Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Edmund McMillen

Episode Date: March 11, 2017

Edmund McMillen, creator of The Binding Of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, and a great many other wonderful indie games joins the DTFH and we talk about transforming your shadow into art.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty a little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Good day to you, my sweet, beautiful friends. And prepare yourself, because I'm gonna let myself ramble today.

I feel good. I went to a flaming lips concert last night. My friend Shelby got me great tickets. I was able to watch from a balcony as Wayne Coyne and the flaming lips exploded glitter and good vibes and confetti and an infinite number of inflatable balloons and everything. Just an outflow, a white hole.

Which is what a lot of people say the Big Bang is actually. A white hole that it's the other side of a black hole. This whole universe is just the outflow from some other universe that got punctured or something. And we're just sort of the, we're the other side of suck, friends. A black hole sucks, literally sucks. That's what it does.

It just pulls everything into it. Can't help it. Ultimate version of selfishness in physics. The thing is dense, man. It's heavy. It's got a heavy vibe. And if you get too close to a fucking black hole, you get sucked in.

It'll suck it all in. Doesn't matter what it is. A star, fuck you. I'm eating you, a star. I don't care how big you are, star, I'm gonna suck you into me. Everything consumed by black holes. Who knows, perhaps one dark day,

billions and billions and billions of years in the future, this entire universe itself may be sucked into some supermassive black hole. But I like the idea of the white hole because the white hole is the opposite of suck. It's the opposite of suck and yet it comes from suck. And this, friends, is why I think this is a very special podcast today.

And this is why I think the flaming lips are an important band to go see. Because it feels like this outflow of positivity coming out of the flaming lips maybe has some roots and some darkness. I don't know for sure. Possibly the story is pretty interesting about Wayne Coyne working at a Long John Silvers

and getting a gun place to his head and suddenly experiencing what in history has inspired a lot of great artists, which is the feeling of only having a few seconds left to live. Some great artists have been marched out to be executed and then they weren't. There's a lot of different versions of the story,

but coming face to face with the suck, face to face with a potential subjective singularity at a Long John Silvers on the floor of a Long John Silvers, the smell of the fish and fry oil on your hands. The whole world slowing down as you feel a fucking gun to your head. I don't know if he had a gun to his head. I might be exaggerating the story,

but from that moment, maybe that moment caused something to shift inside of Wayne Coyne, that insane gunman robbing a fucking Long John Silvers of all the places, of all the places to rob. Why a fucking fast food fish restaurant with a pirate theme doesn't make much sense on that wherever you're robbing.

Go for a bank, right? Go for some, I guess Long John Silvers, maybe, I don't know, like if you come at the right time, there would have been a lot of money or, I don't know, but that robber didn't know that in the moment that he was putting that gun against Wayne Coyne's sweet fucking head, that he was triggering, potentially triggering,

who knows, maybe there would have been a flaming lips no matter what, but for the sake of the story, he could have been potentially triggering a white hole. That moment of suck could have punctured something inside of Wayne Coyne, and that allowed whatever the hell the flaming lips are, I don't know what it is, crossed between a kid's show and some kind of heavy duty magical ritual,

but whatever it is, it's cathartic and beautiful, and I think it does have its roots in darkness, and this is why I like this podcast today, because Edmund McMillan, our guest today, is the creator of a lot of great games. One of them is one of my favorite games. I have a few favorite games, Hearthstone, unfortunately, I think the people over at Blizzard should be tried

in the same way that the people manufacturing Oxy Cotton should be tried on some days when I realized I'm in the grip of a fantasy card game addiction, whatever, it brings me joy. World of Warcraft, of course, Starcraft, I'm a Blizzard nerd, okay, that's mostly what I play. Fallout, I love the Fallout games, and so usually I found out about this other game,

Binding of Isaac, from just browsing through YouTube, maybe it was on Twitch or something, and I looked at the game, and I remember looking at it on YouTube and wondering how it was getting such rave reviews, because when you look at the game, if you haven't played it, then maybe it seems a little, especially if you're like me and you've been playing these big fucking fancy games,

it might seem a little antiquated or something, it was a flash game, but I remember downloading it and playing it and realizing, oh, this is like an incredible game, but it's more than an incredible game, it's art, it's got something in it that is reflecting a very dark understanding of the world, and the moment that, anyway, look, you know this,

this is the Buddhist story of the jewel in the robe. There's a, and really I think about this story too much because it's kind of a dumb story. If you break it down too much, it's kind of a dumb story, but the story is this guy goes and visits his friend who is some kind of wealthy, I don't know, like noble person, and they get drunk together, and he passes out.

The guy who was visiting the noble person gets too hammered, he passes out, the noble person gets some kind of message in the middle of the night, a telegram for the emperor, you gotta get to the fucking palace, don't waste a second. And so the nobleman had wanted to give his friend a gift, a diamond, and he realized he didn't have time, and he couldn't wake him up because he was inebriated and unconscious,

so he sows this diamond into the hymn of his friend's robe and gallops off on his horse to go see the emperor. Anyway, his friend, being a wandering drunk, falls into a bad life. He leaves, he probably was, you know, he left his friend abandoned him, I don't know, he's probably bummed, wandered off into the mud and ended up just, you know,

wasted, wasted, no money close to death because he's starving. And anyway, he ends up, I don't know, running into his friend, the story is pretty dumb, like number one, why wouldn't you leave a note? Why wouldn't you just leave a note in your friend's hand, like check your robe, there's a diamond there. But anyway, the point is not to get

into the details of the story, the guy ends up finding the diamond, you know, and all this time that he was poor, all this time that he was fucked up, all this time he was in his own personal hell, he had this diamond, just waiting for him to find it. So I like when somebody takes, when somebody transforms their own personal darkness

into a diamond, when that thing that you were afraid to say out loud, the thing that you're most embarrassed about, the thing you wouldn't want to tell anybody, is actually your most precious possession because it's an energy source. Not everybody figures that. A lot of people, that diamond ends up fucking them up

because they're so afraid of it. They don't realize that there could be some potency in the thing. But folks like Edmund McMillan seem to have taken a really dark, some dark experiences and used them to make something beautiful and fun and something that is a white hole, something beautiful pouring out of their own personal suck

that pours into our universe from their own subjective black holes. They've flipped their black hole around, turned it into a white hole and let it pour forth with some incredible art. But the art still has within it that emptiness, it still has within it the flavor of darkness and that makes it that much more beautiful.

So this podcast, this convert, this was I had a great day yesterday. I got to have this conversation that you're about to listen to with Edmund McMillan and then I got to go see a Flaming Lips show. So it was a stellar day, one of the best days I've had in a very long time. In both events,

pointed me in the same point or pointing me in the same direction. And I hope that maybe they'll point you in the same direction too, which is that that thing you're afraid to confess, that thing you're embarrassed by, the thing, whatever it is, whatever it is, maybe that is your diamond.

The thing you've been avoiding the most, that's where hidden inside of that thing is a glowing, beautiful diamond that isn't just gonna help you, it has the potential to help the fucking world. That's what's, you know, the whole time you're not doing the thing, whatever it is, you know, because you're scared,

you don't think you deserve to do it, you don't think you're good enough to do it, you're afraid of failure, you're protecting yourself. And that makes sense, of course. I'm terrified too of doing shit. This, for example, freaks me out every single time. But where it gets unethical is,

what about the possibility that whatever that thing is that you're hiding from the world is not only something that could be cathartic for you and could help you evolve into some higher version of yourself. But what if that thing could also help the world? What if that thing that you're hiding, whatever it is, the thing that you haven't processed,

the thing that you're holding inside, what if that thing, the black hole, could be a white hole that if you figured out a way to get in there and you let it pour into the world, then you could create something that would help people. And it doesn't have to be like, oh, you fucking cured malaria or whatever, I hope you do. Cure baldness, do me a favor.

But it could just be something that is really funny. It could be a painting that people walk by. And it, I don't know, in some way or another, it makes, they don't even know why, why they feel a little better. It could be something bigger than that, though. Who knows? Last night, I saw a volcanic explosion of positivity

in the form of unicorns and weighing coin, running or rolling, rolling around in a ball over an audience, fucking laser lights and just too much beauty, and yet somehow still dark, which I like. You know what? I've got this little card here from Alex and Allison Gray.

