Edmund McMillen

About[]

Edmund Charles McMillen (March 2, 1980) is an independent American video game developer, artist, and animator. He is the main creator of The Binding Of Isaac series, along with Florial Himsl and Nicalis who programmed and provided additional design for the game series. He is most notable for his popular games, being Super Meat Boy and The Binding Of Isaac. He has made 55 games over the past 23 years.

Early Life[]

McMillen was born in a household of Mexican-American "spiritually-reborn" Christians. Edmund is a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz, California, however he had never preferred spending time outdoors, mainly spending most of his time indoors. He attended Soquel High School for 2 years. He is especially fond of drawing, with his favorite subject being monsters. Some of his drawings were deemed highly disturbing where his third grade teacher recommended he be given a psychological evaluation. Edmund spent most of his time with his grandmother, whom he claims to be his greatest source of support in his creative endeavors. In Indie Game: The Movie, he states that he spent most of his time of his grandmother due to his family's severe alcohol and drug addiction. Because of this, He had extreme religious guilt and mental issues which caused Edmund to have thoughts to "fight back", causing him to rebel against them. He expressed these feelings in most of his games, examples being Aether and The Binding Of Isaac.

Career[]

In 1996, Edmund had created a series of comics known as "This Is A Cry For Help" which the main premise was about 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 the comic was a dead blue baby. Years prior, Edmund would largely abandon this field and make interactive websites and games. In 2000, Edmund created his Newgrounds account named "Bluebaby" which was based off said mascot. The first game that he had published online was on March 2001 titled "Dead Baby Dressup" which soon became a series of games. In 2002, Edmund discontinued making dressup games and began creating platformer games with unconventional visuals.

McMillen's first official indie-game was Gish, having released in 2004, which received good reception and favorable reviews, At the 2005 Independent Games Festival (IGF), Gish won the "Innovation In Game Design" award, and received the Seamus McNally Grand Prize and its $20,000 prize money. After the release of Gish, Edmund fell into a deep depression as he didn't know what else to do after winning at the IGF until eventually deciding to continue making flash games online.

His most popular game on Newgrounds is Meat Boy (Flash) being released on October 5, 2008, which received 4 million views and Daily 2nd Place. On December 8, 2008, a map-pack version of the game was released. After the releases of Meat Boy and its map-pack, because of how popular Meat Boy was, Microsoft and Nintendo requested McMillen to make a game for their consoles WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, as they were impressed with the success of his previous flash games, Aether and Meat Boy. On January 2009, Edmund came across programmer Tommy Refenes, who had previously worked with Edmund on a flash game titled Grey-Matter, to work on the game Super Meat Boy, forming Team Meat. On September 17, 2009, Team Meat posted a trailer of Super Meat Boy, stating it would release around early 2010 on the Wii Ware and Xbox Live Arcade.

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 in October 20, 2010, Super Meat Boy became a massive success with over a million copies being sold.

The game managed to make into Steam, XBLA, etc.; however, the WiiWare version was cancelled due to the console's filesize

People loved it for it's difficult gameplay, art, animation, and soundtrack. Super Meat Boy was widely known to a point in which it made cameos in other highly acclaimed games such as Enter The Gungeon, Portal 2, Spelunky, Geometry Dash, and many more.

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.

External Links[]

Official Releases[]

People

Lead

Edmund McMillen • Florian Himsl

Nicalis, Inc.

Tyrone Rodriguez

Music

Danny Baranowsky • RIDICULON

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth