See to feel.

It may seem a bit redundant to have an avatar in a game while expecting the player to consider that character to represent him or her. If the player is going to be this main character, why not use a first person point of view?

The main reason in Bientôt l’été is to evoke a sense of touch.

Touch is the one sense that is sorely missed in our multimedia experiences. We can do without taste, and we may even be thankful that designers cannot use smell. But the lack of touch is often frustrating.

Technology has tried to make up for this lack somewhat with haptic feedback through vibrating controllers. And in first person games, we are all familiar with the bobbing camera when walking and jerky camera motions in response to the effects of violence. But the suggestion is never really convincing.

The thing that works best, in my mind, to suggest a sense of touch, is just showing the touching. It would be very difficult to suggest how the wind feels in a first person view. But when you can see how the clothes and hair of a character on screen are pulled by the wind, you get the idea. And if this character is supposed to represented you (because you can control it), then it’s not hard to imagine actually feeling this. Or at least conjuring up a memory in your imagination to what that feels like.