You all love him. Chat, please
welcome Edmund McMillan, the creator
of Binding of Isaac.
They don't all love me.
But they know you.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for being here.
Pleasure to have you on.
How have you been lately?
First of all.
Busy.
Mm hmm.
Had I had another kid recently so
that multiplied the busy.
Been feeling full
of creative juices
and releasing said creative
juices into the ether.
Edmund, the first thing I wanted to start
off here with is before you started
animating for games and kind of
getting into the gaming space.
What were your big interests?
Before I did games I
did comics, I did zines,
I guess you'd say,
and I wasn't super.
I was into a select few comics.
I was really into Lobo.
I was really into the Max,
and I was really into art from an
underground weirdo comics for
weirdos stuff
that I shouldn't be into as a kid.
That's what I was into, and
I was mostly into horror movies
like weird
movies like Troma Movies and
Evil Dead or Dead Alive
sort of stuff.
I was quite deep into that.
Video games were always around,
but I felt like I was just I
was as into video games as any other
kid my age, any other friend that I
had. Most of my friends were more
into video games than I was
it, and I never saw it as an
option for a career or
anything like that.
I kind of fell into it, but
primarily it was, yeah,
writing comics.
A lot of your earlier stuff had
a very specific tone
that wasn't really cultivated at the
time. I felt like like from like
dead baby dress up.
What was your idea going into
game development in terms of the
design and kind of what are some of
the things you wanted to achieve
when you first set out?
Well, I don't think I knew what I
wanted to achieve outside of.
Experimentation and
simply putting a piece of me
out there, I mean, that's what I was
doing with my comics and web
work and, you know, my flash
animations and stuff like that, I
was just trying to say something.
I don't know what I
was saying.
I'm still not completely
conscious of everything that I'm
saying when I'm working.
It's just I just kind of
let stuff come out and
and let it stick.
And that's basically it.
Sometimes I'll just have a bunch of
ideas that seem like they feel
meaningful to me or
interesting to me, and I'll just
connect them all together and make
sense of them.
It's a fun, cathartic experience
for me and always has been.
One of the reasons why I create
anything is usually to figure
something out about myself that I
can't I can't
logically put together in my mind.
Back in the day, even like the dead
baby dress up stuff, it's like,
I think I was a very frustrated
and angry kid, and I felt like
life was meaningless, you know?
And, you know, growing up the way I
did and and everything else like
that, I was quite angsty and
and angry, and I think it kind of
showed. And as time passed, I think
things changed.
And as I learned and grew,
I experimented with different
stories and themes, and I
just try to stay honest and true
to what I do and
not compromise.
I just kind of put it all out there
and see what happens.
And at the very least, I
hope you know, my voice is
clear and that
if it's weird to people, then
that's cool, too. But there's always
some, some substance to usually
what I'm trying to do.
You talk about creating
this art. Very cathartic for you in
a lot of ways.
Is there any specific part of the
process? Is that kind of the
beginning drawings or is it
somewhere throughout that you
specifically really, really love
whenever it comes around?
Like if you count all my flash games
I've made like 40 something games
over my career, 20 years
and over
that amount of time, I think I
learned really quickly that
it's important to approach the
design process in the same way
you would approach a game or how
a game kind of unfolds to a person
like I don't over design,
I throw a little pieces
out there that makes sense.
Connect them. I make sure that
the the actual game
design is cohesive, makes sense and
is fun.
And then I expand
upon general core foundational
ideas, and I keep building upon
those things until I have this
fleshed out experience.
I design in a way where I don't get
bored. It's important to not get
bored when you're working on a
project for four years.
So I try to design it in an open
ended environment almost like
somebody who's improving, right,
comedy or whatever else.
I leave enough holes there
and I don't overthink it, so
it surprises me and inspires
me to fill in those holes as I go.
Not like, Hey.
Because the thing that it would be
most fun for me to do is just
design, you know, theme or
design, core design.
And then I can have it all done.
But if I do that, then I'm what, I'm
sitting here reading my notes
and following my directions.
And usually I'm wrong
the first time, and you can't
have that organic experience where
you're like going through that
through me when I started to hear
Mozz
spewing, spewing things at me.
But yeah, it's
I think it's it's important for me
not to not to relish
in the things I enjoy the most out
of game design because
then I eat, I eat my dessert
first and then I'm not hungry
and I don't want to continue to work
on it.
Having this IP, the one we're
seeing right now for 10 years,
for so long, coming from like a
flash came in 2011.
When would you think was the biggest
transition for this game?
Would you associate it with going
from flash to console or would you
associate it from your
latest expansion
and kind of rework?
When the flash game came out, it
wasn't. It didn't, actually.
It wasn't a huge hit, and
it didn't. The reviews were great.
A lot of people didn't get it.
There wasn't much like it.
Like this was at a point in time
where, like
the original prototype for Spelunky,
like the game maker version of
Spelunky, was an obscure game.
And what other
games like in roguelikes in general,
like old school roguelikes were not
at all, they were very niche.
So nothing was really like it,
and people didn't know how to judge
it and people didn't.
Just the idea of replaying a game
like this, almost like an arcade
game, was so unfamiliar to people,
and it kind of rubbed people the
wrong way. I think by the time we
had done an expansion for it,
it started to explode and it started
to really explode with with people
streaming it.
I think streaming it and showing
showing streamers showing how the
game can be played and how
streamable it was
since every single game you were
going to play was going to be so, so
different was a
big turning point.