I'll read it to you. This is, you can order this, I think. It's from their Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. It's a card, it's a card with a paint and Alex Gray painting on it. But it's called Artist's Prayer. Creator of the universe. How infinite and astonishing are your worlds.

Thank you for your sacred art and sustaining presence. Divine imagination, forgive my blindness. Open all my eyes, reveal the light of truth. Let original beauty guide my every stroke. Universal creativity, flow through me from my heart, through my mind, to my hand, infuse my work with spirit to feed hungry souls. We're hungry out here, man.

We're hungry. We wanna suckle at the other side of your black hole, sweetie. We wanna taste the outflow from that part of you that's condensed density to the maximum degree, the part of you that's making you feel so heavy. We wanna taste the other side of that, the thing where you flip it around, where you transform it.

We wanna taste the outflow. We want that, everyone wants that, we need it. That's one of the things people feed on. And then the good way, you know? And if you're not doing that, you don't wanna be like some dry nipple mama dog with all the little puppies starving because your nipples are clogged up with fear.

You gotta unclog your nips, my friends. Let the milk flow. We're gross. You know what I'm saying? My loves, just go for it. I love this podcast. Edmund McMillan inspired me. Wayne Coyne inspired me.

The flaming lips inspired me. Binding of Isaac inspires me. Even though what I'm about to play may not seem that inspiring to you, it sure is to me. Cause it's funny and it's creepy and it's entertaining. And I called it addictive. Now the word I think I would use is compelling. But here very quickly is the very beginning

of Binding of Isaac. I'll just play a little bit of it for you so that you can understand, for those of you who don't know what the Binding of Isaac is, or who haven't played Super Meat Boy or any of Edmund's games, I just want you to get a taste for what kind of video games this wonderful artist

is putting out into the world. Thank you. Isaac and his mother lived alone in a small house on a hill. Isaac kept to himself, drawing pictures and playing with his toys as his mom watched Christian broadcasts on the television. Life was simple and they were both happy.

That was until the day Isaac's mom heard a voice from above. Your son has become corrupted by sin. He needs to be saved. I will do my best to save him, my lord. Isaac's mother replied, rushing into Isaac's room, removing all that was evil from his life.

Again, the voice called to her. Isaac's soul is still corrupt. He needs to be cut off from all that is evil in this world and confess his sins. I will follow your instructions, lord. I have faith in thee. Isaac's mother replied as she locked Isaac in his room away from the evils of the world.

One last time, Isaac's mom heard the voice of God calling to her. You've done as I'd asked, but I still question your devotion to me to prove your faith. I will ask one more thing of you. Yes, lord, anything Isaac's mother begged. To prove your love and devotion,

I require a sacrifice. Your son, Isaac, will be this sacrifice. Go into his room and end his life as an offering to me to prove you love me above all else. Yes, lord, she replied, grabbing a butcher's knife from the kitchen. Isaac, watching through a crack in his door, trembled in fear.

Scrambling around his room to find a hiding place, he noticed a trapped door to the basement hidden under his rug. Without hesitation, he flung open the hatch, just as his mother burst through his door and threw himself down into the unknown depths below. Friends, that is the beginning of one of my favorite video games

on this fine planet that we're currently stuck on thanks to gravity. Today's guest is the creator of this video game. We're gonna jump right into this episode, friends, but first, you know what it is. Today's episode of the Dugga Trussell Family Hour podcast is brought to you by the saviors of your life

that you might not even know about, blueapron.com. While I get it, man, going out to eat is one of the true pleasures in life, it can become a crutch, it can become a blockage, an obstacle, something that is actually keeping you from experiencing one of the primary and fundamental pleasures of being a human being, which is cooking.

Do you watch the cooking channel? I do. I used to torment myself watching the cooking channel. I don't have cable right now, but if I go to a hotel, I might watch the cooking channel. And one of the things that has always seemed absolutely ridiculous to me is these chefs are trying to show you

how to whip up some kind of thing, you know, like a bacon souffle or a complex macaroni dish. And they have already placed on the counter in front of them these bowls, perfectly filled up with every single ingredient that's been measured out on a scientific scale by an assistant.

And all they gotta do is just dump one thing into the next, into the next and mix it or put it in the oven at the right time. And at the other side of this process is some delicious fucking meal that you don't get to taste. But I've thought, yeah, you know what? Anybody could be a chef like that. If somebody was like ladling out the exact right amount

of nutmeg into some polished silver cup. Yeah, I could do that. I could make it that fucking amazing looking macaroni truffle dish that you just whipped up friend. But I can't do that. Cause my brain doesn't work like that. I have no scale. I have no patience.

I go to the store. Inevitably we'll forget to write down the critical ingredient for the recipe. And I'll get back home and then realize, oh shit, look at that, no butter. So I'll just use whatever's in the refrigerator. Well, I mean, I'm sure coconut milk could work as butter, right?

Oh, whoops, didn't get the rosemary or the Yugoslavian turnips. You know what? Maybe I'll just use the potato that I have. I've never had a potato. So I don't even know what I'm talking about. But you know what I mean? I substitute with just what's there

because I forgot whatever was supposed to get. Anyway, the end of my two hours of cooking is some failed bubbling bit of plasma that looks like a melted gas repairman that tried to smoke a cigarette next to a fucking gas outflow pipe. Just some blackened bubbling remnant of what was supposed to be something delicious.

And God forbid you should be doing this around friends. God forbid you've gotten the curse of humanity, hubris, and have made the decision to cook for your friends. And so there's like three people coming over in 15 minutes that are about to eat what looks like a scorched marshmallow that a bird puked on. And it's supposed to be a macaroni or potatoes.

And so then they come over and you serve, I've done this, I've served, I'm not gonna say what book I got it out of, but it was a book that was supposed to, it's like to supposed to teach you how to cook. You know, anyone can cook that style of book. And like, no, not anyone can cook, not me. Your books a lie.

And I am sitting at a table now watching the glum faces of my friends as they realize that they're gonna have to fucking eat this shit I concocted. And it's embarrassing. Blue Apron, they save us from this humiliation because they deliver farm fresh ingredients that have been measured out in advance. Everything's there, everything's measured out.

They have these wonderful laminated cards that you can look at and they're just, the info is the data is there, man. And it's like they know me, they know me. And from this, you can begin to cook. And every time you cook anything for the rest of your life, you know how to cook that thing, at least sort of. You know how to cook that thing.

You become a little less food illiterate. Blue Apron, all right, that's my personal spiel. Very quickly, let me read what I have to read. Blue Apron is affordable. It's less than $10 per person, per meal. You can choose from a variety of new recipes each week. You can customize your recipes based on your preferences. They have a lot of different delivery options.

So you can make sure that you get the food to your door. There's no weekly commitment. So you only get deliveries when you want them. And each meal comes with a step-by-step, easy to follow recipe card and pre-portioned ingredients and can be prepared in 40 minutes or less. It's guaranteed. Blue Apron's freshness guaranteed promises

that every ingredient in your delivery arrives, ready to cook or they'll make it right. So try it out, man. Go to blueapron.com, forward slash trussell. That's T-R-U-S-S-E-L-L, blueapron.com, forward slash trussell. And you'll get your first three meals free with free shipping. Three free, healthy, delicious meals. What else could you ask for?

Plus, you'll show Blue Apron that it was worth sponsoring the DTFH. Give it a try. You will not be disappointed. I only promote stuff on this show that I like. Speaking of things I like, I like Krishnadas. He is a Kirtan Walla. That means a Kirtan singer.

