Ace Ginger’s Dangerous Day

Sean Vanaman
The Campo Santo Quarterly Review
15 min readApr 1, 2016

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Long before beginning development on Firewatch, I lived in a two bedroom apartment in San Francisco with Campo Santo co-founder Jake Rodkin and my childhood best friend, Adam Nace. While it’s a cliche to dream about one’s earlier days, scraping by as three in an apartment built for two, it was actually wonderful. I was living with my best friends (and they were the best roommates anyone could hope for).

Jake, outside of the office, is a low-key goober who likes high-proof Tiki drinks that could double as scooter fuel in a pinch. He’s strangely organized (Jake’s coworkers may find this fascinating) and when stressed would lock himself in his room and watch reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We shared a wall and late at night the whoosh of the Enterprise would reverberate through the lathe and plaster and I knew at that exact moment Jake’s face was awash in the blue light emitted by the glowing words “Starring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard,” and Jake was happy.

Adam, on the other hand, is rarely stressed — especially at that time. He’s set to be married this summer, so I know much has changed, but Adam had a reputation for fun times that could toe the line of control and decency. We’ve been friends since middle school and it was only when I’d tell Jake a “classic Ace tale,” that I’d see Adam through another’s eyes and be reminded that he was (and is) a special creature.

Stories that include: how Adam had ended a date with a young woman under a tree in his front yard; or how he lived under a bridge in Vienna for a couple days in order to see a Beastie Boys concert; or how he practiced “the Laramie Pizza Donut,” a midnight timing-based food run where one could jump a couple walls and obtain a warm pizza and a mess of donuts from behind their source establishments. The stories set Jake alight. How could this person be real and remain alive?

This behavior earned Adam the moniker “Sunday Nace” (what could happen if Adam were to start partying on a Sunday afternoon) and ultimately “Ace Ginger” (Adam has dirty strawberry blonde hair), an alter ego who could be coaxed out of hiding with a few high-ABV beers served to him on a warm day. With the rest of the afternoon and evening left to do damage, Ace Ginger could thrive. Ace Ginger, not Adam Nace, it turns out, is the perpetrator of most of Adam’s premier escapades.

In 2011 I made him calling cards as a birthday present.

A year later Jake and I planned a unique birthday featuring Ace Ginger, himself. But what if Adam, mild-mannered Adam Nace of Cody, Wyoming, had to answer for the sins of Ginger? What would happen then?

Jake and I set to planning an elaborate day of sophomoric intrigue. Looking back on it now, it’s rife with in-jokes (e.g., the antagonist of this story was named Phaedrus, a bizarre recreation of Will Wright’s secret 2010 GDC talk via our podcast Idle Thumbs in which it was imagined that instead of Wright, a kidnapper should’ve taken the stage) and language that make me cringe but I want to share it all because I also see something else — strangely, the seeds of Firewatch. We crafted a real-time scavenger hunt game with the goal of being as responsive to Adam’s “player input” as possible. It turns out Jake and I wanted to tell peculiar first-person stories years ago. This was one of our first.

The plan was simple. Adam was to wake up on the morning of his birthday and do what he always does: go to the bathroom. Adam (not even Ace) was known for having very loud morning bathroom visits.

While upon his throne, he was to hear the ringing of a telephone from inside the toilet tank. Standing up, he’d remove the porcelain lid and find a small cellular phone in a bag taped to the inside. He’d answer the phone, encounter a mysterious man named Phaedrus, and the game would begin.

Unfortunately, Phaedrus was forced to call Adam’s iPhone rather than a burner, as Adam had eaten light the night before.

Call #1

You might be thinking: “‘You have to take a shit?’ This is the dialog you brought to bear for this charade?” Even more likely: “That voice was scary, how did you do that?”

The voice of Phaedrus is Jared Emerson-Johnson. He wrote every piece of music for every Telltale game we ever worked on and has been Jake’s best friend for years. He also did a ton of sound design on Firewatch. For him to play the role of Phaedrus, Jake and I wrote a script, outlining the sorts of missions Ace was to be sent on and how to react if things didn’t go to plan. He then used his home Pro Tools audio setup to capture a Google Voice call to create “the Phaedrus effect.” It turns out it’s tricky to record a phone call (and illegal in some states if the other party doesn’t know) but Jared figured it out. Here is one of our test calls the week before:

Phaedrus leaves Jake a voicemail.

