The indie institution

Take This was founded in 2013 by video game journalists Russ Pitts and Susan Arendt, alongside clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Kline. Pitts and Arendt were shocked into action after the suicide of a colleague in 2012, and they started the Take This blog to discuss mental illness in the video game industry. It hit a chord, and the blog blossomed into a non-profit that provides resources and panels on the benefits of having an open dialogue about mental illness. Plus, it publishes white papers on harmful game development practices and hosts the AFK Room at major gaming conventions across the country, offering quiet spaces staffed by licensed clinicians for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the bustling, noisy floors at PAX and other big shows.

Though Take This is concerned with broadening the mental-illness conversation across the video game industry, from AAA to one-man dev teams and even journalists, Wilson is specifically invested in the health of indie developers. Edwards is, too -- she was executive director of the International Game Developers Association from 2012 to 2017, and she's seen first-hand how the indie lifestyle can contribute to depression, anxiety and other illnesses.

Independent development has become a mainstream pursuit over the past decade. High-profile successes, the advent of digital-only publishing and accessible game-dev tools have pushed the indie industry into the spotlight, with triumphant developers pulling in millions from a single title, seemingly overnight. Yet there are even more developers who spend years building a quality game, expecting the big indie payoff, only to see sales fall well below such high expectations.

"In my perception of the last few years, it has gotten worse because the stresses of success are something I think a lot of Indies are not prepared for," Edwards says. "Well, actually the stresses of both success and failure. We've seen it on both sides."

The stress of success

Hotline Miami is a perfect example of the modern indie mental toll. The game hit Steam in 2012, the brainchild of two-man development squad Jonatan Soderstrom and Dennis Wedin, and published by Wilson's Devolver Digital. Hotline Miami is the game that put Devolver on the map as an indie publisher -- it was an immediate, massive success, selling 300,000 copies on PC in its first four months alone. It's an ultra-violent, neon-splattered, top-down action game set in 1989, complete with a trippy storyline involving the Russian mob, mysterious janitors and a series of power-endowing animal masks.

"Dennis completed some of those levels of Hotline from an institution," Wilson says.

Wedin was hospitalized for two weeks during the development of Hotline Miami as he dealt with the end of a romantic relationship.

"I was super depressed during the first game because of my breakup, which was really rough on me," Wedin says in a Hotline Miami documentary produced by Complex. From the mental health ward, he infused the game with personal tidbits from his relationship -- but neither Wedin nor Soderstrom told Wilson about the hospitalization. He only found out about it because he watched the documentary.

Wedin didn't want anyone at Devolver to worry, Wilson says.

"We were always worried about his partner, Jonatan, because he looked the part," he recalls. "Dennis is the gregarious rockstar, he's got a tan, he's not afraid to travel and talk to press, and the other one is like you're trying to listen to a game developer."

This was a wake-up call for Wilson. There's no physical indicator for mental illness, no solitary mold of person that it affects. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in six adults in the United States lives with a mental illness -- and, of course, they don't all look or act the same way. Sometimes, there is no red flag.

Wedin's hospitalization went down before Hotline Miami became Hotline Miami -- before it turned Soderstrom and Wedin into rich, big-name indie developers. After the game came out, their lives changed dramatically, but not necessarily for the better.

"It's really hard to feel bad about it because you know you're privileged to be in this situation, but at the same time, I don't like my life more now than I did before the game," Soderstrom says in the Complex documentary. "I kind of like it less."

"Yeah," Wedin agrees.

Soderstrom continues, "I can't feel sorry for myself. I feel like an asshole for not taking responsibility for my life. But I don't know what to do about it. It's just a natural thing that I do. And it wasn't supposed to be a big game. It was supposed to be a great game for a very select few people."

"For us," Wedin says. "We made a game for us."