After the experience of feeling out of place at IndieCade, I started doubting whether we should submit Bientôt l’été to the Independent Games Festival as we had planned. Every title in the IGF is selected by a jury and the IndieCade jury had rejected us. IGF does not have an “Official Selection” to highlight works the organizers find important.

But the chance of rejection didn’t matter much. It hurts to be rejected. But since our games are so different, we can always blame any rejection on conservatism in the jury. So we have an emotional shield in place. That’s the advantage of making art. You can always tell yourself that the public doesn’t understand your work.

A stronger deterrent was the realization that even winning the IGF would be completely meaningless to us. Usually, I imagine, people are overjoyed to win, because they have been chosen among their peers as the best. But I don’t see what our work has in common with most of theirs. So any recognition by the IGF would only mean that perhaps the games industry is now a little bit more open to artistic experiments like ours. It wouldn’t say anything about the quality of our work. Because there’s nothing to compare it to.

But while moaning over email, I started thinking about Dear Esther. And how happy I was that it got nominated for so many awards. Not so much because it’s a recognition of the immense talents of its creators. Because there’s no competition for them either: there’s nothing out there to compare Dear Esther to. I realized that it makes me happy because people are choosing beautiful art over fun entertainment.

So you can blame Jessica Curry for talking me into submitting Bientôt l’été to the IGF.

I was reminded of our early position with regards to commercial distribution of our work -long before we even considered independent development. I was imagining the shop shelves in the games stores with all the fantasy games and the gun games and the driving and sports games. And in the midst of all that, there would be our game, a silent, gentle game, a game that was just beautiful, that didn’t challenge your competitive instincts but created space to think, to connect, to feel.

Simply offering the players an option, a choice. That was our goal. We didn’t need to conquer the games industry, we didn’t even need recognition. We just wanted our work to be there, on the shelves, for people who might want an alternative, something different.

That should be enough.

IndieCade was a wonderful festival. Happy faces, joyful games, spirited political engagement, parties, fun, everybody loving each other. There was not a single quiet moment.

Not a single moment for silence. For a little contemplation. For some quiet observation. For taking in serene beauty. For allowing the cosmos to flow over you.

However unique IndieCade may be in other respects, it has the energy and noise in common with all other public game events. And why not? Games are fun. Games are for people to have fun with each other.

So why don’t they reject us? The IndieCade jury tried to by refusing to nominate Bientôt l’été. But then the staff made us part of the Official Selection. So our game was there, in a hot tent on a town square packed with computers and humans. The loudest of them attracting the attention. As always. Of course.

It makes one wonder. Would videogames have evolved more quickly if there had been a more serene way of celebrating them in public? The fun party atmosphere obviously benefits loud and colorful games, encourages casual interactions and makes it impossible to concentrate on anything.

Videogames are not games. At least they don’t have to be. But when they are not, they become weak. The beauty of the videogame medium is its intimacy. Videogames are best enjoyed by solitary players, at home, when everything around them is silent. This is a fragile form of beauty, an intense collaboration between man and machine, a strange form of electro-human meditation.

How does one celebrate such a solemn event? How does one celebrate quiet? Peace? Beauty? Calm? Focus? The things that our civilization needs much more of?

For a while, I have been thinking that the lack of massive critical success of our work was due to the fact that it wasn’t good enough. That one day we would make something that would be so good that everyone would appreciate it. I don’t believe that anymore.

Our work is “good enough”. It’s damn good, in fact. It’s just not for everyone. And if we were to make a game that everybody likes, it would simply be another type of work, something that is easier to love. Better made? Perhaps, in that way that widely appreciated things are well made.

But if I search my own soul for things that I love, I don’t see such things at the top. I see messy things, adventurous things, flawed things. Things like, I guess Bientôt l’été.

I’m also in deep doubt whether videogames is still a relevant context for our work. More and more good games are appearing that have nothing to do with what I am looking for in the medium. I cannot deny that they are good. They are just not my taste. They don’t move me. And they take attention away from our work. Probably appropriately so. Because they fit much better in the tradition of games.

I would like to play a “home match” for a change. Present our work in a context where most people appreciate it. There certainly are enough people in the world for that to be possible. They just don’t happen to be united under a “games” banner.

