I’m very grateful that people are actually taking the time to play the alpha build of our game and share their impressions and ideas. A lot of interesting things have come up that I really would not have seen so clearly without their help.

I’m still expecting some reactions that I’m especially curious about but a few issues have already surfaced.

The collecting interaction is still not right. Moving away from explicit finding and collecting of objects on the beach was a good choice. But the current replacement of phrases gliding over the screen and standing still to collect them is just not clear. So I’ll be experimenting with different ways of doing this.

There’s a problem with using the phrases in the conversation in the café as well. Currently, you just get a list of the phrases you have collected and you select one to speak it. This stimulates a form of goal-orientation that is not compatible with my vision for the game.

The pure keyboard controls also don’t seem to be ideal, or have the desired emotional effect. Several players prefer the experimental mouse controls, often claiming it makes the experience feel less game-like.

Suggestions have been made to show the ghost of another player on the beach. Not sure how I feel about that yet. Maybe I just need to experiment with it and see.

Currently, there is no end to the beach. You can just keep going, and part of the beach moves along with you. Some people like this but others feel that, since there is nothing new to discover, you might as well make them stop in some way. I’ll have to think about this.

Some suggestions are good but would require too much work to implement. I’d prefer to keep the number of features small but polish them really well. If, however, Bientôt l’été would do well commercially, I’ll probably want to work on some of these ideas anyway and release them in a new version, or as additional content. Especially being able to interact more with another player is attractive to me.

I do realize that the people who are currently playing and commenting are a narrow selection particularly interested in this sort of game. But I’m still happily surprised by how common it has become to simply enjoy a game for its atmosphere and mood. It’s such a joy not to have to fight for the right of a videogame to not have puzzles or enemies anymore.

Bientôt l’été will probably end up being one of the “purest” videogames I made. Pure in the sense of trying hard to approach what I feel is right, fine-tuning the expression so it matches what I have in mind as closely as possible. And what I have in mind is intensely personal. So personal that I don’t expect many people to enjoy it like I do.

That is where purism leads: away from an audience. I’m essentially making a game for myself. And after Bientôt l’été, I think I’ll be ready for something else.

Because the deeper I go, the more acutely I become aware that in the deepest depths, there is nothing. That is also where purism leads. You keep chiseling away the unnecessary parts, there’s always something that seems wrong, and in the end, nothing is left.

This purism may be the way to arrive at the best possible art. And in my mind this means that it can only be enjoyed deeply by a small group of people. I don’t think this sort of elitism is a problem in and of itself. It’s just not something I want to be involved in all the time.

I will continue the production of Bientôt l’été along its current course. But I don’t think the next project I’ll be working on will be quite as purist. It’s interesting to dig this hole and enjoy the quiet and the concentration. But after this, I’ll be happy to crawl out and engage with simpler pleasures that are more easily shared.

A young man was showing us a videogame he was working on the other day. He was explaining how his game was different because it didn’t have any puzzles or combat or scores. We were expected to develop an opinion about his work, and I couldn’t help but think that this was not special at all, not anymore.

At first I was surprised, because it’s the kind of thing I have been saying and defending myself for a long time. But then I realized that this means that we have moved on, that something has happened. Something has changed.

Sure, the commercial mainstream rages on with its mediocre conservative spectacles. But there are alternatives now. We may even be approaching a situation similar to that in other media, where the popular mainstream is just banal titillation but where there is also a strong stream of other, more sincere, more artistic work.

Perhaps today the phrase “this videogame doesn’t have conventional rules or goals” has become as little revolutionary or special as “this music doesn’t have drums” or “there’s no explosions in this movie” or “this book is not structured like a hero’s journey”. Drums, explosions and heroes may still be super-popular, but everybody knows that other things exist as well, and that those things are valuable, even if, perhaps, sometimes they require a bit more attention to appreciate.

And the greatest thing about this is that suddenly the creation of artistic videogames has become a lot more challenging. It is no longer good enough to make a game without guns or platforms. We’re in the next phase now: we need to work harder. Finally!

The first alpha build has been sent out to people who have pre-ordered Bientôt l’été. And even though I know that through the act of pre-ordering without even seeing a screenshot, these people show more than average sympathy towards our work, I’m nervous as hell.

At first there was the fear of disappointment. I was, and still am, fully prepared to refund anyone who does not enjoy the game. I am also worried that people may not understand the game. Bientôt l’été is awfully calm and understated, and probably more conceptual than anything we ever released. I don’t think I’ll be making art games for a while after this. It’s nerve-racking.