And he was a, he sat at the feet of Neem Karoli Baba. Ramdas' guru. I've gotten to hang out with him at these Ramdas retreats that I go to. And he's been kind enough to be a guest on the upcoming live DTFH at the Bell House in Brooklyn on March 21st. If you wanna know, I always say,

Hare Krishna, what Hare Krishna means. What chanting the Hare Krishna Mahamantra means or singing it does, then this is the podcast for you. March 21st at the Bell House. Tickets are at dunkitrosil.com. Also, I'm gonna be the independent in San Francisco. That's Wednesday, April 26th. Finally, if you wanna really freak out with me in Hawaii,

I'm gonna be at the Ramdas Spring Retreat. That's May, I think it's May 3rd. May 1st, May 3rd, not sure, but you can look it, go to ramdas.org, it'll be there. Can't wait, man. Oh, fuck, I can't wait. Just to lay in that sweet ocean, slurping my tie and staring into the infinite.

Come, join me there. If you can, it'll be a blast. I guess that's, oh, Amazon. Also, thank you guys who keep using the Amazon portal. It's a fantastic way for you to support this podcast and anything we talk about on the podcast or don't talk about for that matter, if you go through the link at dunkitrosil.com,

Amazon gives us very small percentage of it. And man, I know I keep pushing this thing, no pun intended, and I'm not sponsored by Ableton, but holy shit, this Ableton pushed too. It does not stop being cool. Every, you think you understand this incredible machine and then the rug just gets pulled out from under you and you find other layers of complexity.

Look, I'm not, I don't consider my, I'm not a musician. I don't think anybody thinks I am. And I don't think that you have to be a musician to wanna make music, cooking, making music. These are just basic fundamental human impulses, man. And if you wanna like skip the, a lifetime of training and music, then technology will allow you to do that.

I'm not, I think if your intentions are pure here, like if you're not tricking yourself into thinking that like you're gonna have an Ableton pushed too and turn into base nectar overnight or something, if you just go into it with wanting to trip out on how technology is making whatever's in your head and whatever's in the world, the time between what's in your head going into the world

shorter and shorter and shorter, then Ableton and Ableton pushed too. Well, well, you know what, look, what are you gonna do, play video games? Play video games, it's great. Play Binding of Isaac, it's fine, but maybe spend a little bit of time learning something new. That's what I'm doing.

I love it. So yeah, go through the Amazon portal, get a push too. All right, God, sorry, that was a long one. I told you, I feel good, flaming lips. I don't go out enough. Jesus Christ, the world is so full of beautiful white holes, just waiting for you to put your mouth upon. All right, that's it for me, man.

Today's guest is the creator of some fantastic games. I'm not gonna list them all because there's too many to list. The ones I'm most fond of are Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac. You can find out everything you need to know about Edmund by going to his blog, which the link will be at dunkintrustle.com

or by playing his games. Either way, I hope you will please send as much love as you possibly can to one of my favorite artists living today. Everyone please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, Edmund McMillan. For me, man, it's what I gotta do. So that's why.

So forgive the sound quality, please. Be gentle with me. There's just no time for me to fly out to Santa Barbara to do an interview. And I don't wanna put that on a guest. He wants some weirdo flying across the country to come to your house and interview you. That sounds annoying.

When Skype, this incredible technology allows this very same thing to happen instantaneously without spraying rocket gas or whatever comes out of a plane into the sky. So again, in all seriousness, if I could make these podcasts technically perfect, if I could make these Skype podcasts as good as the one-on-one interviews, I would do it.

And I'm gonna look into it, figure out how to do it if it's possible. So if the sound quality on Edmund's side seems a little, I don't know, Skype-y, well, it is. And so just be kind, listen to what he says. Allow yourself to surrender to the limitation because there is no way around it for this particular episode.

So forgive me for Skype, it's all I got. All right, fine, here we go. Today's guest is one of my favorite artists living on planet Earth. He's a video game designer. He's created many, many games. I'm gonna, the ones I like best are Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac.

You can watch him on Indie Game, the movie. But first, listen to him here. Everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell family, our podcast, The Legend Himself, Edmund McMillan. Welcome. Welcome, welcome on you. As you are with us. Shake hands, no need to be blue.

Welcome to you, welcome, welcome. It's the Dunkin' Trussell family. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Edmund, welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell family, our podcast. Thank you so much for taking some time out of what must be an incredibly busy schedule to have a chat with me.

No problem. You are the creator. I have a few favorite video games in my life. And I'm sure you know, as much as anybody, how much it means to have a favorite video game. It's a big deal. It's something that you go to for comfort when you're stressed out.

It's a very potent and powerful thing. And you created one of those games, which for me is the binding of Isaac. But on top of that, you've made over 50 video games, which is insane to me. And I guess I just wanted, I was curious, do you spend more time playing games or designing games? Well, I spend way more time designing games, for sure.

Do you? Yeah, I mean, I try my best to play as many games as possible. But yeah, as time is, the more time that has passed, the less I tend to play games. I'll play like the really appealing ones or the really, really cream of the crop type games. Even though I'm playing Pokemon, go a lot.

I don't know if people think that that's cream of the crop. I mean, you know, but that's the thing with games is like, who knows, it's such a personal connection that happens. And why you end up liking one game over another is anybody's guess. But I was wondering, as a creator of games, you're a creator of games, I'm a consumer of games. I have a video game addiction problem.

I get... No, that's probably why you like Isaac. Yeah, yeah, because you made it as addictive as anything that could, it's so severely addictive. I hate to call it addictive. My goal is never to make an addictive game. Maybe it's just semantics here, but I like to use the word compelling.

Well, you know what? I say addict and addiction in the same way. I say like freak or dumb. Yeah, I just don't like feeling like a... Like I'm making something that's actually wasting people's time or they could have been spending it on better things, but you know, whatever.

This is, I mean, I've never had a chance to talk to a successful game designer at your level. And this is one of my primary questions. Is that very thing? Number one, there is a stigma against playing video games. A lot of variety of stigmas against playing video games from the most basic and ridiculous one. It's for children to the more extreme one,

which is you're wasting your life, man. You're sitting there pressing buttons. You could be learning to play piano right now. And so what do you think about that? Do you really think it's a waste of time to play these games? It's something that I go back and forth in my head all the time. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I can say right now that, I mean, playing video games is as much of a waste of time as listening to music or watching a movie, which aren't that big of a waste. I guess it's just when it becomes not worth it, I guess. I don't know. I played World of Warcraft with my wife for a little while and I think we played for a month in it.

It was kind of like, oh, wait a minute, let's not do this. Right. Like, you just don't, I don't know. I guess there's a point. I don't know. Honestly, it's a strange thing. It's odd for me having my most successful game

be what she's considered the most addictive game that I've done, a completely non-linear, infinitely replayable game, which was my goal. And it's kind of like the new arcade in a way where you're not just playing for high score. You're just experiencing a new experience every time, which was my goal. But then I, sometimes I guess I do, I question like,

you know, it's cool when people show you how many hours they put into it. My wife is like a huge obsessed player. Like she plays at least three or four hours a day and we have a baby, so that's saying something. Wow. And she, I mean, she was the first beta tester. She was the reason why I probably,

probably the number one reason why I kept making DLCs is because she'd finish it and I just, it's cool to see her get so into something that I made because she wasn't really into anything else that I had done in the past. But then it's kind of like, what am I doing? Like I'm playing with fire here, I guess in a way, but there's also a part of me that doesn't really care.

So whatever. That's pretty intense though. No, that's intense. Because first hand, you get to witness what it looks like. First hand, right there, your wife is dive, is jumped into the reality that you created. And wow, yeah, that's so intense, man. By the way, soulmate, I guess, right?

That's a soulmate. Yeah, sure. How'd you guys meet? I met when she was really young. I mean, I was young too. I was 19. I didn't know how old she was, but then I was informed and I stayed away for a while.

She was 14 at the time. We didn't start dating until she was 15. Wow. And we've been together for almost 17 years. Wow. And this was, when you were 19, were you already developing games at that point? I don't, it's possible that I was,

but I didn't recognize it. I mean, I was a comic artist. I made comics for many years through high school and a little, I think I started making games officially, or I knew that I was making games officially around like when I was 24. 24. And that was in action script?

Is that what you started in? Yeah, I started in Flash. But actually, I mean, I started in Click and Play. There's this program called Click and Play that I had in high school that I was making games with, but I didn't, I mean, when I was in high school, people always, you know, like, what are you gonna do when you get older

and people are like, you should make video games. And I was like, well, there's no way I ever could because no one's gonna listen to me. Like there's no way I'm gonna convince a company that you should make this game about a naked child that's commentary on like religion. Like that's gonna be something that anybody's gonna get behind.