I could say like so right after the
first expansion, Wrath of the lamb
was a big one. And then when it came
to console,
that was huge. I mean, it sold like
crazy and and it was on
all consoles like Nicholas released
it on every console, including
handhelds at the time.
So it went from this
obscure weirdo game that had a
good amount of success on steam
to a more
well-oiled tuned version of
the same game.
And I would say that a recent
expansion kind of breathed
new life into it, which was really
cool to be able to work with Vin,
who is a ultra
super mega fan of the
game and knows the game inside
out better than almost anybody that
has ever worked on it and
being able to work with him,
expanding it and adding adding
his ideas into it was
just cool. Because I mean, his ideas
are also the ideas of of
the mod community of the fans.
So it became this big
kind of fanfare thing, and that was
something I had to kind of let go of
as well. There is a point in time
where I think after the first
expansion for,
for, for console and everything
else, I started
to realize that.
I need, this wasn't my game
anymore.
It was it was very much.
Almost this legend and I
want him to listen to the fans, and
I wanted to see what they wanted,
but not in a way where I'm giving
them exactly what they ask for.
But roughly what they want,
you know, because you never want,
you can ever appeal to every
single person. But I think for the
most part, if you get them to
believe in what you're doing and
show them like, OK, you know, you
know, I know this game and you
trust me with it. So let's try
this.
I kind of want to get a sense of the
time period here between
afterbirth plus and repentance.
When you kind of started seeing a
lot of mods come up, you started
seeing a lot of people rework the
game and, you know, work their
preferences into it and change it up
for different versions.
What did you really make of that at
that time and going into
repentance what was your
main goal? You know, in addition to
the fan service you you're talking
about giving people some of what
they wanted, but, you know,
maintaining your soul in the game as
well.
Afterbirth Plus, it was just going to be a mod
with no extra content like not a
mod, but modules.
Sorry. Right.
And we because I was at the point
where I was like, OK, it's been
six and a half seven years and I'm
like, OK, I'm let's let's let's
be done with this and let's
but I don't want to be done, done.
I want people to, you know, build
off of it because it's theirs.
And let's just support mod stuff
and and put it up on steam.
But then, of course, like, I always
do it, it got it, got away from me,
and I'm like, Well, if we're gonna
do this, let's add this boss, and
then let's add this character and
let's do this, this and this.
That was actually a difficult time
for me. I was spread very thin, and
I wasn't feeling too good about
being in the industry in general,
and I kind of just handed
off my designs to
the team and I wasn't really
overseeing it. So it had a rough,
a rough launch, which
I later corrected with a bunch
of little DLCs mini
DLCs, and a new character and called
them booster packs.
But around
that time of release,
there was also it was also announced
that there was a there was so many
huge mods that were coming out
around that time, but there was one
mod that stood out called
Afterbirth.
And the thing that stood out the
most to me was that it seemed like
something I would do.
There's it's hard to
it's hard to explain what works and
what doesn't with Isaac
and I
sometimes don't bother trying like,
that's why I just do all the design
myself. But there was something
about this mod that just
seemed like it was.
It was following all the logical
paths that that were kind
of set in place. It was doing a lot
of things that I
thought a lot of the choices were
choices I would have made, and I was
pretty in awe of those choices,
and I wanted to talk to the person
who made it and possibly hire
them and work with them on the
the stuff that I had planned for
updates and I did.
And that was Vin.
You do have a lot of like awesome IP
to capitalize on, but also I'm sure
you must get the itch sometimes it
just kind of completely like
wipe the slate clean and try
something else.
Oh yeah, for sure.
I mean, I could I could very easily
turn Mew-Genics into an some sort of
weird Isaac spinoff sequel,
but I just don't.
I'm trying my best not to.
I just want I just want
to -make... I think that Mew-Genics,
I think Mew-Genics will be
my best game and
I want to do it justice, and
I don't want it to just be like
an expansion on top of another thing
or just another Legend
of Bum-bo type situation where I'm,
you know, rewriting Isaac.
Not to say that it might not take
place in a similar world, but
definitely not Isaac being
the protagonist.
Before you go something really
important. I mean, we're obviously
going to pick some people to give a
month subscription to for the
Unboxing of Isaac.
But can you talk a little bit about
that idea and that subscription
service and kind of what you get?
Yeah, the shirt and everything.
Yeah, we're so we're doing a
yearlong subscription monthly
box, not blind.
We will show you the contents of the
box every new month.
We've spoiled four
or five shirts already.
Each box will include a really
cool, high quality T-shirt, which I
have right here and I'm throwing
things.
Oh, you mean this one?
Oh, yes.
It's so you can attest that it's
a really soft.
It's like it's not a cheap shirt.
No, like this is a very, very
nice, high quality shirt.
Feels very good on the skin.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
It's it's my my my number
one choice for four shirts that I
actually wear. And then I've also
got there's a the Dogma
sticker, which is like
staticky, holographic, shiny
goodness. Yeah, each box will come
with that. For that, that box will
come with that.
And then there's going to be three
dogma themed Four Souls cards that
are promo cards that are exclusive
to each box that will be in there.
And then there's a bonus item in
this month's bonus item is actually
or it's going to be next month.
It's Mother's Day.
It's going to be Mom's Ring, which
is another promo item
that for Four Souls that we're
putting in as well.
So that's that's the first box the
Dogma Box.
Would love to have you back some
time.
I'm always here.
I would love to come back
And keep keep Mick Foley in your
heart for me.
I will.
I can't. He can't leave.