But mostly, I’m embarrassed to admit it, I’m nervous about rejection, about failure. And I know this is stupid and that I need to fight it. In videogames personal taste is almost non-existent. Games are either right or wrong. And if you make a game that people don’t like, your game is wrong. If you make a game that isn’t massively successful, it’s because it’s a bad game.

And I know that is not how I feel about other media. You like that kind of music, I like these kinds of books. We are happy for each other that we both find something we like, but neither one of us is wrong, and neither are the creators of these works. They do what they do and some people enjoy it and others don’t.

Anyway, releasing an early alpha has a purpose: to collect responses to the game. And even though I would infinitely rather hear gushing praise and reports on how much people love Bientôt l’été, what matters now is making the game as good as it can be. And for that I need to hear criticism, I need to hear what people do not like about it. And then I need to judge if it can be fixed without altering the purpose of the piece, or conflicting with my own preferences.

The latter is important because I do not see Bientôt l’été as a commercial release. It needs to be good, on its own terms, not necessarily as widely successful as possible (I’ll reserve that ambition for another future project). It needs to be good in the way that I think videogames can be good. And I know that my taste is not exactly mainstream.

The North China Lover is a re-telling of the same story as in Marguerite Duras’ probably best known work The Lover. The novel makes references to its predecessor in the form of corrections. The male protagonist, for instance, is described as slightly different in this version, while the female protagonist, or the child as she is often referred to, is described as being the same. The book also includes film directions, as if Duras was trying to correct the film Jean-Jacques Annaud had created the year before, based on the first book.

The story takes place in the French colonies in Asia, where Duras grew up. So it’s likely that it is at least in part auto-biographical.

A French family in colonial Vietnam, impoverished after the death of the husband and some bad business decisions. A mother, two sons, and a daughter in her early teens.

The girl meets a rich Chinese man and they have an affair.

He is madly in love with her. But it is unclear throughout the entire book whether the girl actually loves him or if she is just manipulating him out of childlike curiosity on the one hand and financial gain on the other.

Nevertheless, they do have a real relationship that consists mostly of meetings in an apartment the man seems to possess precisely for this purpose. He is described as weak and fragile. He does absolutely nothing. He doesn’t need to. His family is rich. The contrast between him and the girl’s older abusive brother could not be greater.

Despite the age and race difference, the girl’s family encourages the relationship for the sake of the money. The man does help the family in the end. But this cannot prevent their return to France. The emotions the couple experience in the period between knowing she will leave and the actual departure are described in great detail.

The book ends years later when the girl, now a woman, in France, receives a phone call from the Chinese man. He tells her that he has never stopped loving her.

This is another book in which Duras investigates “abnormal” love. But, again, she does this without dismissal or glorification. The fact that the girl’s feelings remain ambiguous seems perfectly normal, given her age. She is simply not capable yet of loving the man as much as he loves her.

The novel also paints a very nuanced portrait of racism, in all its shapes and sizes. Despite the white family’s poverty, they still feel somehow superior to this immeasurably rich Chinese man. But this does not really bother him. He is accustomed to it. He is very sophisticated, well mannered and even kind. While the white family of the girl comes across as virtually savage, cruel and uncultured.

But it is to Duras’ credit that she doesn’t judge. There is love everywhere. Next to the romantic and sensual love between the girl and her lover, there is the adoration of the mother for the older son, the love of the girl for her younger retarded brother, the love between both children and an indigenous servant of about their age, and the love between the girl and her schoolmates.

Many beautiful details appear in the book. Movingly precise descriptions of the motions of hands, glances of eyes, warm humid skin, etc. Duras’ superb restraint somehow leads to some of the most acutely recognizable presentations of the emotions that coincide with love, and the suffering of separation. It’s when we are silent that we feel the most. When nothing in our face or our demeanor betrays any emotion, that we show our nobility, the nobility of creatures who love.

I first encountered Agatha through Marguerite Duras’ film Agatha et les lectures illimitées and only later read the booklet (which is structured as a theater play, but it’s not unusual for Duras to include theater- or film-like descriptions and instructions in her work). The film consists of long shots of the lobby and immediate surroundings of Les Roches Noires, the former hotel in Trouville-sur-Mer where Duras lived (and earlier also Marcel Proust). Over these slow images, Duras and her much younger partner Yann Andréa read the text. Once in a while a woman or a man is seen standing still, looking away. The man is played by Yann Andréa. The woman by a younger actress.

