Edmund McMillen

Edmundimg — Edmund McMillen at *Game Developers Choice Awards 2012.*

Edmund Charles McMillen (March 2, 1980) is an independent American video game developer, animator and artist who is known for his most notable work, Super Meat Boy. He was the designer and artist behind Team Meat, before leaving around 2017. He worked on games such as Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, Gish & 55 other games over the past 23 years.

School Life[]

In third grade, Edmund was recommended for psychologic therapy, due to his love of drawing monsters. An anecdote Edmund would often tell in interviews is that in high school, (along with a very supportive art teacher) as an art project, he drew a hand coming out of a vagina. His teachers where shocked and asked the art teacher to take it down, But the art teacher said he "couldn't find the key" to open the cabinet.

Career[]

In 1996, Edmund had created a series of comics known as "This Is A Cry For Help" which mainly focused on offensive humor and dark subject matter. In the comic, there was a series in it known as "Things To Do With Dead Babies" which was the commonly talked about aspect of the comic.

The mascot of said comic was a dead blue baby. When Edmund made interactive websites and games, he wanted to add in the dead babies as they were popular around the time. In 2000, Edmund had created his Newgrounds account known as "Bluebaby" based off said mascot. The first game he had published on Newgrounds was on March 2001, titled "Dead Baby Dressup". In 2002, Edmund discontinued making dressup games and began creating platformer games with unconventional visuals which received positive reviews.

In 2008, Edmund had published a game titled Meat Boy (Flash) on Newgrounds, an action platformer starring Meat Boy, who has to save his girlfriend Bandaid Girl from the main antagonist, Dr. Fetus. The game was highly popular and had received many positive reviews. It garnered 4 million views and Daily 2nd Place. In early 2009, Edmund came across programmer Tommy Refenes, who had previously worked with Edmund on a game titled Grey-Matter to work on Super Meat Boy, forming Team Meat.

They began production on Super Meat Boy, as Nintendo and Microsoft requested that make a game for their services, WiiWare and Xbox, as they were impressed by the success of Edmund's flash games, being Aether and Meat Boy (Flash). Team Meat posted a trailer on September 18, 2009 on YouTube, stating the game would release around early 2010. However, due to the fact that Team Meat were building extra levels (examples being Dark World) the release was delayed to the fourth quarter. Having released on October 20, 2010, Super Meat Boy became a massive success, with over a million copies being sold in 2012. The game was first released on the Xbox 360 through XBLA and on Steam on November 20, 2010. However, due to the file size limitation of the Wii Ware channel, Super Meat Boy was canceled for the WiiWare.

People loved the game for its difficult gameplay, art, animation, and soundtrack. Super Meat Boy was widely known to a point in which the game had made cameos in other highly acclaimed games such as Enter The Gungeon, Portal 2, Spelunky, Geometry Dash, and many more. Around early December 2010, PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals) made Super Tofu Boy to protest the game and promote veganism, as they had believed that Meat Boy, the titular protagonist, was made out of animal flesh, however, this was not true as Team Meat had stated on twitter that Meat Boy is a skinless human. In response, Team Meat added their own depiction of Tofu Boy to the PC version of Super Meat Boy. Tofu Boy is known for being deemed the worst character in Super Meat Boy, as he is highly slow and does not jump very high.

In 2017, Edmund had stated in an interviewer with Eurogamer that he was no longer with Team Meat and would not be a part of their future projects, examples being the sequel to Super Meat Boy, Super Meat Boy Forever.

Art Style[]

Edmund has a unique scary, bold art style. This is clearly shown in Gish and The Binding of Isaac.

In a Formspring post, somebody compared his art style to that of Kyle Gabler, The artist behind 2DBoy. In response, he said:

"I didn't do the art for World Of Goo, that was Kyle Gabler's art, not mine. Though we both take inspiration from Tim Burton."

Flash Games[]

Over the past 23 years, Edmund McMillen has worked with programmers such as Tyler Glaiel, Florian Himsl, Caulder Bradford, and 2 games with Tommy Refenes, Team Meats' current coder/director.

Official Releases[]

Games that Edmund McMillen had released officially through a buying system, e.g. Steam or XBLA:

Philosophy[]

Edmund states that the reason for his games challenging difficulty is because "Without pain there is no reward" as if you don't struggle to do something, you don't feel as good when you do/complete it.

Links[]

http://edmundmcmillen.blogspot.com - Edmund's development blog.

http://edmundm.com - Edmund's website.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_McMillen - Information on Wikipedia.

Trivia[]

Edmund McMillen is dyslexic, hence the cause of his spelling errors, such as the ones in the ending credits of The Binding Of Isaac, another game created by Edmund.
Edmund McMillen's mascot, Bluebaby, became a playable character in The Binding Of Isaac, being renamed ???.
Edmund McMillen has been a resident of Santa Cruz, California his entire life.
Edmund McMillen had a kindergarten teacher that highly hated him due to Edmund's disability, being dyslexia.
Edmund McMillen's favorite known bands are The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, and Nirvana.