By releasing unfinished versions of Bientôt l’été, I’m creating a schedule where I find myself working towards a deadline often. Right now, I’m working towards a version of the game to demo at IndieCade. This will be the third alpha release.

The difference between regular production and working towards a deadline is a difference in priorities. Certain issues, which need to be dealt with for a final release, can easily be ignored in an unfinished demo version and are thus postponed. Other features, such as controls, require a certain, perhaps premature, optimization for demo purposes.

A deadline offers an extra motivation to get things done. That sort of pressure can be good and bad. But given that the deadline is not the final deadline, one can always minimize the stress. Perhaps unduly. Multiple deadlines add to the workload and thus extend the production time. But they also stimulate. So perhaps the work is done more quickly.

I have a nagging feeling that this constant priority of a deadline is pushing me to make rash decisions that are perhaps not necessary. Every form of prioritization has its victims. And when working under time pressure, shortcuts are often taken. On a good day, it feels like the game is rapidly approaching its final state. On a bad day it feels like building a cardboard house.

Steam’s Big Picture feature is wonderful news for us. Since the day we started Tale of Tales, we’ve always imagined our games on the television screen in the living room. Until now, the game consoles have offered the only way that allows for that and we’ve had trouble getting around to develop for those.

But thanks to Steam, we might not need to. The interface works remarkably well. And the consoles better take notes on how to create a couch-friendly online store. And of course it’s great to see our games on tv.

What is less great is the context. Thanks to the firm concentration of Steam on only games, it becomes once again depressingly clear how nerdy the entire videogame context is. Browsing the offer is a smooth experience through the Big Picture interface. So smooth that there is no possible way to ignore the extreme juvenile nature, trite narratives and silly visuals abundant in the medium.

I don’t mind too much to show our work in this context myself. Makes it easy to stand out. And I do respect videogames of any kind for their craftmanship. But I worry about how this looks to outsiders. Why would anyone not familiar with games be attracted to this atmosphere? How can we hope to ever broaden the audience for videogames if most of what we show them is guns and cars and arcade bleeps?

I worry about this of course especially because with our work we hope to reach out to people who are not interested in videogames yet. Our games don’t exactly cater to the desires of the average gamer. But we think that they might appeal to people with different tastes. But why would people like that ever visit a store like this?

Working in a popular medium as videogames where serious cultural consideration is rather scarce, I’m always torn between the desire to do the work I know I should be doing and to make things that are easier to enjoy for the existing audience of said medium.

Given that this audience already gets more than they can digest, and very few people do what we do, it seems wise to just continue on our path. To work for the happy few. Or for a time when our efforts will be appreciated by more. Or to influence the more skilful entertainers, to maybe slowly inch the medium towards its destination in some kind of rehash of the avantgarde dynamic.

The trouble with this option is that I am not entirely certain the human species has a future at all. I see a civilization in rapid decline, unwilling to give up its dogmas for its very survival. I sense no goodwill towards a better future. Just many attempts at hanging on to our impossible way of life.

These people need help! The people of Earth need help. Now. And while I’m not as presumptuous to think that art can immediately impact society -let alone the art that I produce- I do believe that the major problem of humanity is the lack of goodwill. In other words, the lack of imagination. I believe real changes happen when the spirit of people changes. And this spirit is exactly the terrain of the arts.

So do I work for a future that may not even exist? Or do I try to help people now so that, perhaps, there may be a future at all?

With Bientôt l’été I’m working for the future. But what if there is no future? Then I’d better work for the present. And maybe, in the process, help a future to exist after all.

I could be wrong. Maybe humankind is not threatened with extinction at all. But that is the more depressing thought for me. I do not wish it to continue this way. Change or die, humanity!

One could be forgiven for giving up after all this time. A decade. More maybe. A decade of confused yearning. For this medium to become Something. We could all feel it. We didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. But it felt obvious. Something will happen.

Ten years. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. You could be forgiven. For accepting that this is all the medium can do. Maybe we were dreaming. Maybe we were delusional. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe the dream will come true after all, through this continuous repetition of more of the same in an ever tightening spiral. Maybe Something will be squeezed out of it.

We must have been mistaken. The forest for the trees. This is not a Great New Medium. This is the most superb way to have fun. So much fun that nothing will ever hurt again. Or delight. Or make us wonder. Or dream.

Well, do go on without me. I’m staying here. You might not feel it. Or have what it takes to experience this. But I do. And if I don’t, I will.

Easy for me to say of course. I never liked The Fun anyway. Always stayed away from it. Never could The Fun Machine quench my Enormous Thirst. My Hunger.

I’m going hunting. I’m the hunter. I’ll bring back the goods. But i don’t know when.

All the animations that Laura Smith is making for Homme and Femme in Bientôt l’été make me want to create more games with the same characters. Why bother designing new characters for every game? Maybe we should think of them as actors and have them re-appear in multiple situations.

I guess we do something like that with the Girl in White. She made her first appearance in the original 8, then appeared in The Path and is now coming back in the remake of 8. And we have plans for her in other games too.

