Following the logic from the previous post, I need to conclude that artistic games will always be slow and contain very minimal (inter)activity. Which is not entirely dissimilar to the situation in other media in which both entertainment and art are created. Rock and roll tends to be active and exciting. Classical music calm and complex. Action movies are fast and clear. Art films are slow and confusing. Adventure books and comic strips are spectacular and engaging. Literature and poetry are often modest and a bit alienating.

Obviously we can all enjoy both. In fact, art, since it requires such an effort, is often the least attractive option to pass some leisure time. As a result, we might actually spend more time with entertainment. Yet it is the art that matters most and makes the deepest impressions and makes us who we are. If this applies to most, then it follows that we need a lot more entertainment than art.

But I do feel that the entertainment needs the art in any medium. If only to explore and thus rejuvenate and expand. Even if nobody in the public would see the art directly, they would witness its indirect effects in entertainment. Unless even the creators of such entertainment reject the art. Then the medium atrophies.

Luckily sensible people make room in their lives for both. I can’t imagine living on this planet without experiencing art once in a while. That seems like a waste of a life time.

Elle est toujours au bord de ne pas écrire, elle est toujours sur le point de tout quitter, et les mots et la vie.
—Yann Andréa, Cet amour-là

I’m starting to believe that some critics from outside of the game industry were onto something when they intuited that videogames couldn’t really be art because of their interactivity. They felt that a certain passivity was required for that special art effect to take place. From experience, I cannot but confirm this. But this passivity doesn’t exclude interactivity as such. What we really need is time.

I have never felt that deeply moving aesthetic joy by casually passing by a work of art hanging on the wall. Or by listening to a piece of music while engaged in another absorbing activity. I need to calm down, slow down, take my time and concentrate. Only then does the art work release its magic.

There’s a lot of moments in Bientôt l’été when nothing happens. You’re just walking. Or sometimes just standing or sitting. But during this time of physical passivity, I feel my brain and heart working. They are exploring the work and being absorbed by it, in a manner that does not happen while being active, but that does linger for quite a while after the moment of passivity.

The problem of the outside critics is not that the interactivity as such is preventing them from being moved by the videogame. It’s that the design of the game does not allow them any time to take it all in, to process what is happening, to stretch out their emotional antennas and sense the atmosphere. This is especially problematic for people who are not used to playing games, for whom even the simplest controls require attention.

To some extent, this is a design mistake. At least in so far as the designer was hoping to provoke this deep artistic pleasure. There is an explicit assumption in the game community that the art effect of a game should be generated by the interactivity, by the game design, by the active engagement with the game’s mechanics and rule sets. Maybe this works for very experienced players. Probably because, through their high skill level, the engagement with the mechanical level does not require all their concentration.

A lot of the joy that art gives me comes from observing my own reactions to the piece. To wonder about why I feel this way or that when looking or listening to this or that, I need time. Time when I do nothing. Time to allow the emotions and thoughts to grow and wash over me, like the waves on a beach.

Je crois que c’est terminé, qu’après ce livre je ne peux plus rien écrire, c’est fini. C’est terrible et en même temps je serai débarrassée de cette corvée.
—Yann Andréa, Cet amour-là

il n’y a rien à comprendre, cessez avec ça, ne faites pas tout le temps l’enfant.
—Yann Andréa, Cet amour-là

J’ai peur pour elle, de la voir là debout face à cette salle pleine. Peur qu’on n’aime pas ce film, India Song, comme si c’était possible, comme si ça pouvait exister, qu’on lui fasse du mal. Et je vois qu’elle souffre, que pour elle, ce film c’est plus qu’un film, qu’elle aime ce film comme si ce n’était pas elle qui l’avait fait. Elle est folle d’amour pour ce film, (…)

—Yann Andréa, Cet amour-là

Do you wish people to believe good of you? Don’t speak.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées

There’s a number of things in Bientôt l’été that are imperfect in some ways but that I cannot change because they are perfect in others. They are logical, theoretically sound, but they don’t quite feel right.

This probably explains in part the interesting reactions we get sometimes. People clearly really experiencing something special and unique, but being put off by a detail. Such a detail is often the result of pure logic, of building a system that makes sense, but that is too raw for easy human pleasure.

I do believe that ideally systems should be tweaked to optimize human experience. Yet somehow I cannot bring myself to damage the perfection of these systems. It’s probably laziness in part. The systems are straightforward and logical and tweaking them for messy human consumption would require adding lots of ifs and buts (are there any programming languages that have but statements next to if statements?).