The Pacific Ocean in Venice, Los Angeles, is oriented in the same direction as the North Sea that was the model for the beach in Bientôt l’été. It’s also a West coast. Meaning that the sun sets in it and it is lit from the opposite side in the morning.

But it’s very different in other respects. Where the waves on the North Sea form a complex choreography that starts already far from the shore, here the water surface is calm overall but for a narrow strip near the beach. As if to compensate, the waves are often much bigger than those in Belgium and the North of France.

Since the dizzying dance of the North Sea waves that inspired Bientôt l’été is missing here, I wonder if people who are more familiar with this type of coast will be able to appreciate the reference in the game.

Another difference is the air. Breathing along the North Sea is exhilarating. There is a very distinct smell to the sea water and breathing too deeply can make your head spin. Here, the smell is much more faint.

And then there’s the sound. The much more chaotic wave patterns combined with unrelenting strong winds make of North Sea beaches very noisy affairs. You often have to scream to one another to be able to understand. Not here. When a wave crashes, you certainly hear it. But then it subdues. It becomes so quiet that you can hear the foam fizzing on the sand.

The seagulls too are quiet things here. While in Europe, the screaming of the gulls sends mortifying chills down your bones, here a gentle peep once in a while is all you get out of them.

I guess I’m starting to understand what is so pacific about this ocean.

The sea has no meaning.

Some people seem to have a problem with Bientôt l’été being meaningless and lacking closure. I honestly don’t know how to respond to that criticism. Other than admitting that perhaps the whole design is a mistake and it’s probably just bad art. This would be unfair, however, towards other people who thoroughly enjoy the game, despite its lack of closure, etc.

What can I do? I can’t add meaning where there is none. That would be dishonest. I can understand the human desire for closure, but I somehow feel that closure is perpendicular to the nature of the interactive medium. It’s one of the reasons why I love this medium. There doesn’t need to be an end, a conclusion, a final word.

I actually see this desire for lack of closure in a lot of modern literature, not in the least Marguerite Duras’ own work. But the novel, while perfectly fine in many ways, remains a form that is limited by the linearity of language and even the physicality of its medium, the book. At some point, the reader will reach the last page, read the last word and close the book. It doesn’t matter how unfinished the writer might think the story is, how open-ended, how much there remains to be said. The end happens, undeniably.

No so in videogames, not if you let them be what they are: computer programs. A computer program is something that a user starts up and shuts down. We do this without thinking when using an email client or a web browser or a word processor. But when we’re using software for entertainment or enlightenment, we suddenly lack the willpower or the sense of responsibility to do the same. Suddenly we cannot decide anymore for ourselves when we’ve had enough, when we’re done. We want the program to tell us that it’s over, that we should close the application.

Given the desire in a lot of art in other media and the unique potential of this medium, this seems a shame. But people are people, and “we cannot want what we want” as Schopenhauer knew. We just want. And when we don’t get what we want, we are disappointed.

Would Bientôt l’été be better with an ending or with a clear meaning or a story? It would certainly feel better, it would make us, as players, feel better. But would it be better? In my experience, deep aesthetic joy is always accompanied by a sense of mystery. Something lacking in my understanding, something that goes beyond what I know, something that I do not know and that I cannot really learn but only be aware of. The awareness of this lack, of this mystery, greatly heightens the aesthetic pleasure. I guess it is the opposite of kitsch, where extreme familiarity renders something that in and of itself may be pleasant to look at, a thorn in the eye.

I think the lack of meaning and the lack of closure makes Bientôt l’été more beautiful. Less satisfying, perhaps, but more beautiful. And more memorable. There will always be a reason to return to the beach or the café, a sense of lack, of missing something, of incompleteness. Maybe that will be the ultimate “message” of Bientôt l’été. Who knows?

Bientôt l’été has been selected for IndieCade in Culver City, Los Angeles, USA. Alpha version 3 will be playable at the festival from 4 to 7 October. We will also briefly present the game at the conference during the Project Next session on Sunday at 3 pm.

Hopefully I can continue posting to this blog while we’re away.

Next to the difficulty of explaining what Bientôt l’été is, I’m having trouble coming up with one sentence descriptions as well.

