Photographic images are nice. But synthetic images are much more powerful. Photographic images are also easy to forget because they look like reality and we don’t need art to see reality. But a synthetic image is unique, is completely created by the artist. There’s no need to hide that under pretending that the image is a photograph. We should take pride in the synthetic nature of our medium. It brings us closer to Michelangelo and Rubens than to snap shots and home videos.

Currently, to play with somebody else in Bientôt l’été, you enter the café on the dyke and go sit at a table. When you do that, the game checks if somebody is already sitting at a table somewhere, waiting, and if so you connect to them. If not, you wait.

I just realized that there’s a problem with this design. If the availability of connecting to another player depends their patience to wait, the window for finding somebody else will be extremely small. And given that Bientôt l’été is not the kind of game that will attract enormous crowds —so that there’s always somebody to play with— I need to increase that window somehow.

There is literally nothing to do while you wait either. I guess I could let you to have a virtual drink and smoke on your own, Dinner Date-style, but how long will that remain amusing without adding a lot more to the game.

We already have “a lot more”, though. We have an entire beach. So perhaps your “waiting” starts already while you’re alone on the beach. And then when somebody enters the café, you are notified of this and you can decide to join them. This notification should not be too personal, though (like your character’s cell phone ringing). That would conflict with the pleasant solitude of the beach situation.

Maybe the appearance of the café on the beach changes for all players when somebody has entered and is available to play together. So you would regularly look at the café and if, say, the light is on, you can enter yourself. If multiple players responded simultaneously, they can all be matched up in couples by the game.

Since you know that this light will go on in other players’ games when you enter the café, you would normally not have to wait too long until somebody connects to you —at least if somebody else is playing the game at that moment (which is a lot more likely if “playing the game” includes the beach scene, and is not limited to “waiting at the table”). So that makes it acceptable to enter the café even is nobody is there yet.