HOTLINE MIAMI
Jonathan Söderström & Dennis Wedin combined an arthouse storyline with a driving soundtrack into the violent video game Hotline Miami.
MIAMI, FL
Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin had been focused on designing smaller games, but they dreamed of making an immersive game straight from their imagination. They had that compelling vision that so many game designers have: to make the game that you would love to play yourself.
“If you lose confidence in your own tastes you can’t make games anymore.”
Jonatan & Dennis began collaborating on a new game tentatively called “Cocaine Cowboys”, named after the violent documentary on the Miami drug trade. The game came together despite hardships, as Jonatan borrowed money from his family to pay the rent, and Dennis worked on some of the character design from inside a mental ward. They got a breakthrough when Devolver Digital agreed to publish, and they renamed the game Hotline Miami.
As the game begins, we look down from above on an unnamed protagonist. He’s been receiving messages on his answering machine instructing him to go on a murder spree against the local Russian mafia. Wave synth and industrial pop music begins thumping. The anonymous main character dons a chicken mask and begin sneaking around in claustrophobic rooms, running and gunning for his life.
Immersive video games are fantastical worlds where the player can act out new identities and actions. An important innovation in Hotline Miami is that the player can choose different animal masks with different abilities. The main character therefore doesn’t have one personality. Dennis explains his innovation:
“I have a phobia for animals acting as humans. What would be the scariest thing to meet in an alley would be a chicken with a baseball bat. When he puts on the mask he becomes an animal and not responsible for its own actions, and can kill because he’s an animal.”
Hotline Miami became the stand out indie hit of 2012 beating out games with budgets over $500 million and teams of hundreds. Suddenly two indie gamers had sold over 2 million copies. Evan Greenwood sums up the value proposition of Hotline Miami as such:
“The difficulty in Hotline Miami is core to the experience. It forces you to pay attention and keeps you in a state of adrenaline high… There’s more than enough games to play. And they’re coming at the consumers at an incredible rate, at incredible discounts. You’ve got to stand out.”
DOCU-SHORT
DISCUSSION
The game’s publisher at Devolver Digital Mike Wilson sums up the story of Hotline Miami as this, “This is your arthouse film, being played through a video game.”
Many creations are story-based at their core, and the audience naturally inserts themselves into the main character. Jonatan describes the game’s main character as the “perfect character because he doesn’t have a personality so you can put yourself into him”.
Q: How can your audience be the main character of your creation?
Many independent game developers treat music as an after-thought. To its credit, almost all of the critical reviews of Hotline Miami mention its soundtrack. The enveloping and driving soundscape that Jonatan and Dennis wanted “had to have a certain beats per minute”. They started searching for music through Bandcamp until they found the work of M|O|O|N who was still in high school and had never licensed music before. He had no idea that the four songs he’d made on old speakers in his mom’s basement were the perfect backdrop for Hotline Miami.
M|O|O|N reflects on his involvement saying, “It represents what is possible. You can make a game that sells two million copies, with a small budget and two people. Just because you have a good idea and you’re willing to put in the work.”
Q: What other creation and creators would benefit your creation?