The text and the way it was read in the film mesmerized me and has profoundly influenced how the voice parts are handled in Bientôt l’été. Not that there’s anything special about it. It was exactly its dryness and virtual indifference that made the effect so emotional, so strong. It was quite difficult to get our voice actors to speak like that, especially considering the rather heavily emotional content of some of the text.

A man meets a woman after receiving a telegram from her asking him to come quickly because she loves him. When he arrives she tells him that she is leaving him.

In the conversation that follows the man tries to understand the reason why. Because it is obvious that the woman still loves him. They reminisce their youth at the seaside, near a river, exploring an abandoned villa, playing piano and making love in an old bed in the empty building.

Suddenly it becomes clear that the man and woman are brother and sister. And that this is the reason why their relationship has to end.

Agatha is a beautiful text filled with wonderful descriptions of the many emotions that coincide with love. Some people have argued that Duras is a subversive writer with her portrayal of aberrant characters and relationships. But I deeply disagree.

Her work is about the beauty of love. But it doesn’t avoid its complexity. She investigates love, obsessively, and isn’t afraid to explore what’s underneath. But never to the point where she abandons the concept or discredits it.

When she writes about incest, we see the beauty of love, and feel the sadness of its impossibility. She doesn’t demand rights for this special love to exist, to be recognized. In a way, the complexity, the impossibility only makes the love more beautiful. And we do not want to destroy that by making it acceptable.

Love is disruptive, love is not easily controlled but at the same time love can be a habit, can grow into some kind of organ or a limb. And the fear of an end to love is that of amputation.

I found Love the most difficult of Marguerite Duras’ novels I’ve read so far. I actually read it a second time, when I realized that I just didn’t get it. The second time, I read it very slowly and deliberately. It remained a difficult work but I did discover its beauty.

Three people on a beach. Two men, one woman. It’s the same beach as in all the other novels by Duras. T. Beach, S. Thala. With features that remind very strongly of Trouville-sur-Mer where Duras lived. The boardwalk, the hotel, the town on the hill behind the coast.

One man walks near the shore, in the distance. When he comes at the end, he turns back. Or sometimes he disappears. He is followed by gulls, sometimes. The other man is near the woman. She sits on the beach. He approaches her, seems interested in her romantically. She is evasive.

Sometimes it feels like they have done this before. That they came back to this place after having been away for a long time. Maybe one of the men was looking for the woman.

They meet each other, and they leave each other. Like the tide. During the day. Sometimes at night. They cry. They sleep.

It feels like the entire story takes place on a long straight stretch of sandy beach. Though it’s difficult to find a “story” in the novel. If anything, the lack of story in L’amour has greatly inspired and supported my own desire to have no story in Bientôt l’été.

There is no need for a story. We are dealing with emotions that we all know. But what we need is an opportunity to explore them, to see them in another light. To discover the indifference at the bottom of love, or the beauty of distance, the joy of unfulfilled desire and the poetry of psychological torment.

A dog dies on the beach. After a storm, we find dead seagulls. A man screams. A woman plays with the sand. Her eyes are closed. We want things. We know it. Yet we play. We play the game of human contact. We know that we can never get as close as we desire. So the distance of communication is comforting.

We always return. We are glad to see each other. Glad to have company on this incomprehensible piece of rock hurling itself through time and space. The sunset is beautiful.

The Ravishing of Lol V Stein is a key work of Duras for me. Next to The Lover, it’s the one I remembered most vividly reading in my early twenties, when I first came in touch with the writing of Marguerite Duras.

The entire book revolves around a single event. An event that recurs in several of Duras’ novels. There’s a ball in a seaside casino. This ball is attended by a young couple, very much in love. An older woman swoops in and captives the attention of the young man. He dances with her the entire night, and when he leaves with the woman, his former fiancee still sits in the same position, numb, holding her friend’s hand.

The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein takes place ten years after this event. Miss Stein has spent most of this time in a psychiatric institution, but when the book starts, she lives in a beautiful villa, married to another man, with three children.

Like Anne Desbaresdes in Moderato Cantabile, Lol Stein enjoys taking long walks all over town. On one of these walks, she follows a man to the home of a her friend from back at the ball, Tatiana Karl, also married in the mean time.