Like all the ideas that I had were way too weird and it just didn't seem possible. So I just tossed that idea away. Like I thought maybe the best I could be an animator for a video game company because it seemed to be something that I was pretty okay at. Sure. For the most part, I had given up on that idea

and it wasn't until I found out about what the indie scene, you know, independent games in general, which was super tiny in 2003, 2004. But that's kind of opened my eyes to like, oh, wait, like I can just work with one other person and they'll listen to me. Yeah, you know, like I'll be able to convince. I was for the longest time and still to this day,

I mostly worked with fans, people that already dig what I'm doing enough to listen to me and listen to my stupid ideas and help me execute them. Well, you couldn't, yeah, you couldn't. I don't see any way, at least in the universe, the way things used to be in 2001 that you would have been able to pitch any of these games to anybody and get the kind of feedback you would want.

Let me read some of the games from your Wikipedia that you've designed. Yep. The Lonely Hermit backup files, that sounds cool. Then we get Dead Baby Dress Up. 12 uses of Dead Babies. Dead Baby Dress Up, two. Six more Dead Baby Uses.

Dead Baby Dress Up, three. WWF Baby Dress Up. Eight more Dead Baby Uses. Dead Baby Dress Up, four. The Boy Who Questioned God. Dead Baby Dress Up, X. Dead Baby Superhero Dress Up. Yeah, these ideas.

Are amazing, and I mean that. I don't mean that sarcastic. No, yeah, back in the early 2000s, people, I was known as Edmund Dead Baby McMillan, like that was what I was known for. And the whole Dead Baby theme, that was the mascot for, This Is a Cry for Help, which was a comic,

and later a website that I maintained, which was my claim to fame then. And that mascot made its way into Isaac and became the blue baby. Wow. Like in a lot of ways, Dead Baby Dress Up, which for people who, well nobody knows what Dead Baby Dress Up is.

So if you can imagine the blue baby from The Binding of Isaac, and you drag and drop pieces of facial features and clothing onto it to configure it, you can take a screenshot of it and do whatever you want. And back in like 2001 and 2000, this is when I was making these things, I was obsessed with the idea of customization.

And I later incorporated that into The Binding of Isaac. And I thought it would just be really cool to, every item that you pick up gives you some sort of random, not random, but a facial feature that makes a randomly generated blue baby or dead baby. Oh wow, I get it. Of course, yeah. And one of the things I love about that level

of customization, Binding of Isaac, is that in most games, when you pick up something to customize the hero, it makes the hero look better, stronger, healthier. Whereas in Isaac, most things that you pick up distort the poor thing. By the end of the game,

you're surrounded by floating dead babies. You've got a cyclopean eye, wings. You've transformed it into this mutated thing. It is dark. And I can remember being drawn into the game, initially just by the name. Because I knew what you meant by The Binding of Isaac. You were talking about one of the many stories

of human sacrifice in the Bible. And can you actually, would you mind relating the story, where you got the name, The Binding of Isaac? Yeah, Binding of Isaac's from the chapter in the Bible where Abraham has to, or is asked to kill his son to prove his devotion to God.

Which I think is, I mean, there's a lot of wacky shit in the Bible, but that one's pretty insane, mostly because it happens now. People do hear the voice of God and tell them to kill their kid and they kill their kid. Well, yeah, and you know what? A lot of the ways that that gets translated

in a more modern sense, is the voice of God that they hear is patriotism. And the way they kill their kid is by encouraging the child to like, join whatever military is the military of the country that the kid is born into. And so- Well, there's a lot of ways

people kill their kids these days. Yeah. But I mean, I'm going for the more literal sense. Like when The Binding of Isaac came out, that week, some, a woman killed her kids. So I had Google Alerts set up for The Binding of Isaac to see, you know, reception. And I started getting a ton of Google Alerts.

And I was like, what's this? What's this? And it's like, woman kills son, here's voice of God. And it's just like, what? And it's like, oh, and I actually, that was when I realized, oh, this happens quite often. Like people hear the voice of God. And then it goes into the whole theme of the game

where it's kind of questioning the whole like, if you believe that, then shouldn't you believe that that is a possibility of something that could currently happen. And everybody writes those people off as crazy, but it seems like a devout person might question if that's true. Well, yeah.

It was an interesting subject matter. It was the beginning of what I wanted to explore and where I wanted to go with it initially. It also, the title The Binding of Isaac was also so perfect. It also reads the same as The Legend of Zelda, The Binding of Isaac. Oh, fuck. So it was like, I don't know.

It just seemed so perfect. It is perfect. And it's perfect on a lot of different levels. One aspect of its perfection is that it's based on one of the most prevalent, yet somehow taboo occult principles, which is the idea that there is some occult energy to be gained from sacrificing your child or a child to an entity.

And Christians, a lot of fundamentalists love to point their fingers at secret occult groups that live in the world that sacrifice, ritualistically sacrifice children when the entire story of Christianity is based on an omnipotent being sacrificing its child so that the world can be healed. The whole of Christianity is based on child sacrifice.

And people seem to miss that point altogether. So the pillar of the game is based on one of the fundamental components of Christianity. I mean, when you go and take communion, you're eating the flesh of a God. You're eating the flesh of a sacrificed God. It's really an intense and dark religion in a lot of different ways.

And I think that your game captures that in such a beautiful and subtle way. And it's also mixed in with a lot of other occult elements. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you gathered the information and your understanding of the symbols that made it into the game. Well, I grew up Catholic.

I went through seven years of catechism. So I had a great deal of experience. And I also grew up as the blackest black sheet of my family. Like I was super black sheet. So I had one side. So my mom and dad were divorced when I was five. And my dad, who was a huge drug addict,

got into recovery, which came with extreme Christianity, which was like his new drug. And so the McMillan side of the family were all like this. They were all super hard, poor Christians, very fire and burnstone. And then the other side of my family, mainly my grandmother, she was very devout Catholic. And I grew up with these two sides, the same coin,

but for the most part, like the Catholic side was super ritualistic, very, I enjoyed the rituals. They were very interesting to me because they were very reminiscent of D&D and spellcasting and the specific, like I've said this before and I think possibly in the movie, but my grandma used to do a, I was gonna say spell, she would do a prayer of safe passage

whenever we would go over 17 over the hill, over in Santa Cruz. And it would always feel comforting. How did the prayer go? What was that? How did the prayer go? I don't know, she would, I think she would pray the rosary, which what I would actually do as well.

Like I, I mean, I guess it's, you know, it's like meditating or whatever else. I used to have really bad ulcers when I was little and I used to pray the rosary in order to sleep. Wow. So I mean, it goes deep. There's little stuff too. Like I remember very vividly when my,

my grandpa passed away when I was five, we would go and light candles so he would get out of purgatory. And it was just so mind blowing. Wow. And that is magic just to clarify or in my opinion, when you're that there isn't, there is no difference in a magical working and a prayer.

It's a different type of magic, you know, because it's a invoking a God, but it's still magic. You're uttering some incantation to a transcendent force to affect some change in your dimension. It's just that because Catholicism has become such a popular form of magical practice, people don't refer to it as magic anymore,

but please continue. Sorry. But yeah, but basically kind of what you're saying, like growing up, I always kind of saw it as that. My grandma felt magical. She felt, my grandma came from Mexico as well. So there was kind of like, there's this mixing of,

what is it called? Can't my mind- Santeria? Yeah, it's like, yeah, a bit of Santeria. There's, there was a, she walked the line of like, am I a psychic or am I talking to God? You know, that sort of thing. And like there were, there was a big blend

and which is why I'm so interested that I have like a big collection of weird, you know, Mexican Catholic stuff, which walks that line as well. Wow, cool. All around my house. But yeah, growing up, my grandma seemed like she was magic and it, I don't, yeah, I can't say that I ever really believed

in any of the stuff that I, that was being said, but it, the way my grandmother was with religion, it's, she was so, I guess, progressive. She, she was very like, this is my religion. This is what I believe. And nobody else is, is on the same wavelength. Like, and nobody else needs to be like, this is mine. This is my personal relationship with my God.

