Edmund McMillen
McMillen at the Game Developers Choice Awards in March 2012
Born	(1980-03-02)March 2, 1980 (age 45) Santa Cruz, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Video game designer,artist
Known for	Super Meat Boy,The Binding of Isaac (Rebirth),The End Is Nigh,The Legend of Bum-bo
Spouse	Danielle McMillen (m. 2005)
Children	2

Edmund Charles McMillen^[1] (born March 2, 1980) is an Americanvideo game designer and artist. He is known for hisAdobe Flash games with unconventional visual styles.^[2] His works include 2010'sside-scrollerSuper Meat Boy, 2011'sroguelike gameThe Binding of Isaac, and its 2014 remakeThe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

McMillen was born on March 2, 1980, to a family of "born-again Christians" of Mexican descent.^[3][4] A lifelong resident ofWatsonville, inSanta Cruz, California,^[5][4] he attended Soquel High School.^[6] He is fond of drawing, his favorite subject being monsters.^[5] McMillen 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, McMillen 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.^[5] His childhood is represented in many of his own game creations, more specificallyThe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. In an interview withIndie Game: The Movie he explains that his family was consistently riddled with alcohol and drug addiction. He was confronted by this extreme faith, which caused him religious guilt and mental problems causing him to grow a desire to fight back, resulting in his acting out against them.

McMillen's initial graphic work was in independent comics.^[7][8] 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 gameSuper Meat Boy, as a promotional tie-in for the game.^[9] His most well-known games are the Flash-based gameMeat Boy, and its sequelSuper Meat Boy, which has been released for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4. McMillen is also known for the gamesGish,Aether,The Binding of Isaac andCoil.Gish won Game Tunnel's 2004 Adventure Game of the Year, as well as Indie Game of the Year.^[10][11] His gameCoil was nominated for the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival.^[12] McMillen was the original character artist and animator onBraid,^[12] before those assets were replaced by the work of David Hellman.^[13]Braid went on to win the Innovation Award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival prior to its release, and several awards in 2008, includingGameSpot's Best Platformer,^[14] and Best Original Downloadable Console Game,^[15] and the 12th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Awards Casual Game of the Year.^[16] His gameAether was a 2009 IndieCade finalist and received an honorable mention.^[17]

McMillen and programmerTommy Refenes established Team Meat, an independent game production company, with the intent that they would never utilize a third-party publisher.^[18] Their first game,Super Meat Boy, was released on October 20, 2010, on theXbox 360 viaXbox Live Arcade, and onValve's digital distribution systemSteam on November 30, 2010. A release was planned for theNintendoWii, but was canceled. According toKotaku, problems arose due to the file size limitations of the Wii'sWiiWare Channel.^[19] A retail version of the game was released on April 5, 2011.^[20] Due to Sony's initial lack of interest in the game, Team Meat entered into contractual obligations that prohibit the game from being released for the Sony PlayStation 3.^[21] McMillen and Refenes responded to the success ofSuper Meat Boy and the impossibility of a sequel in a brief statement that read, "We feel like we did it right the 1st time."^[22] McMillen and Refenes' development ofSuper Meat Boy was featured in the filmIndie Game: The Movie.

In a 2017 interview withEurogamer, Refenes revealed that McMillen was no longer a part of Team Meat and would not play a role in developing the game's sequel,Super Meat Boy Forever.^[23] McMillen later confirmed this in a blog post.^[24][25]Forever was eventually released in late 2020 for various platforms.

The Binding of Isaac is anindieroguelike video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl, initially released in 2011 forMicrosoft Windows; the game was later ported forOS X, andLinux operating systems. The game's title and plot are inspired by theBiblical story of theBinding of Isaac. In the game, Isaac's mother receives a message fromGod demanding the life of her son as proof of herfaith, and Isaac flees into the monster-filled basement of their home where he must fight to survive. Players control Isaac or one of 33 other unlockable characters through aprocedurally generated dungeon in a roguelike manner, fashioned after those ofThe Legend of Zelda, defeating monsters in real-time combat while collecting items and power-ups to defeatbosses and eventually Isaac's mother.

The game was the result of a week-long game jam between McMillen and Himsl to develop aThe Legend of Zelda-inspired roguelike that allowed McMillen to showcase his feelings about both positive and negative aspects of religion that he had come to discover from conflicts between his Catholic andborn again Christian family members while growing up.^[1][26] McMillen had considered the title a risk but one he could take after the financial success ofSuper Meat Boy,^[26] and released it without much fanfare toSteam in September 2011, not expecting many sales.^[1][26] The game soon gained popularity partially as a result of variousLet's Play videos showcasing the title. McMillen and Himsl released an expansion "Wrath of the Lamb" in May 2012, but were limited from further expansion due to limitations with theFlash platform.^[26] They had started working withNintendo in 2012 to release a3DS version, but Nintendo later backed out of the deal, citing controversy over the game's religious themes.^[27]

DeveloperNicalis worked with McMillen in 2014 to complete a remake of the game,The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, bringing additional features that McMillen had planned that exceeded Flash's limitation, as well as to improve the game's graphics and enable ports for other systems beyond personal computers, includingPlayStation 4 andVita,Xbox One,Wii U,Nintendo 3DS, and theNintendo Switch.The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has received three expansions, each one including more bosses, items, and areas. The first expansion,The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth, released on October 30, 2015, the second expansion,The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, released on January 3, 2017, and the third and final expansion,The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, was released on March 31, 2021.

In 2016, McMillen announced a prequel toThe Binding of Isaac titledThe Legend of Bum-bo, independently developed by programmer James Interactive and himself.^[28] The game was produced over the course of four years, without a workingprototype created during the process.The Legend of Bum-bo was digitally released on Steam on November 12, 2019, to mixed reviews.^[29][30] The game was ported toiOS on December 7, 2020,^[31] then toEpic Games Store,GOG.com, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X & Series S by Nicalis in 2022.^[32][33]

The End Is Nigh is aplatformadventurevideo game developed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel. The game was released on July 12, 2017, onMicrosoft Windows viaSteam. Ports of the game were released on August 15, 2017, onmacOS and on December 12, 2017, forLinux andNintendo Switch, with a port for thePlayStation 4 andPlayStation Vita in development. The game has been described as a spiritual successor to McMillen'sSuper Meat Boy.

The themes within the game were inspired by personal and professional experiences that had happened around the time of the game's development such as threatened lawsuits, his wife's pregnancy, andagoraphobia, which were described by McMillen as the "darkest" point in his career.^[1] McMillen was contemplating whether he wanted to continue making games, and these thoughts inspired the content of the game.

McMillen claimed that, to contrast Super Meat Boy's themes of challenging yourself because "it's worth it", The End is Nigh was designed to make players constantly question whether or not the game's challenges will reward them in the end.^[1] McMillen went on to describe The End is Nigh as "constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never drops", and described the struggles of the protagonist (Ash) as a "life falling apart".

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