The direction Jared was given for Phaedrus was, “Phaedrus is a highly capable and imposing kidnapper mastermind who, if given an ice-cream cone, would immediately drop it on his foot.” He nailed it.

Thanks to Phaedrus’ orders, Adam visited his favorite bathroom (the smaller of the two, of course; he’d never use the larger one that is also home to a shower and a tub) and found the phone.

The setup.

The story: There are four pieces of outlandish, fictional “evidence” of serious crime in the world and Adam must parlay with their handlers to retrieve them, the first of which was outlined in a dossier found at the foot of the stairs, with the other three yet to be revealed. Of course, each of these crimes was something Ace Ginger could’ve easily committed without Adam’s recollection. Thinking it over, four is probably a gross understatement. Oh well.

Adam’s dossier included:

  1. Directions to the first piece of evidence.
  2. A flip camera for recording his own diary footage.
  3. A mustache disguise.
  4. A secondary back-up mustache.

Adam’s first stop was a pagoda nestled into the crook of an island within Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, just over half a mile from the apartment. Hidden within the pagoda, an agent had left for him the evidence he sought. That agent was Jake, around 4:30 that morning.

I wouldn’t recommend entering a Golden Gate Park in the dark and taping a dossier to the bottom of a table. Jake was the one who pulled the short straw and soon found himself stalked by a park denizen and frantically calling me to pick him up. I did, and nobody was hurt.

Adam got to the lake but needed more direction. Of course, Phaedrus was the only number saved in his flip phone and, not unlike Delilah in Firewatch, was there whenever Adam felt he needed some direction.

Adam reaches the Lake but neglects to find the pagoda.

We knew it would be important to be able to document the day: snap photos, record conversations, and so on. So I donned a series of disguises and, with our friend Nick, tailed Adam throughout the day. This allowed me to get photos like this:

Adam searches a pagoda for his first piece of evidence.

I was probably 150 yards away, using a Lumix GH1 with a 150mm telephoto lens. It worked splendidly, as I felt like a real spy. It’s a feeling I recommend to everyone if you can set it up in such a way that you’re not breaking any laws or betraying someone’s trust.

Nick and me tailing Adam in his 1997 Mazda Miata.

Upon getting to the pagoda, Adam struggled to find his goal, but luckily had built up a rapport with Phaedrus and didn’t hesitate to call and ask for help.

“I’ve reached the pagoda.”

A few things, here. Firstly, I can’t say enough good things about Jared’s performance. He’d been playing Phaedrus for about an hour at this stage and had completely become him. Those long pauses you hear aren’t Jared having a bad a connection, they are evidence of his terrifying sense of comedic timing. He hangs for a beat too long, and just as Adam thinks the connection has been lost, calmly repeats the question, “Your catch phrase?” *Kisses fingers*

Also, I can’t remember where “You betta ask somebody!!!” originated, but it was a phrase I forever associate with a blacked-out Ace right before something bad happens.

Lastly, Adam’s assumption of his role is also remarkable. He was completely unprepared for this day. He was awoken by Phaedrus at 8 am on a Saturday and had no chance to prepare, let alone get in the mindset of an agent in some sort of cloak-and-dagger rendezvous drama. Half the excitement of writing this elaborate game was knowing Adam would become whatever we asked him to without question.

From time to time, Phaedrus would call with a reminder — it’d be easy for Adam to forget all the moving pieces of the game.

Excellent.

But how did we orchestrate all of this stuff? It’s not dissimilar to the way Firewatch works, honestly. There are “facts” (essentially, switches) set by player action (where you are and what you’re doing) and facts and events that the game is trying to make happen (stuff to entertain you and drive the story forward). Those “systems” were controlled by Jake and me. Jake, Jared, and I were always connected via headset (a three-way call on our cell phones). I would relay to Jake what was happening (the player action) and he would manage what story to drive back to Adam via Jared (effectively, the scripting and event system of the game). There are times when I’d be on two calls at a time (eavesdropping on Adam, as you’ll see later) and would continue to feed Jake information. Jake was at our friend’s apartment with all of our story materials and a laptop, ready to solve any problem we ran into in the field.