This is what I'm doing. Nobody else needs to do the same thing because nobody else has this personal relationship. So it was never, I never felt like I, if I didn't believe it, I, I was in the wrong, if that makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But then on the other side,

my dad's side of the family made me feel completely like the devil. And I, I was the kind of kid growing up where if I was pushed into a role, I would play the role. Like, and if I was going to be a weirdo, if I was going to be the weird, evil, dark kid, I'd totally embrace it and I'd become that kid. And I think in a lot of ways it pushed me into this,

the person I kind of am, like all these different, pushing all these different directions and kind of, you know, the, Isaac is, is an exploration of, of that, of feeling, of, of feeling bad. Yeah. Because I'm different. And it, and it, it, it, it, I, the art that you, it's so artful and that when you, as a, you know,

you're a child of divorce. Many of us are children of divorce. I've read about some of your experiences going to, you went to visit your dad on the weekends. I, and, and you would. So not only would you go to visit your dad in the weekends, but this was, I, this is after he is in recovery and has taken up fundamentalism.

Is that correct? Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. And you're going on the weekends from this magical grandmother who's, who has a very advanced connection with her religion. And you're basically landing in like a kind of hell. A, a, a judgmental, dark, hellish world.

And, uh, um, somehow you can feel it in, in that game. And I think that that, if anybody challenges me on video games, being a childish activity or anybody throws out just like, and unfortunately not many people do it these days as much, but the ill-informed idea that video games are somehow not art, your game is the game that just destroys that argument.

Because captured in the energy of this game is the feeling. You feel it, man. I like, when I play that game, I feel it. I feel, it takes me back to when I was a kid, takes me back to like the time I pissed my pants in like the second grade, you know, like in, in just the humiliation that kids feel that it seems

like adults forget about. And it's there in the cutscenes of that game. So fuck, it's great, man. But, um, I wanted to ask, do you, so you, you didn't take up Catholicism. You don't feel, do you, do you still pray? If I'm like having a panic attack or something bad's going on, I might, I might, I, I randomly prayed,

but I don't, I don't, I don't think I'd believe. I don't know. I usually pray to my grandma, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that's the thing people, one of the very,

I think one of the mistakes people make is like, they think there's a right thing to pray to, you know, like, so if you have to like figure out the right thing or you know, like, it can't just be God. It's got to be a God from the right team. And it's can't, certainly can't be your grandmother or my, or my mom or whoever is passed on. Never can you access those people, which is insane.

If you ask me, I mean, everything that dies goes back into the infinite. So it's just some component of that infinite, I guess. But man, you, is your, is your dad still around? Yeah, he's still around. He actually, he recently, he recently, a few years ago, he visited me and he asked for a copy of, of Isaac and I gave him a DRM free CD

and he, he's like, oh yeah, you know, there's some, some kids around my mobile home park and they might like it. I'm like, yeah, whatever, cool, but, you know, do whatever. And then he visited me, you know, a year later and he was like, oh yeah, like our church had a lock in and I installed Isaac on all the computers and the kids loved it.

Oh wow. And I was like, I was like, really? I'm like, I don't know. Like there are aspects of that game. I mean, the, the whole thing kind of like is, revolves around questioning Christianity. And he's like, oh no, like it's all by the book. Like it's, it's just another story in the Bible.

Like it's, wow, he, and that was a weird thing too. Like I remember thinking, my wife especially was really worried about releasing this game. She felt like it was, it might be too critical and that people would, you know, the wrong kind of people would get upset. Yes. And I didn't think so, but I was worried, you know,

I'm always, you know, and I remember preparing like, oh, what am I, what will I say when I'm attacked? And, you know, but no, it never happened. It never ever happened. In fact, there was a Christian pastor, pastor that wrote a review of Isaac praising it. Oh my God. That is nuts, man.

Again, another indication of just how, how powerful the thing is that you create it. I mean, when I, I've interviewed, I performed at the wedding of the grandson of the founder of the church of Satan. I've interviewed the head of the Satanic temple, Lucian Grieves. I've been in the presence of familial Satanists.

And your game made me feel way more creepy than being around them. Like fuck, cause you're like, and so, cause it's fascinating cause you're getting these dopamine hits. You're playing this game. Holy shit, man. I think I'm finally going to make it through. I'm not going to die this time.

And then suddenly it dawns on you. I'm steering a baby that was severely abused and almost murdered by his mom that uses his tears as a weapon. What the fuck, man? So, so powerful and dark. Do you, do you, do you don't think your dad, when he played it, had any inkling of the fact

that he was something of an inspiration for that narrative? I don't, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of other things that I pull from, from different people. Like, of course my, there are a lot of people in my family that have been very abused. I mean, I kind of come from like, I mean, I think, I think most people come from some history of abuse,

but I'm learning that I'm wrong. The more friends I make, the more I'm like, well, yeah, you were molested, right? It's like, I thought, hey, wait, wasn't everybody? What's going on here? I guess, no, but yeah. You seem very familiar with abuse. And you also seem like the other thing

that I like about the game is, and especially chatting with you now, is that the fact that this kid's power is his tears. And it works within the game when you realize that maybe the binding of Isaac is a kind of tear that shot out of you and turned into this beautiful game. Is that safe to say that it? I mean, I guess in a way, I mean,

I hate to think that people can see my work. I mean, of course you're gonna see my work and think I'm a big weirdo, which is true, but I mean, many people have had way worse than I have. I just grew up poor and had, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I'm downplaying or upplaying or what I'm doing here, but I hate to think for people to think that I'm,

my mom's a terrible mother and et cetera. Oh yeah, none of us want that to put that on our families, man. I mean, that's the problem with like a, you know, I remember going to visit my dad in the summers and it was fine. It sounded like the worst. You know, it's not like I, you know, there's a very sad and there's a bittersweet song,

a lot of us sing, which is, you know, I didn't have it as bad as other people, you know? It's a bittersweet song. It could be so much worse. I don't know. There's, so when making Isaac, which originally, you know, depending on how you design something

from the bottom up or the top down, I was designing around this Legend of Zelda shell, you know, at its core, I was trying to do, much like what I did with Super Meat Boy, I was kind of re-envisioning something, I guess in the way like Quentin Tarantino would, like I want to relive my favorite things growing up, but I want to put my own spin on it.

I want to put my own, I want to make it mine in a way. And I did that with Mario with Super Meat Boy and I did it with Zelda with the Binding of Isaac. And one of the things Miyamoto did when writing the story for the game, or just the general feel of the game, was he wrote about his childhood and how he used to explore as a kid

and that kind of feeling of, you know, being a creative kid and imagining this world and adventuring into the unknown. And I love that so much. I thought, how can I make this mine? And I started exploring my own childhood and just got darker and darker. Holy shit.

And it's just kind of like, it's not that, I mean, I was alone a lot, but it wasn't, I didn't, it wasn't a bad thing. I liked being alone. I wasn't a fan of people in general. So I enjoyed my time alone. And, you know, yeah, in a lot of ways, of course the game is about me growing up.

I mean, as an artist, I think it's really hard to create something genuine without exploring something personal. The thing I have the most experience with is me. I know who I am. And I know what I've been through. So the most honestly I can speak and the most artistically I can speak

is with my own vocabulary, my own personal experience. And I thought, okay, I'll just dump it all into this. I mean, it was, I did not think that anybody would care. I was purposefully going dark. Like I was going to make something so, so weird and so off that it could, I hope that like you, like I hope it would speak to you. I hope it would speak to people like you.

Like I hope that there is, there would be a handful of people out there who had maybe some similar experience that they could get into and understand what's going on and really love it. But for the most part, the mainstream will just totally be like, ah, that's a fucking, fucking weird game.

