Unfinished playthings.

One of the questions that came out of the feedback on the alpha version of Bientôt l’été was if there was going to be a sort of conclusion to the game, an end, closure.

When thinking about it, I cannot but agree that this would most probably improve the emotional impact of the game. I have fond memories of playing videogames that end. A satisfying ending gives the entire experience that happened before a sense of depth in meaning. And it tells players they can stop now, they have seen what there is to see, the show is over, hope you liked it.

But this conflicts terribly with how I think as a creator of these things. I make systems, creatures, little machines that are either on or off, alive or dead. And when they are alive, they just do what they do, ad infinitum.

There’s no story, no reason. It’s just a situation, a construction, designed for inspection. I like creating worlds, systems, things that live and that respond to your presence. But I have no point to make. On the contrary. I design these devices in order to find points. And any points I find are always only temporary. It’s about playing with meaning. Not about finding the truth. But about imagining “What if this or that were true?”

Attaching an end to this, exhausting the possibilities, stopping the experiment seems incongruous. And yet I cannot deny the potential emotional impact of closure, even if it is utterly false. The choice between honesty and beauty is one of the hardest I know.