Adam made his way across town to a place called Duboce Park and had one of the best interactions of the day.

Jake and I worked with a man named Carl at Telltale Games — he was a gameplay programmer on The Walking Dead and has the beard and disposition of a nineteenth century prospector. Essentially, of all the dorks I know, he is the least type-cast as a Bay Area programmer and was perfect for the role of The Petunia.

Carl Muckehnhoupt — the Petunia.

Carl had a delicate role to play. Ace was to approach the bench, say “I better ask somebody,” and Carl was to look him in the eye, get up and walk away (leaving behind his newspaper). He pulled it off perfectly, leaving a flummoxed Adam standing alone at the bench before noticing the paper.

Adam found his second piece of evidence within the paper and immediately called his pal, Phaedrus.

Check the sports section.

You may remember earlier that Phaedrus told Ace he’d picked up a tail. We didn’t want this day to be a plodding re-tread of found story — we wanted to drive Adam forward with a faux threat. We quickly realized that the best way to do that was to hand him the proof.

The photos I was taking were incredibly important because they kicked off the most ambitious part of the story. Adam would meet The Petunia in Duboce Park and immediately be sent back across town to the zoo. There, he was to be handed photos of the previous meeting. We had about 45 minutes to make it all happen. Luckily, Adam had to buy socks.

Shortly after snapping the photos, I peeled out and was back at my house printing off the black and whites. I then dropped those into a pre-made dossier and bolted to the zoo, being extra-careful to not bump into Adam along the way. And sure enough, that’s exactly what almost happened in the parking lot. But let’s not get ahead.

Adam recapped the day while waiting for the train.

Upon Adam’s arrival at the zoo, we had to manage him. Our friend Harrison Pink (also of Telltale) played the role of Adam’s contact — and Ace’s former lover — at the Oryx Paddock. We had a third set of evidence to hide in a day-use locker. That meant getting Adam to the far side of the zoo and far away from our machinations.

Definitely stoked on these.

The contact would only meet with Ace Ginger.

The audio of Adam’s interaction with Harrison is lost (although I could hear it in my earpiece thanks to a strategically placed phone in Harrison’s pocket) but the setup was such: this is where Ace’s trail was to go cold. His contact had bad news — his tail was too close and there would be no exchange. Adam would protest and Harrison would silently hand him a folio of photos taken at the park, not even an hour before. (When conceiving of this moment, I couldn’t get over how it would feel to be handed photos from a time so fresh in your memory. It was obviously imperative that Adam never saw Nick or me— he didn’t — and the moment totally landed. Adam was flabbergasted to see big 8x10 black-and-white glossies from his meeting with The Petunia.)

Nick and I caught the first half of the interaction from about 125 yards away. I can hear Harrison in my left ear and I’m telling Jake and Jared what’s happening (based on the script) in my right. Harrison’s opening line was “Majestic creatures, aren’t they?” and the rest of his script was improvised. This video’s quality is somewhere between Blair Witch and Zapruder due to the shakiness.

“Majestic creatures, aren’t they?”

Harrison was then free to remind Adam why he’d chosen this place to meet (they’d been on safari together in Kenya) before giving him a hug and leaving. That hug would provide cover for a clandestine transfer of a locker key and Harrison would disappear into the crowd, leaving Adam holding the key to the next piece of evidence: journal pages documenting Harrison and Ace’s steamy days in Africa.

Inside the locker, we’d planted a copy of Moby Dick with a note from Harrison and a cocktail napkin instructing Adam to order a drink called a Kilimanjaro from a bar in the Castro bearing the name of Melville’s classic. With our most intricate human set-pieces of the story concluded, we were getting close to the end of the story, but we needed to really end with a bang.