But it turned out that the design was very appealing, which in a way is, I guess I kind of get off on that. Like the idea that I'm forcing a bunch of people who definitely do not know what's going on, they just see it as a weird, I'm a little kid crying on shit type experience. And that's great, you know? But I feel like there's gotta be something there

that's bleeding into their brain and they're picking up on little pieces of who I am. And I guess in a way it's kind of like a twisted enjoyment of making you see these things that you're not supposed to or something like that. It's subversive. And yeah, I'm sure there's people who are just, I mean, just like the whatever youth group

that was sitting around playing this game. I'm sure there's people who don't see it. But you know what I bet? I bet that a lot of the people that you think might not get it, get it. Because that hesitation when you don't necessarily want, you know, none of us want to do the whole victim thing. Nobody wants to do that.

No one wants to be like, ah, it was horrible. You know, the silence, the naps, beginning to love the emptiness, beginning to love the silence, beginning to love the sound of the fan, the feeling of the aloneness and how it became this weird, anesthetic. And yet still you're like, it was fucking divorce, man.

And no one wants to be like, ah, the divorce broke my heart. But for a lot of people, that's the first heartbreak. That's when it all like just is fucked up. And if it's preceded by addiction, alcoholism, you know, it's instability into instability into instability. So you don't necessarily have to be getting your, you know, your butt fingered by somebody.

It can, you know, because you're getting an early glimpse. I think what happens is some people don't get the early glimpse, you know, like, and I have friends who grew up in that, where you're like, what, you lived in one house your whole life? What? Your whole fucking life?

I had that exact conversation with a friend of mine. And I was like, whoa, like between the ages of five and 17, I think I lived in at least 15 to 16 different houses. You are a gypsy. And that, you are definitively a gypsy. And it's interesting, the gypsy culture in the, in the West is particularly depressing

because at least the gypsy culture in the East embraces the never ending movement from one place to the next. Whereas in the West, our gypsy culture pretends that every new place you're gonna move, that's where you're gonna stay. And every single fucking time there's another person who marries your mom or another place to go,

packing up, unpacking, you become intimately familiar with the process of packing, moving trucks. How, you know, most people don't know, I can look at, like I gained at a young age the ability to estimate how long a move would take. You know, like I knew from the number of times we've moved. So that's pretty, pretty weird, right? And then you run into these people who are like, yeah,

you know, this is my friend from the third grade and we would play together that childhood room is still there. I mean, it's, it's, and I'm not, I don't, I love my life, I like where I'm at. But I also acknowledge how fucking weird and turbulent it was. And I think that there's a gift in it. And I think that when you see your work,

you realize how that, what you did is transmute something that a lot of us went through. And that's why I say, I bet a lot more people connect to this game than maybe you think, because a lot of us went through divorce, you know? And that game speaks to that. Yeah, it's been having, so we just had a daughter and she's, she's a year, a year and a half.

And just sitting around with my wife who grew up very similarly to me, of course, that how else are we going to find each other? Right. But to like look at this little girl and be like, you're going to live in this house forever. Like your parents are going to stay together. There's not going to be this back and forth.

Like, it's, I mean, it's, it's nice to be able to, I've learned that having a child, you kind of like cathartically fix your childhood, all the holes and all the, all the weirdness. I mean, of course, the things that made me who I am, but like you get to fix it, you get to right the wrongs. It's kind of, it's a very cathartic experience. I mean, having a kid is a religious experience for sure.

That's what everybody says. Did you, when you, when you guys, was this something when you started dating or when you rise, you're in love and this is real, you're probably going to get married. Did you just know you were going to have a kid or was it a question mark? No, I mean, my wife got pregnant when we met. And of course we didn't have the baby.

And that was, I mean, in a way that's kind of the story of Super Meat Boy, which I'd never speak of. What? But wait, can you, do you mind speaking of it here? We can jump over it, but I'd love to hear more about that. I mean, she was 15 years old when I met her and mistakes were made and we didn't have the baby. And it was very difficult for her.

It was very difficult. And her, that distance and the depression that came along with the choice was a hurdle. It was an uphill battle and it was something that bounced around throughout a relationship. And of me as this codependent person, I needed her more than anything in the world and to have that distance between us was difficult.

I mean, she did eventually get over it and was able to get through with it and then it was like 16 years between that and our baby now. Wow. And that, there was a lot of tell me if we're gonna really have a baby. Like once you open that door, it's hard to close it.

And like, is this gonna happen? Is this not gonna happen? And it was a very difficult thing for us as a couple and trying to figure out what's the most responsible thing to do, what's best for us and what's best for our future. And the stars aligned. And recently, there were a few horrible things that happened mostly with our family

and there was a minor health issue that happened. And it was kind of like, hey, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? Like, am I gonna just spin my wheels and make money? How much money do I need? Like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, the priority is straight basically. Like I do, I want, some of my fondest memories

that I have with Danielle are when we play a game together and having a baby seemed like the best cooperative game we could play and making that decision has been the most amazing thing ever for us. And I'm glad we waited because having a kid is so difficult. I have no idea how a single parent does it at all. How old are you? It's, I just turned 37.

Okay, yeah, okay, wow. So you, yes, I, oh wow, man. Yeah, so you were, you were like, what? I get it though, because that thing you just said, how difficult having a child is. I mean, for you, a game designer, an artist, somebody who's like, you earned a life of freedom, man. You don't work for some corporate.

You work for yourself, you're free. So I get it, man. Having a child is a surrender to a greater destiny. And, but whoa, man. I mean, I, you know, I'm an, if I have a child now, I'm going to be an old dad. But at that thing that you're saying, man, I feel it all the time.

Like, what am I doing? Like, why wouldn't, why wouldn't I want to do that? Or- Well, it's scary. It's a scary, intimidating thing. And it always blows my mind when I see so many people willy-nilly having kids and it's just seem like making that decision is just, I don't know.

I mean, but yeah. Like I said, the stars aligned and stars aligned. Stars have aligned for me many times in my life. And this is just one of those situations where it's like, no, we're going to do this. And it's completely life changing and it's completely great. And it just, I don't know.

Yeah, it's, it really brings you back, makes you relive everything all over again. And it totally makes your priorities change. Like the hardest thing for me right now is the war between the family man and the creative person. Like, I am a terrible person to be around if I'm not being creative.

Terrible. I'm a just awful, self-destructive mess. Oh, well, can we talk a little bit about your creative process? I'd really like to know, especially now that you have a child, what your work day looks like. No, it's definitely a lot different. I'm leaning on the people that I work with

much harder than I, and it was very difficult for me as a workaholic as well, to go from, you know, 80 hour plus weeks, you know, infinite. I don't even know what the fucking hours that I work are. You know, you work until it's done and that's it. Like, which is also very difficult to do when you have a relationship.

Right. And an obsessive work schedule who makes me feel like a man, you know what I mean? Like, it makes me feel like I'm worth something. It's the one thing that makes me feel like I'm something. Absolutely. Tell me your old, prior to the child, tell me a little bit about what a typical day

designing one of these games was like for you. What did it look like? What time did you wake up? I just get up, I get up when I get up, and I sit down and I work all day. You have your own office at your house? Yeah. So would you get up, you get up, you make breakfast,

do you take a shower, or do you just literally get up and go to the computer and get back to work? I just get up, go to the computer, especially when things are really like, you know, you gotta get shit done type stuff, like you just get up and go. What time would you wake up? Oh, it's random.

I have the most fucked up schedule in the world. That's another thing that I have to figure out, like how the fuck we can stabilize our schedule so this child actually sees the light of day. Right now we're on an early schedule, which is great. Like I'd be waking up right now normally. Yes. But we recently just flipped our schedule,

which we do a lot. I probably am like living very unhealthily when it comes to the amount of sun that I get versus, you know, sleep deprivation and stuff like that. I'll probably have to tone it down. What time are you going to bed, Edmund? Oh, it's different. I mean, a reasonable time when I get tired.

I'm very, I don't know. I found this, I found that the later I stay up, and of course Danielle's on the same schedule as I am, so the later we stay up, the more creative I feel. Yeah. I feel super, super creative. And I'm an insomniac as well, so it's like the reason I can't sleep is usually

because I've got a million ideas of things I want to do. And I got to write them down or whatever else, and I can't stop my brain from, you know, going down all the different paths. But I also feel, I'm also a total nut case in that same situation. Like it's edging into insanity. Like I'm more prone to panic attacks.