The man whom she had followed turns out to be Tatiana’s lover, Jacques Hold. When he falls in love with Lol, she rejects him and prefers to spy on his encounters with Tatiana in a hotel, instead. Lying in a wheat field, she watches them through the window, while he knows.

At the end of the book, Jacques accompanies Lol to the seaside casino where Lol’s drama occurred. The tension rises during the train ride there, but when they finally arrive and see the abandoned ball room, nothing happens.

The casino and the hotel make an appearance in Bientôt l’été, as architecture housing the café where the players meet. And the mental state of Lol V. Stein definitely inspired the characters. They take long walks on the beach, while seemingly unconnected fragments of amorous thoughts float by, rushed in by the violence of the waves.

There’s always a feeling of insecurity about Lol. One never knows whether to expect a reasonable conversation or a complete nervous breakdown. And all the while Lol seems to frolic through life, almost giggling.

The novel switches viewpoints about one third in. The uncertainty about who is telling the story, rather typical of Duras’ style, was also very inspiring to me in terms of how to approach the characters. There’s a deep ambiguity about their role as avatars or characters in a story that seems to be missing.

The earliest ideas for Bientôt l’été were not based on any specific novel, but inspired but a certain atmosphere that is present in much of Marguerite Duras’ work. Above all, it was this atmosphere that I wanted to capture in a videogame. When starting the research for the game, we were quickly attracted to the setting and the main characters of Moderato Cantabile as a starting point for Bientôt l’été.

In a small industrial town on the North Atlantic coast of France, a murder has happened, interrupting the piano lesson of the son of Anne Desbaresdes, the wife of the local factory owner. A man has killed his lover in a café. Mrs Desbaresdes joins the crowd to see the murderer embracing his victim on the floor before the police take him away.

The subsequent days, Anne Desbaresdes strays from her usual walks with her child, to visit the place of the crime. She meets a factory worker, Chauvin, who seems to share her fascination with the event. Together they speculate about the reasons for the crime and the possible events that might have lead up to this desperate act, while discovering a taste for the wine served in the café.

Over the course of their meetings, the reader increasingly gets the impression that Desbaresdes and Chauvin are no longer talking about the strangers involved in the incident, but about themselves. It is never explicitly said, but somehow, in between the lines, one senses a sort of falling in love happening.

I grew up in the province of Belgium closest to the sea. My grandfather lived at the seaside, in the dunes, and we visited often. The long sandy beach of Belgium is a major attraction for spending leisure time. This has given me a fondness for the seaside that resurfaces when I read Duras, who lived on the beach of Trouville-sur-Mer for many years.

The sea is an important theme in her work. But also the socio-historical context. Seaside towns only started emerging at the end of the 19th century, because the water and the air were considered healthy. So they have always been places of leisure. Their earliest architecture is the Belle Époque and Victorian style so typical for the pass times of the well to do. Every seaside resort has a casino, for instance. And a seaside casino is another recurring theme in Duras’ work.

The situation of sitting at a café table, talking and drinking, is copied almost literally in Bientôt l’été. This is exactly what you do in the multiplayer part of the game. Not that there’s any chat. You find things to say on the beach. And you don’t know who your partner is (unless you use the special private mode and arrange to meet a friend). Your partner will always be displayed as the other character, regardless of their choice. So if you play the woman, they will be portrayed as the man. Because that’s how the story goes.

You talk, you drink, you smoke, you listen to music. and then, inevitably, there is nothing more to say.

I had already read a few novels by Marguerite Duras long before even thinking of creating something like Bientôt l’été. It was my philosophy teacher in art school who introduced me to her work. My friends and I adored it and devoured it, even in Dutch translation.

For Bientôt l’été specifically, I have read a dozen or so books. The text in the game (270 separate phrases at the moment) comes from these novels.

To read these books in their original language was one of my main reasons for going back to school to (re-)learn French last year and the year before. The spoken text in the game will be in French. But for the written text, a choice of translations will also be offered (English and Dutch so far).

Marguerite Duras is a very celebrated, if somewhat controversial, author in France. Yet, outside of France, her fame is mostly limited to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film The Lover, which the writer disliked so much that she re-wrote the story of the novel that the film was based on and switched publishers when her publisher didn’t want to release a new book with the same story.

In an attempt to familiarize you, dear readers, a bit with the subject matter (and style) of Bientôt l’été, in a next few blog posts I will discuss the different books that I have read for this project, try to explain their stories and attempt to evoke a sense of the spell they cast on me.