This is a sin in my ideology of putting humans above machines. And yet it feels right somehow. I want the player of Bientôt l’été to enter the digital domain. The experience should be mixed, hybrid, give and take. Bientôt l’été does not solely exist to give you pleasure. It also wants to receive pleasure. So player and game need to meet each other half way. In that vague electronic realm of cyberspace.

Because Bientôt l’été exists. It is a thing. It is not just a means for your enjoyment. It is an entity with its own history, its own culture, its own identity. As such, it requires your respect. When you visit it, you enter a foreign land. Yes, it’s a land that was built on what you know as your culture, your life. But it has improvised on top of that, laid bare some aspects of it, mutilated others. Not randomly, not systematically, but very precisely. Bientôt l’été looks at your life and points out what it finds interesting, what fascinates it, while not entirely comprehending, questioning, amused perhaps, wondering.

This look from the outside may feel disturbing at times, even wrong. A foreigner’s interpretation of your culture is always crude, always feels like a misinformed caricature.

I have no justification for the moments in Bientôt l’été that feel awkward, jarring, disturbing, incongruous. There is no justification. If I were a better designer, I would fix them, smooth out the experience, become successful. But somehow I feel that this would be betrayal. Betrayal of the logic. And also, I feel that this imperfect version should exist first, in its pure untweaked form, before somebody picks up on it and creates an experience that does fit the human form perfectly.

Of course, this way, I remain the uncelebrated forerunner, the mad creator who, almost pathologically, blurts out wisdoms that he does not comprehend himself but that inspire others to greatness. It’s a noble, yet lonely position that I do not intend to stay in all my life. But for Bientôt l’été, it seems appropriate. I’m curious to see what this one’s ideas will give birth to.

I’m sure that there are many people who are by nature kind and joyful and generous and happy with just about anything they encounter. For others it takes more effort to be positive all the time. And for yet others, being a cheerful participant would require deep dishonesty.

I’m pretty sure I fall in the latter category. That doesn’t mean that I am an eternal pessimist. On the contrary: it probably means I am more hopeful than most. As such my expectations are high and I am quickly disappointed. I am impatient.

One of the most fascinating things I have learned from Lionhead’s superb first Black & White videogame is that the quickest way to make the player like a character, is to make the character seem to like the player.

I think this process occurs in real life as well. If you like people, they will like you back. And what a wonderful time we live in for liking! Liking is the very basis for our dear persistent and pervasive web 2.0. We are all liking each other 24/7. We have never been more happy.

I wonder if the people who were wishing for more when The Graveyard came out are starting to feel silly now. It’s been over 4 years now since we released it. And, even though the “official” games industry doesn’t seem to have moved much, a lot has happened alongside of it. A lot of games have been released by many different authors and a lot of talking has been done. And although the hardcore ludic branch of the spectrum is stronger than ever, recently being reinforced by a new popularity of non-video games, there has never been as much acceptance and appreciation for more artistic types of interactive work in the games audience.

Do they feel silly now, asking for more story or for puzzles or -jokingly- for enemies to overcome? Or are we ready, as a group, to engage with pure interaction? With doing things for the sake of doing them. With making up our own minds as to what these things mean. With being the creators of our own entertainment. With using these interactive experiences as tools. Tools for self-exploration, for amusement, for investigation of certain themes. Or do we still need the author to take us by the hand, to make us feel things, to tell us a story? Have we grown up as players yet?

That is a question we seldom ask, is it? We’re often going on about how young, even infantile, videogames are as a medium. But we seldom question the maturity of our players. At least not within the play activity (outside of it, sadly, there has been some lamentable displays of childishness; but many others have commented on this already).

In fact, many of the more mainstream games seem to assume no such maturity exists. The simplistic stories, the excessive tutorials, the extreme hands holding all point to an assumption in the designers that the players of their work are children, or grown-ups with the mentality of children.

Children don’t like art films. Children seldom read literature. Classical music is mostly wasted on children. Children get bored in museums. Do we become children again when we play a videogame?

It takes maturity to appreciate a story by Kafka, a cantata by Bach or a film by Duras. Not just in the sense of having had some life experience to frame the artistic one. But also in the sense of discipline, initiative and endurance. We have to be able to bring ourself to the work, to enter a state in which we are receptive to its beauty, to let go of many of our expectations, even of the expectation to understand or decipher the meaning of the piece. It takes maturity to accept a mystery without feeling the need to comprehend it.

Have we achieved that sort of maturity yet when engaging with videogames?

It is odd to think that the same people who have no problem getting through Beckett or Godard would not be able to deal with an artistic game. And yet that was exactly the situation 4 years ago, when The Graveyard came out. It will be interesting to see how things have changed when Bientôt l’été is released.