Edmund McMillen

Edmund McMillen
McMillen at the Game Developers Choice Awards in March 2012
Born	(1980-03-02) March 2, 1980 (age 36) Santa Cruz, California, U.S.
Occupation	Video game designer, programmer, artist
Known for	Video games, comic art, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac

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

McMillen has been a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz, California. He went to school at Soquel High School. He is especially fond of drawing, his favorite subjects being monsters. 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.

McMillen's initial graphic work was in independent comics. 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. 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. His game Coil was nominated for the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. McMillen was the original character artist and animator on Braid, before those assets were replaced by the work of David Hellman. 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, and Best Original Downloadable Console Game, and the 12th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Awards Casual Game of the Year. His game Aether was a 2009 IndieCade finalist and received an honorable mention.

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. Their first game, Super Meat Boy, was released on October 20, 2010 on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade, and on Valve Corporation's digital distribution system Steam on November 30, 2010. 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. A retail version of the game was released on April 5, 2011. 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. 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." 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.