But every time she appears, we make a new model. And all animations need to be redone. That makes sense, though, because she’s a different age every time.

Femme and Homme could remain the same age. Their attire was specifically designed for the seaside situation. So that might need to change anyway. Although. It would be interesting to play with these characters, and even similar controls (like they always look away from the camera), in different situations.

Ah! If only game making were simpler. Then we could play with such ideas!

Next to the tennis courts, several other elements that refer to the life of the wealthy recur in Marguerite Duras’ work. There’s always a villa somewhere. Often inhabited, as in Moderato Cantabile, by the unsatisfied wife of a more or less invisible rich husband.

So one of the incarnations of the café exterior in Bientôt l’été is a villa. And when somebody enters to start a twoplayer session, a window on the first floor opens and we can see light through the curtains. Referring to the sleepless nights of the mistress of the house, spent gazing out, observing young couples taking nightly strolls under the dark shadows of the flowering magnolia in the moonlight.

This magnolia tree also makes an appearance in Bientôt l’été. Its almost nauseatingly sensual scent penetrating the nostrils of the doctors and lawyers and politicians and entrepreneurs invited to the dinner with their glamorous wives. One night, the lady of the house takes one of the giant flowers and ornaments her cleavage with it. Then she drinks too much and vomits. She had already been having cheap wine in the café with a factory worker.

Another open window is in a hotel, also present in Bientôt l’été. Through this hotel window, in several of Duras’ novels, a woman observes a man making love with his mistress. She does this hidden, lying down in a wheat field that grows next to the hotel, as in Bientôt l’été. The man knows she is there but he cannot see her.

No matter how generous I make my schedules, I always seem to lag behind. There’s always things that take longer than expected. And new things pop up all the time.

It’s making me nervous. I want to finish this thing already and get it out there. But when I play a test build, despite the numerous little issues, I become mesmerized. And I feel that Bientôt l’été deserves to be polished well. I need to be patient and take my time with it. So that this time I don’t release a game with a five page list of unfinished tasks and removed features.

I don’t expect Bientôt l’été to be a smash hit. But I think it’s going to be around for a while. And if it is, I want it to be solid. I want it to be exactly right, and finished properly. So that I don’t need to be embarrassed about this or the other clumsily implemented feature some years from now.

I had hoped to release Bientôt l’été in October. But that is not going to happen. November is more likely. Unless I decide it would make a nice Christmas gift.

In January we’re starting a new project. And shifting gears on one that is already running in the background. But there’s plenty of time until then.

Other Marguerite Duras-related seaside features in Bientôt l’été include the pier and the tennis court. The pier is modeled after one of the twin piers in Trouville-sur-Mer, the coastal French town where Duras spent the last decade of her life. Impressive wooden constructions with a small metal lighthouse at the end.

I don’t have any recollection of a pier in the Duras novels I have read. But tennis courts occur often, especially abandoned tennis courts. There’s a fenced off tennis court on the beach not far from her home in Trouville. But I’m sure they appeared in novels from before she lived there. A lot of her work refers in some way to class distinctions (Duras had been a member of the communist party in France). And in her book, tennis is a sport for the idle rich, more specifically for the embassy personnel in the colonies.

I remember a trance-inducing repetition of references in Le Vice-Consul to Anne-Marie Stretter’s lone bicycle leaning against the fence of the abandoned tennis courts in the park of the French embassy in Calcutta. I don’t believe anyone ever actually plays in her novels. The purpose of the tennis courts is to be abandoned. As I’m sure they are in Trouville, most time of the year, when there’s no tourists.

There’s something beautifully melancholic about out of season tourist towns. Especially at the seaside where the cold wind continuously tugs at the closed off attractions while the gulls shriek there terrifying cries.

Gulls. Dead. After a storm. On the beach. Another recurring element in her novels. Also a dog. Also dead. As in L’Amour, where the man had gone to utter an inhuman scream after frustrating encounters with the woman.

The black rock on the beach refers to the Vaches Noires cliffs, a remarkable rock formation on the beach of Villers-sur-Mer, neighboring Trouville, and possibly what gave Duras’ residence its name.

The harbor crane is not necessarily a seaside feature. But it refers to the industrial harbor town in which Moderato Cantabile takes place, the novel that forms the basis of Bientôt l’été. Another class symbol, if you will, contrasting with the tennis court.

The row boat refers to the harbor as well. But a gigantic cruise ship was added because I was very impressed with them in Venice, surreally towering over the delicate stilt constructions. A cruise ship takes the elder brother, and later the rest of the family, back to France at the end of L’Amant de la Chine du Nord. So there’s still a link with Duras.

The seaside scene in Bientôt l’été is based on a mix of influences. The dike is a typical element from the Belgian coast line that I’m very familiar with. But Trouville-sur-Mer, the French coastal home town of the writer whose work inspired the game, Marguerite Duras, doesn’t have a dike. Instead, a row of buildings is planted straight on the beach, including Duras’ residence, the majestic former hotel, Les Roches Noires.