We can call The Endless Forest is a multiplayer screensaver where everyone plays a deer or The Graveyard a game in which you play the role of an elderly lady who visits a cemetery. The Path is a short horror game inspired by Little Red Ridinghood, Fatale explores the legend of Salome and Vanitas is a meditative exploration of luxury and loss on the iPhone.

But what is Bientôt l’été?

Is it

a French videogame about love

as I originally called it -until somebody started fussing about its heterosexuality? Maybe I should call it a game about heterosexual love, though that would imply assuming that gay people don’t have an imagination. Or that people would only play the game as some kind of simulated version of their own life.

Do I call it

an exploration of beaches and moods in Marguerite Duras

Though I should probably avoid mentioning Duras too up front. Since few people in videogames know her and those who do might not appreciate the association with videogames, or have expectations that the game cannot deliver on.

I do get the impression that the idea of making a videogame that is inspired by the work of a highly respected modern author is attracting the attention of people who are interested in literature. Given that we are always trying to seduce new people into gaming, referring to the literary background of Bientôt l’été might be a good idea.

Sea. Space. Cybernetics. Touch.

says the reference material collection. The reference to science fiction, space and/or holodecks should probably be included. Since the juxtaposition with love, seaside and cafés is interesting. And because the space station metaphor for internet connections is quite crucial.

Talking with your lover at a table in a café at the seaside on the holodeck of a space station in orbit of an earth-like planet in a distant solar system.

I like how this one grows: from the intimacy of the lover to the small café table to the open seaside to the vastness of space.

Your body at the seaside on a remote space station. Alone. And then together.

A videogame about playing a game in a videogame about the desire to touch.

Love and loneliness in space.

It’s not raining. It’s not raining. It’s not raining.

A literary experiment in virtual space.

If any other short descriptions come up after playing the alpha version, please do tweet or email!

I know we’re supposed to be tolerant of all sorts of life styles. And I am. Tolerant. But not encouraging.

I think the world, and especially the technology and videogames related parts of it, could do with a bit less patience with nerds. They are just too comfortable. They more or less retreated from the world to form a cocoon around them where nothing can harm them. I understand that for some people this is a matter of survival. I imagine that nerds are weak and insecure. And I don’t blame them for seeking comfort.

But we really shouldn’t pay so much attention to what people like that say. Life in an artificial womb has made them extremely protective of their fragile situation. Which means they are ultra-conservative in the literal sense: intent on conserving the state of perfection that they inhabit. As such they are not open to new ideas. Nor do they have any particular concern for the rest of the world. All they care about is their own little bubble.

Technology has traditionally drawn nerds. It supports a solitary existence where empathy is an unnecessary luxury. Technology may even require nerd levels of concentration to develop. And I’m sure a lot of technological progress only happened thanks to the dedication of nerds.

But while we owe them respect and gratitude, we should ignore them when it comes to envisioning the future, broadening ideas. When we think about ways in which we can make the medium of videogames more accessible, or more varied, so that people of all kinds can find something of beauty in it, we really should not consult with the nerds.

Their message is simple: things are fine the way they are. Don’t change them. If videogames are not appreciated by everyone, that’s just because of what they are. They cannot change. And then they get aggressive. Because they feel that the changes we propose will happen at the expensive of the things that they love, the things that make them feel comfortable, the things that help them cope with a strange world.

Let’s just ignore them. It’s not like suddenly technology will stop being a haven for nerds. They will always find a cozy little nest in it. But the rest of the world needs to live as well. And we have our own needs and desires.

An article about us like this makes us seem like insane, arrogant, revolutionary, etc. And while I cannot deny any of the words in such an article, I don’t really recognize myself much in the emotional tone of it.

I’m a hardworking rather boring person. My only real vice is an obsession with work. But I schedule it very well so that it all feels orderly and controlled. There’s no chaos here, no surprises.

Maybe the way in which our work deviates from the norm makes it seem revolutionary. But that is hardly the spirit in which it is created. We simply try to make beautiful things. And we are continuously frustrated by our lack of talent and skills to really realize our dreams. So we work hard and learn all the time.

We have no desire to make things that other people are already making. But that is not the same as actively going against the grain. We can’t help it that we both don’t like most games and really love this medium.