This story was all leading up to a rooftop party generously hosted by our friend Oscar. I had wanted to end somewhere similar to the movie The Game, which ends on the rooftop of the Plaza Hotel and, as fate would have it, Oscar had recently purchased a condo across the alley. His roof would be perfect.

We thought about Ace’s day as a series of moments, which is not unlike the way we think about designing video games. We fell in love with the phone in the toilet, the imagery of The Petunia on a park bench and the Pynchon-esque absurdity of a giant man (Harrison) in a fisherman’s cap opening with “Majestic creatures, aren’t they?” before handing Adam photos of himself. The last moment was to be Adam, blindfolded on a rooftop, feeling somewhat vulnerable and in danger (we really wanted to spook him), only to pull off a mask and see everyone who loved him. Everything that happens in between those moments is driven by the systems (the player behavior of Adam, in this case, and the rules upon which our city runs day in and day out). We don’t really care how you get to the moment because when you do the entire thing will feel orchestrated (even though very little of it is) and personal. It’s a very fun way to work.

Adam was headed towards Moby Dick and I was breaking every traffic law on the books to get there first. I was worried, and had Phaedrus check in.

See, I needed Adam to get one more piece of evidence, but this time it was to come from a stranger, a bartender. I had tried to contact the bar in the lead-up of the game but they weren’t sure who was on shift that morning so I had to wing it. I ran in with a dossier and a twenty dollar bill and said to the bartender, “A man is going to come in here and order a drink called a Kilimanjaro. This drink is made-up; make whatever you want, but hand him this folder and keep the change.” I ran out before he could say no.

I quickly began changing into a tuxedo, fake beard, sunglasses, and hat inside a friend’s apartment down the street. Adam walked up to the bar right on time and I queued up an Uber Black Car.

A Kilimanjaro.

Remember, this was five years ago. The ability to get a Town Car to just appear was tantamount to witchcraft. You’ll hear below how stunned he is that “a random car” could appear and know where he is going.

Getting into the car, I would be sitting there in the disguise and I’d hand Adam an iPod and a blindfold. With the iPod mashed into his ears (rocking Led Zeppelin, something Ace Ginger would love) we barreled towards the Palace Hotel.

I don’t really remember the car ride as I was so completely nervous that, now with Adam 100% in my charge, the perfection of the day could really only by ruined by my own blunders. We got Adam out of the Uber and into the elevator and pressed the button for the roof.

As the elevator rose, I remember the relief hitting. Jake had confirmed that there were fully thirty folks up on the roof and when the mask came off, Ace was gonna lose it.

He did.

The double cry.

Everyone cheered and Adam began to cry and then I began to cry and he gave me a hug and simply said, “I can’t believe what you’ve done.”

That feeling, aside from how special it was to honor such a close friend, was very similar to shipping Firewatch. You spend so much time obsessing over the minutia that, when it’s all finally smushed together, the heft of it is a bit staggering. We would’ve never set out to make a game like Firewatch had Jake and I not concocted this outrageous day. And I would’ve never set out to do it had I not had such a stellar partner in Jake and such an incredible target (and friend) in Adam.

That last bit was the most important things I’ve taken away in my years as a designer: your player, your customer, your target in this case, is all that matters. You can concoct the perfect system and it might not matter to the wrong person. But, with the right person, you’ll be a magician, and being a magician is tremendously, stupidly fun.

An Updated Appendix — The Dossier

April 4, 2016: I wanted to share with folks the actual props Jake and I put together for the game. Not unlike our relationship on a game, I start writing whatever comes to mind and Jake, somehow, transforms that stuff into tangible objects that trick the mind into believing they are, and have always been, real.

(Left to right, top to bottom) The first dossier with mustache #1 and FBI alias sheet. The four Ace Ginger calling-card pieces of evidence, Moby Dick and cocktail napkin, the first dossier. The four Ace Ginger calling cards, detail. The full dossier. The African journal and Ace Ginger Africa calling card. The Petunia drop — the sports section (“How are your beloved Rocky’s doing?) along with the zoo ticket and map attached to the inner pages of the sports section. FBI Memorandum RE: Ace Ginger. The black-and-white glossies handed to Adam at the Oryx Paddock.

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