IGM Interviews – Aaron Reed and Jacob Garde (Ice-Bound) Part 2

After a brief break, we’re finally back with more from Ice-Bound creators Aaron Reed and Jacob Garde!

creators Aaron Reed and Jacob Garde! If you missed out on the first part, you can find it here, and if you still haven’t heard much about Ice-Bound itself, you can find most of the details here.

Indie Game Magazine: So, Ice-Bound is already looking awesome. Okay, so you’ve got all of the changing text where you can select what you feel is the best way to express something; did you guys write it with a specific choice in mind for each block of text, or did you just try to give as many feasible answers for each?

Aaron Reed : So — if I can jump onto that, Jacob, if you don’t mind — so yeah, so I’ve been working for awhile now with a couple of different varieties of different interactive narrative systems, and one of the things, while I was working on the game Prom Week , which is a 2012 IGF and IndieCade nominee, I was the lead writer on that game, and I sort of developed this style of writing that I called quantum authoring, which is where you’re trying to keep all of these different possible states the story could be in in your head as you’re authoring, and then write text that can work in as many of those states as possible. So it’s sort of a technique like, well, maybe there can be 10 different situations here, but I don’t have time to write ten different versions of the text, so what are the sort of “pressure points” where a few words here will make this scene work in that situation, but the rest of the action is gonna work in either situation.

So with the Shimmer Text in Ice-Bound , we’ve sort of approached that as an opportunity to find the moments in a little piece of story that will cause the most interesting change if that story fragment appears in a different situation. So initially when we started doing those – and some of them still are – just kind of, you know, synonymous, or otherwise not very interesting. But as we’ve moved forward, we tend to more and and more write them such that they’re a moment where you might change how a character feels about this situation, or change whether it’s, you know, a defining moment or a not important moment. There’s little bits like that that kind of make you read the whole scene differently, so we’re hoping – and this is still obviously all in progress, but – we’re hoping the end result will be that those little choices, even though they’re very small and only affecting a few words, are actually sort of meaningful for your interpretation of the characters and how the story is going.

IGM: So on that note, I actually did have a question out of pure curiosity: The story follows a whole bunch of people… is the story supposed to be a collection of short stories about these people, or is it a definite cast of characters that would be worked in together throughout the “book.”

Aaron : Some of each.

[laughs] Okay, that’s fair.

Aaron : Did you want us to talk about that? Jacob?

Jacob Garde : Yeah sure. So I think, speaking from a narrative standpoint, it’s kind of funny, because I’m trying to get the different levels of the story in my head… so I think that the way that we’re going for this is that it’s kind of a collection of separate stories, but they all take place in Carina Station, and Carina Station is kind of the unifying mechanic, the unifying theme of Ice-Bound as Kris Holmquist’s book. And so, in the further levels, as you’re going down, I think what’s happening is, and this plays out with the theme system, with the tagging that we have, that what we’re going for is one of these things where we have lots of separate stories that, as you’re proceeding, you see how like, no, this is building towards something, you know. Like all of these things going down are meant to sort of be building to some overwhelming conclusion. And, really, if we’re talking as if we’re inside — so like, Kris Holmquist’s novel, Ice-Bound, that’s why it’s unfinished, right, that’s the big thing: What is it building to? That’s the big question, and so with us implementing the game, that’s what gonna make the ending of it really interesting for people as they’re going through, because they’re gonna be seeing their choices, and what they think are the important stories starting to matter more, and then building to that conclusion.

Aaron : One of the things that happens as you start to get into the later chapters is — ’cause they are more or less individual short stories on each level — but as you move towards the later chapters, you start seeing characters from some of the earlier stories reappear, and also bits of Kris Holmquist’s life start being integrated into the stories, because, as Jacob – Jacob’s like, “No, don’t spoil it!” [laughs] – so as you’re sort of going deeper into the station, you’re also sort of going deeper into your relationship with KRIS, and digging more into his backstory. And this question of “What does this story mean to him,” and how connected is it to the story of his own life, becomes more and more brought to the foreground. So I think it kind of starts off as a collection of short stories, but by the end, things have melted – if you will – into more of a unified whole.

Jacob : Yeah, and that’s kind of another thing we’re working with, was the idea that you sort of bring your life, when you’re writing, you bring things from your life into your writing, and working with KRIS, he’s had things taken out of his life. And so, as you’re progressing through the book, in the Compendium are these missing pieces, but they’re corrupted pieces. And you can’t show KRIS the entire Compendium, you have to just show him little parts of it. And so what you’re seeing as you go to the end is the blending of the stories, but it’s still not a complete picture. And so, yeah, I think that’s kind of what we’re going for.

Cool! So one of the things I noticed while I was playing, I felt more like I was actually the one writing the book, instead of just KRIS or Holmquist having written it. Was this the intended feel of the game?

Aaron : Yeah, for me at least, that was definitely one of the big things I wanted to capture. So I did a project about a year ago called 18 Cadence that was really explicitly exploring that notion of, what if we make the player feel more like a writer or an editor, feel more like they have more creative control over the process. And a lot of those ideas I think have bled into Ice-Bound . We really wanted to make you feel like you were collaborating with KRIS to figure out how this book should end. So I’m really glad that came across.

IGM: Are you planning to bring Ice-Bound to anything other than the iPad?

Aaron : Yes, we’re hoping to… we’re hoping to get to the point where we can promise it on more platforms, we’re not 100% there yet, because we’re still verifying that it will work. But fortunately, the way it’s written makes it very portable. The biggest stumbling block is actually making sure the Augmented Reality’s gonna work correctly on different platforms. But we are looking into getting it running on PC and Mac using webcam. And probably one of the major Android tablets, too.

Jacob : Yeah, the big thing for us is that we have prototyped different parts of the experience on different platforms, but for the purposes of like, “Yes! We will have it on this,” we’re like “Technically, something terrible could happen,” and maybe it doesn’t, but we would hate to be in this situation where people would be disappointed, so… that’s like our number one development task right now, is working with these different versions that we have on different platforms, and sort of trying to make sure that we can confirm performance and everything else. But yeah, we definitely want to offer it outside of iPad. We are hopeful. [laughs]