I have, I'm super paranoid. I'm just a super fucking weirdo, but I'm super creative. And motivated. And then the opposite, it's like once I come back around and I'm waking up at six in the morning and having a whole day and where I'm going out and doing stuff and whatever else and getting some work done, I feel like a regular working man.

I feel totally balanced. I feel calm, I feel healthy, but it's difficult. I always flip back around to that other person. And it's not like I feel like I need that person, you know what I mean? But I, it's difficult for me. There's not enough hours in the day. Like I just have, I tend to just,

I'll stay up another hour and I'll get some work done. I'll stay up another hour and I get some work done. And then eventually it just pushes into we're waking up when it's getting dark. And you can't, you can't do that. No, you can't. Because nothing's open. You got to move to New York.

Yeah, that's, I guess that's true. Like Santa Cruz goes to sleep at 11. So it's like. Yeah, you, you're in a place, definitely. I know exactly the, the, the world that you're in there, man and the artist life does seem to be an insomniac's life. But I, you were talking a little bit about sort of creativity and your own personal being on sort of

the precipice of madness. And when it comes to, to making things. And this is something when I'm, when I see like some, like a, when I see art that I love. So one of the things that often pops into my mind is how did they have the courage to make this without thinking that they were having a nervous breakdown? Like the, when you come up with an idea like many of your games,

especially a video, like a painting, a drawing. If I want to make some song for my podcast or whatever, I could, you know, there's a lot of the temporal risk is low. Yeah. You know, but, but for you, it's like to dive into an idea that is initially, as we discussed earlier, completely unmarketable, risky, and more than that, like on some level offensive and on, and confessional.

When you jump into that, how do you overcome the part of yourself that's saying, what the fuck are you doing, man? Are you okay? There's absolutely no part of me that ever feels that way. Oh, wow. And I, and it's probably just conditioning from, you know, growing up and just like letting loose when it comes to just

writing and, and, and comics and whatever else I throw myself into, like. What a blessing. You're blessed. That's a blessing. That's a blessing from your grandmother. Because I, and, and I think a lot of people that I know, when we see people like you driven,

Simon, like you see driven people all the time, but driven artists, almost to the point of madness. You know, I, I want to be that. But I can't, long-term projects, I don't know. It's just like, especially like ideas that I might have that are preposterous in my mind. Some evil part of me pops up as like, no way, man, no way.

There's no, go ahead. I guess for me, like as you, as you said in the beginning, like all the little shitty games that I've made over the years, right? Like I've failed repeatedly. I've, I've, I have worked on things for years that never saw the light of day. I've worked on things for years that just poof, they're gone. And I've had failures, many failures.

I've had two good games, you know, that people really know me for and tons of games that it's like, what the fuck, who fucking cares? Like I think recently I put out a game that I made in a few months with a friend of mine called fingered. It was just a little goofy game that explores the death penalty, but I thought it was fun. Can you talk about, how did it work?

What's the premise? It's a randomly generated lineup of people that are, and then you've got these witnesses that give you rough descriptions and you kind of rule out who didn't do it and who did, and then you kind of just hedge your bets. And then you have to put the person in the electric chair and pull the switch, and then you see if they did it or if they didn't, and then you go from there.

It was a super fun little project. I really enjoyed working on it, but people fucking, I mean, it was, it was garbage game to these people. I sold it for like a buck 50 or whatever, but it was, you know, they were like, pfft. It's like, well, get used to it. Cause this is the shit I made always. Like I, I'm going to make what most consider garbage

that is fun for me to do. I'm in this, I mean, I'm in this for selfish reasons and I'm not, I'm not going to apologize for that. Like I, I am in this because I need this. I don't fucking care if I make money off this. Like I never did in the past. Like if you dig it great, I'm doing this because I need this to get out of me.

I'm doing this because this is fun. This is what makes me happy. This is what keeps me going. This is what makes me feel like a person. I could give a fuck what anybody else thinks. You know, like I really don't care. And I think I don't care because I know what it's like to fail and I failed so many times

and I've learned from those things. And it's not an ideal. You just pick yourself up and you move on. Like it's, it's a, the movie is a weird illusion as well. And I'm, have you, did you watch any game or movie? Okay. So that's what inspired me. By the way, that's like that somewhere right around

watching that game is where the, our Twitter interaction happened. It's such a good game, but yeah, go ahead. Sorry. So like I, a lot of people will come up and be like, you know how to do it and whatever else it's like, I kind of wish that that movie would show. You don't, it's like a psychic, right?

A psychic, when they're scamming somebody, they will be like, oh, I'm feeling this and I'm seeing this. And then the person on the other end is going, no, no, no, but then when they get something right, they go, yes, yes. That person, this psychic is amazing. This person's so great. They're right on, they're right on.

But nobody, nobody remembers the, the misses. And I've had so many failures, but nobody's looking at them cause they were failures. Nobody's talking about them cause they were failures. And it's like, it kind of creates this illusion of success and how success works. And that's, that's the one thing that I, I kind of wish that it would, it was a little more clear.

Cause I get these people that, you know, message me and they're like, Hey, I just quit my job at, at EA where I had the secure job and I have a wife and kids and I'm going to do it. I'm going to be an independent game developer. And it's like, what the fuck? What are you doing? And it's, it's, it's, I guess it's that,

it's that illusion though. It's that illusion of instant success. Like you're just going to jump in. And it's like, I've had a, I've had a lot of experience and I had a lot of other experience with failure, with what not to do. And for whatever reason, I'm able to pick myself up and move on.

And I learn a lot. You learn a lot from making mistakes. You learn a lot from doing things just in general. And from taking risks, man. And the, but you know, like, let's talk about that guy from EA or let's talk about, you know, sometimes I get emails like that too. And from people who are like,

I'm going to, you know, and they don't say they're going to be a game designer. Sometimes they say, I'm just going to Peru. Like, you know. And, and, and, you know, part of me thinks, oh shit, oh shit. You know, this could be a big mistake. But then on the other hand, you, if somebody's working at EA and they're,

they're not getting that feeling that you, it seems like you live inside of, and that is failure. You know, that's their first failure, working at a thing they didn't want to be working at, right? Yeah, for sure. But it's a, it's really risky and earth-shattering for somebody to have that kind of failure late in life. I mean, it's, if you're not used to it, I don't know.

I've been invited to go up and talk to colleges and stuff like that, especially UCSC here. And I'll take them up on it, but I'm probably not the guy. I don't say the things that they want me to say because the first thing I walk in, I'm like, didn't go to college and you definitely don't need to go here to make games. Ah, like, what do you, and then of course it's like,

oh, so I don't know what to tell you. And I realize that I'm a different type of person. I realize that there's very different people out there. And some people like the structure and need the structure. And that's fucking great. There's, there's, it's not like it's any worse working for a company. You're not a worse person.

You're not a less creative person. It's just different types of people that have different types of motivation. And I don't think that's something that can be taught. I don't think that's something that can be explained. I just think it's different, different people require different types of fuel. Right.

And if you're going to college for game design and you haven't already made multiple games, I don't think you're going to make it as an independent game designer. I mean, it's, it's a harsh thing to say, but that's the, I think it's the truth. Like an independent game designer is somebody who is an independent artist in general

is somebody who's living it. It's a stupidly, you have to sacrifice everything. You live it. That's it. That's it. That's your life. You're, you're an artist and that's all you do. That's all you think about.

And you know, you know already who you are. You know, you're that person and you know what you need. And let me, let me point out what you just said. You said, you have to sacrifice everything. And I think that when you talk about the voice of God and you talk about the voice of God coming into a person's life. Yeah, sure.

The crazy people here, God tell them to like throw their fucking baby off the roof or whatever. But I think the voice of God is what I think of God as is the same voice that got into you, man and said, you're going to have to sacrifice everything. Edmund, you have to give it all up. You're going to have to sacrifice your whole fucking life to make these games.