This building was the direct inspiration for one of the exteriors of the café on the dike in Bientôt l’été. In front of Les Roches Noires is a boardwalk, referred to on several occasions in Duras’ novels and also present in the game.

Another building typical of the Belle Epoque coastal towns is the casino. There’s a casino in Trouville and one of the buildings in Bientôt l’été was inspired by it.

A coastal casino is a recurring feature in Duras’ novels. It hosts the ball room where Anne-Marie Stretter breaks Lol V. Stein’s spirit by seducing her financé. And the café in Bientôt l’été, sometimes.

As a seaside resident, Duras often refers to the ocean in her novels. Seldom as the typical romantic environment, though. And having spent two nights in Trouville, I understand. The sea is a violent monster, as mysterious as it is indifferent.

One of her novels, L’amour takes place almost entirely on the beach. It’s about a confused love triangle. And of course there’s Moderato Cantabile, written long before Duras lived at the seaside -it’s one of her early successes- that takes place in a small industrial harbor town at the Atlantic coast. The character design and the entire talking at a café table come straight out of that book.

You can collect two types of items on the beach in Bientôt l’été: “Things” and “Thoughts”. Thoughts are quotes from Marguerite Duras novels (280 phrases from a dozen or so books). Things are physical objects.

In the beginning I was thinking of both Thoughts and Things as items washed up on the shore. Collecting is a common activity when walking along the seaside. So it felt natural. Indeed, I did mean to include all sorts of shells. In the early versions of the game, I used several objects from our Vanitas app. The bird skull worked particularly well. At that time, the Thoughts were written in the sand (albeit it in a clean typeface, not hand drawn, to refer to the artificial nature of the presentation).

To collect these items, you had to stand close to one and close your eyes (by holding a key). Then the item would be shown in the middle of the screen against a black background. You were required to keep your eyes closed for a little while until the object or phrase was collected. The motivation for this interface was that I wanted the player to focus on something and then remember it, in tribute to Duras’ precise and concentrated writing. Your memory was represented as a classic inventory that you saw any time you closed your eyes. Things on the left, Thoughts on the right. You could collect a maximum of 16 of each.

The problem with this design was that it pushed the player towards a sort of mechanical behavior that was all about the act of collecting, irrespective of the nature of the object or phrase that was being collected.

To reduce the emphasis on activity (and hopefully move it to content), I decided to show the phrases that were written in the sand also on the screen when you walked past them. So when you were close to a Thought on the beach, the phrase would appear in the middle of the screen, without requiring closing of eyes or any other action. To collect the item, you would stand still near it and wait a while. The phrase would fade out and when it was gone, it was considered memorized, collected in your inventory and removed from the beach. I especially liked how the phrases slid from the top to the bottom of the screen or vice versa as you passed by. I called this system Passing Thoughts.

I didn’t want to use this mechanic for Things because I thought close ups of objects in the middle of the screen wouldn’t look as good as the nice clean text. This started me thinking about the nature of these objects. So far, I hadn’t really considered what they were going to be. And since I apparently didn’t care much, I decided to remove the feature. I still wanted the player to have physical objects because they were fun to play with on the café table. But instead of having them brought in by the waves, like the Thoughts, I moved them to the “Apparitions”.

Apparitions are larger objects or landscape features that appear on the beach as a sort of glitches or dreams. There is always only one Apparition, a different one each time you leave the café. Analogous to the Thought collection, you would stand still next to an Apparition to make it disappear. When it had faded out, the avatar would spontaneously walk towards an item lying near to it and pick it up. These items were related to the Apparitions. So the magnolia tree would give you a magnolia blossom (referring to Chauvin’s memory of the huge flower in Anne Desbaresdes’ cleavage at an awkward business dinner in Moderato Cantabile).

The problem with this interface was that players didn’t understand that they were required to stand still and wait. This is very unintuitive. And subtle hints on screen didn’t help everyone. So many ended up in the café with nothing in their pockets and all they could do was talk about drinking wine.

In the latest alpha version, the phrases still appear on the screen when you are near the sea. But they animate up and down with the waves that roll in, unrelated to your position. Every Thought you see is remembered. Without having to do anything. To fully enable this, I removed the limit of 16 items. The inventory was removed as well. Instead, every phrase that was remembered is written on the beach (instead of removed). The stand still and fade out collection mechanic for the Things was retained, but as to be expected, didn’t work very well.

So the last change I made was another simplification. If you close your eyes while facing the building on the dike, you see a button that says “Enter”. You see this button no matter how far you are. You can always enter the café. You don’t need to walk towards it. I have added a similar button for Apparitions now. If you close your eyes, you can see the Apparition from afar, because it’s bright pink and emits lots of particles. A button hovers over it. When you click that button you see a close up of the Apparition feature and then an item falls out of the sky for your avatar to pick up, while the Apparition disappears.

All of the Things are now chess pieces. So there’s 16 of them, for a full set (white if you’re playing the man, black if you’re playing the woman). Well, there’s actually 17 Things. But I’ll keep the last one a secret, just to tease you.