An Interview with Edmund McMillen: The Story

Welcome back back again again! If you were here last week, you know we were in the middle of interviewing Edmund. If you weren’t here... well, now you know, too. This week we’ll continue with more questions for Edmund and find out more about his growth as a game developer and a game creator. What kind of work did you do before you started making games?

Edmund

Tons of jobs since I was 15. My first was at the SPCA, cutting stuff around there and doing manual labor for a summer. Right after that I did cameraman work for a show that was on public access. I enjoyed that a great deal. I worked in a factory with my dad; they made pieces of washing machine parts. I worked at Blockbuster for a year, GameStop on-and-off and the other things it became—different iterations on-and-off for many, many years. I was still working at GameStop if I needed money; after Gish had won IGF, I went to doing that part-time. How and when did you start designing games?

Edmund

When I was sixteen, I started making comics, then I started making games in the Duke Nukem [engine] with mods. I made a lot of stuff with Duke, Doom and Quake in the later years. Then I was making games with Klik & Play. There was a game I made called Build the Lower Intestine. I don’t remember what it was called, but I used to make pretty in-depth games with this weird ASCII editor. [NOTE: At this point in the interview Edmund has another negotiation with his daughter Peach. I’m still uncertain who the better negotiator is yet, but given that Peach is 1/10th of Edmund’s age, she has the clear advantage.] Are your life experiences intrinsic to your game design?

Edmund

The games that I make are pieces of my life reworked. I’ve found a way for people to experience little bits and pieces of who I am by putting them in interesting game design. What’s your first game that you say is “my first game”?

Edmund

Dead Baby Dressup! was my first game. I didn’t think it was a game. When I was making games in high school, I remember thinking if I could make a game, I could join a studio and that’d be something I want to do. But I also remember thinking that there was no way, because I’d only be happy making games at a studio if they would listen to my ideas... and no one was going to listen to my ideas. There was no way anybody would be down with the stuff I wanted to do. I thought at least I could make cartoons or do animation or something. I was leaning towards 2D and 3D animation at the end of high school. That seemed to be my only real option. Truthfully, I didn’t want to go anywhere; I didn’t want to work for anyone. I wanted to figure out some way that I could do it myself. In my sophomore year of high school—or maybe even freshman year—there was a guest speaker named Clay Butler. He was a local cartoonist; he had his own comic strip under syndication called Sidewalk Bubblegum. It was a political comic strip. He had multiple animations that played on public access as well as Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation. I felt like no one gave a shit except me. I was like, “Oh my God!” I was in awe. He was like a movie star to me! I was enamored by this, and the idea that it could be his job. He talked about it, that he didn’t make a lot of money but he was really