Tommy Refenes

Tommy Refenes
Refenes at the 2012 Game Developers Conference
Born	(1981-06-14) June 14, 1981 (age 35) Hendersonville, North Carolina
Occupation	Video game designer, programmer Co-CEO of Team Meat
Known for	Super Meat Boy

Tommy Refenes is an American video game designer and programmer, best known for his work on the game Super Meat Boy, a platformer he co-created with developer Edmund McMillen.

Refenes began programming at the age of eleven, and has been doing so professionally since the age of 18. He dropped out of North Carolina State University; he later told gaming blog Brutal Gamer "if you want to be a programmer, do not go to college."

Refenes started at Seventy - Two DPI in August 2001 where he managed their website and servers. In August 2003 he was hired by Learning Station, where he developed server software and applications in Flash, C++, PHP, and ASP. In July 2005 he decided to shift to the computer game field and went to work for the now defunct Streamline Studios, where he assisted in optimizing and porting the Unreal 2.x engine from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360, as well as assisting on the WiiWare title HoopWorld. In May 2006, Refenes and Aubrey Hesselgren, a game designer, founded the company Pillowfort. Their first effort was a game they dubbed Goo!. In 2008 Goo! won the grand prize for Best Threaded Game in the 2008 Intel Game Demo Contest, and took third place for Best Game on Intel Graphics. The game was canceled and Refenes left the studio in January 2009. In 2008 he co-founded the company Team Meat with game and graphics designer Edmund McMillen, with Refenes acting as programmer and Co-CEO. As of November 2010 Super Meat Boy is the only game they have published together.

In March 2010 at the Game Developers Conference 2010, Refenes criticized Apple's App Store, calling it "awful" and "horrible" and likened its games to the crude Tiger Electronics games that were popular in the 1980s and '90s. Seven days after this speech was given, Apple pulled the game Zits & Giggles from the market. Refenes had developed the game and sold it through the App Store in order to satirize what he considered to be the nonsensical nature of the App Store. In response to its removal he and McMillen launched the Super Meat Boy Handheld on the App Store. The game adopted the art style and gameplay of the Tiger handheld series of games. As Refenes described it, "Super Meat Boy Handheld is all the branding of Super Meat Boy, without the actual gameplay or art from Super Meat Boy...and all for ONLY A DOLLAR."