Edmund McMillen

Edmund McMillen (born March 2, 1980) is an American video game designer and artist known for his flash-game visual style.^[1]

Early life

McMillen has been a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz, California.^[2] He went to school at Soquel High School.^[3] He is especially fond of drawing, his favorite subjects being monsters.^[2] Edmund spent most of his childhood with his grandmother, whom he considers to be the greatest source of support in his creative endeavors. Later in his life, Edmund received a box from his grandmother that contained all of his drawings as a child. Many of these drawings can be seen by unlocking The Box in one of his games, The Basement Collection.^[2]

Career

McMillen's initial graphic work was in independent comics.^[4][5] While he has largely abandoned this field in favor of video games, he has released a series of comics featuring Meat Boy, the title character in the video game Super Meat Boy, as a promotional tie-in for the game.^[6] His most well-known games are the Flash-based game Meat Boy, and its much-lauded sequel Super Meat Boy, which has been released for the Xbox 360 & PS4 platforms and PC. McMillen is also known for the award-winning games Gish, Aether, The Binding of Isaac and Coil. Gish won Game Tunnel's 2004 Adventure Game of the Year, as well as Indie Game of the Year.^[7][8] His game Coil was nominated for the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival.^[9] McMillen was the original character artist and animator on Braid,^[9] before those assets were replaced by the work of David Hellman.^[10] Braid went on to win the Innovation Award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival prior to its release, and several awards in 2008, including GameSpot's Best Platformer,^[11] and Best Original Downloadable Console Game,^[12] and the 12th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Awards Casual Game of the Year.^[13] His game Aether was a 2009 IndieCade finalist and received an honorable mention.^[14]

Super Meat Boy

McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes established Team Meat, an independent game production company, with the intent that they would never utilize a third-party publisher.^[15] Their first game, Super Meat Boy, was released on October 20, 2010 on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade,^[16] and on Valve Corporation's digital distribution system Steam on November 30, 2010.^[17] A release was planned for the Nintendo Wii, but was canceled. According to Kotaku, problems arose due to the file size limitations of the Wii's WiiWare Channel.^[18] A retail version of the game was released on April 5, 2011.^[19] Due to Sony's initial disinterest in the game, Team Meat entered into contractual obligations that prohibit the game from being released for the Sony PS3.^[20] McMillen and Refenes responded to the success of Super Meat Boy and the impossibility of a sequel in a brief statement that read, "We feel like we did it...the 1st time."^[21] In the April 2011 issue of Game Developer, McMillen said that during the development of Super Meat Boy he had to go under emergency gallbladder surgery which put him $50,000 in debt because he could not afford health insurance.^[22]

McMillen and Refenes' development of Super Meat Boy was featured in the film Indie Game: The Movie.

Games developed

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edmund McMillen.

• Official website
• Edmund McMillen's blog
• Edmund McMillen's user page on Newgrounds
• Edmund McMillen at the Internet Movie Database