And if you don't hear that voice, you know and it isn't a clear voice, that's the problem. If only, right? If only some very clear voice from the heavens popped into your head and was like, quit your job, go into the wilderness, obey me, then we'd be set. But it's a kind of, it's a, I know, I know when I set down the path of comedy,

I just, I realized early on, I remember saying this to my mom and saying this to myself, I'll just be poor for the rest of my life. Like, yeah, it's the exact same thing. And that's where, that's it. That's the archetype. That is the archetype of the person that we are. You know, that's what it is.

It's like, don't fucking care. Like, I don't care. I mean, I live poor my whole life. Like, what difference is it going to make? Like, I know what I'm doing. I know how to eat top ramen and fucking hot dogs. Fuck off. Like, I can do this.

I'm skilled at this. Sure, my gallbladder got removed. Oh, Jesus. But, you know, whatever. Like, yeah, I mean, I hear you though. Like the whole, I guess for me, the voice is more of a voice saying, you'll never be happy unless you keep going.

And like, you know, when I hit my teens and I was, you know, my initial soul search, I guess you could say, creatively trying to figure out what the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing it? Why am I here? What am I going to do? I guess I made that decision of like, I'm going to try to do this because I know if I don't,

I'll probably kill myself. Like, I'll probably end up at the bottom, you know? I'll head down some path in my father did. You know, I'm, it's all in me, you know? And unless I keep moving in this direction, logically, it seems like logically I would have to end somewhere. It's, I gotta end up somewhere. Like if I just keep going,

and it was just a lot of not giving up. Like, I mean, when I was making games in the early 2000s, I was working at GameStop. That's how I was paying the rent. I was working at GameStop and I was doing freelance work for like local music magazines and stuff like that. A lot of other independent stuff that I was doing and I had nobody really holding my hand

and I had nobody really, you know, you learn from your mistakes. I remember just doing the most logical thing possible. And when I was really desperate for work, I would just machine gun email every fucking local business and say, hey, I'm working on my portfolio. I do illustration, I do logo design, use me up. I'm going to do, I'm going to work for free.

And then I would, and they would hire me. And that's how it's like, it's seemed logical to me because I would do that. Like I would hire that person if I was a company and they were like, hey, I will work for you for free. I'm good, I don't have a lot to show for it to prove that I'm good, but I have some enough for you to believe me.

Let me work for you for free. It's like a few local magazines. I was like, I'll do your logo for free, give me a chance. I'm working on a portfolio. They're like, cool, they did it. And they're like, oh, I'm pretty good. Can you do this? Yes, but I need to be paid.

And then it's like, okay. And then it just goes from there. And it's like, I think nowadays, of course, that climate has changed, probably not good to recommend people working for free because there's a lot of people online who'll just take you for everything. But you got to work, you got to be logical.

That's the key thing with anything. You got to be as logical as possible or you're going to get taken advantage of. That's right. Yeah, you got to balance it out. Still, you got to follow that feeling, you know? And who knows? I don't know.

Like I think my idea is irresponsible to say out loud sometimes, but I don't know if you feel dead in your job. I'll tell you, here's the thing. Top ramen, when you're doing what you're supposed to be doing tastes a lot better than a steak when you're in a life that you despise, you know? Especially with when you put an egg in it.

Yes, people forget the egg. I didn't know about the egg until I started eating ramen out here. Very quickly, Edmund, if I could just ask, do you have any thoughts about virtual reality and the future of VR? If there is a future of VR, what it might be? I think we're a ways off, a long ways off.

I don't think anything really that we have currently does much more than what a game would do, except it's stuck to your head. And it's one of those things where in order to really experience VR in any kind of compelling way, you need to be able to feel something, some sort of force feedback in some way, shape, or form. Anything else is kind of shitty.

You've tried the Vive? Yeah, yeah. And I hate to say that too, because of course, like I don't want to be spitting in the face of the people who've given me these things, but it's a reality. It's just like, I honestly don't believe there's gonna be any compelling game design future

in when it comes to games on your phone. I hate to hear you say that, only because I would love to see what you would make for that game. Like, do you have it off the top of your head? And this is probably a dumb question, but in a perfect world where we have force feedback from VR, and maybe VR 10 years from now,

VR in an alternate universe, what kind of game would you make? Ah, man, I have some weird ideas for that, but there would be just really fucked up. It'd probably be, have you played The Witness? Ah, no, I haven't played that. You should, you dig it. Okay, cool.

You can tell you already from getting to know you from us talking that you'd really like it a lot. Cool. I think you totally dig it. It's like a little mini religious experience. Like it's a... I can't wait. I'll download it. Going into the mind of Jonathan Blow.

He's great. I could see VR being kind of like that, like a puzzle, an exploration puzzle experience. And I would try to explore that in some way. And the one thing that I think VR can do really well is scare the shit out of you and actually immerse you more in the world. So you could, I think, the horror genre in general

could be pretty great, but it's one of those things where with art in general, when you're giving more of a basic guideline and you're giving limitations, you'd be surprised, as you probably know, of how inspiring that can be and how it's important to have these limitations. With VR, you're going into this 3D fucking...

It's what we're experiencing now. Like it's no rules. So I think, theoretically, nothing great will come of it aside from something super into the future where you're really experiencing Westworld type shit, right? Well, I don't know. I mean, we disagree on that point,

but I don't think, I mean, I think as far as games go, there isn't like, whereas like Binding of Isaac, I've spent, well, I don't know how long, there's no way, I don't know how long I've spent playing that game, a long time, a long time. Still not very good at it, but or me, boy, Christ, man, I'm so stuck right now. I'm so stuck, but I think, you know,

as far as like applications for art, for building stuff, for communal experiences with other people, you know, that's where VR shines. But yeah, there isn't a VR game that I've spent a lot of time playing as compared to like World of Warcraft or you know, some of the other games out there. So I hear what you're saying, man.

It's kind of like the, you know, the initial, we, that controller, it's like, Nintendo had their years with that controller and they're like, we're gonna make this game that incorporates all the best of what it can do. And that was Wii Sports. And that was the only fucking good thing that ever came out of that.

That's right. And that's because Nintendo, you know, some of the greatest designers out there, they fully explored it. They had hoped that people could go further with it, but they did fully explore it. And that's it. And I hate to sound like a pessimist

when it comes to the VR stuff, but when it comes to games, like actual game design, I feel like what you're seeing right now is the best of, it's the best. Like that's as good as it's gonna get until, until there's a big change to VR where you can actually feel your environment and explore it more.

Brutal. But hey. But I've loved to be proven wrong, man. I mean, I loved, proved me wrong. So I can play some fucking great VR games. Have you played accounting? I've seen it. Okay, give it a shot.

It's quick. If you play it in 30 minutes, it's funny. I think you know what you said about horror is also true for comedy with VR. For sure, for sure. You can make really funny games in there. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. Yeah, like games like Surgeon Simulator

would be perfect for VR if it hasn't already happened. Or your lineup game. Cause you know, there's a game, cause that's the thing with VR. People don't realize it's a, it's a shared experience with a person and the goggles and someone in the room. Usually it's like a missionary thing where you,

Yeah, I've seen, there's some interesting ones. I've seen like ones where you have to diffuse a bomb and somebody else has to describe it to you and, That's it. But your lineup one. But I mean, honestly, what you're, that's not VR. Like you're talking about an augmented reality experience. Like you're talking about an out of bounds,

like you can, you can, you don't need VR to do that. You could literally have somebody in another room and have just have a DM type person that's orchestrating the rule set and have the other person, you know, giving information. It's more of like a real life game. It still doesn't, it's not, it's not utilizing what VR is. And maybe it's just that what VR is currently isn't enough

to go beyond, I don't know, maybe there isn't even anything beyond that. I'm questioning the whole thing right now because, because what, because what are we going to do? Fucking play sports. You can play sports. Like, what are you going to do? I mean, all you can, I feel like the best things

that can happen when it comes to VR in the future is scaring the shit out of somebody and making them laugh. That's great. The two things I want to do most in life. Oh, and trust me, you could scare the fucking shit out of people in VR with VR and that's great. Man, Edmund, you are awesome, man. It's so cool chatting with you.

How can be, I mean, you have a fantastic blog, if you don't mind telling people where they can find you. Yeah, dude, those, they're your polls? That's all that's on there. It's like the dumb polls I did from ages ago that were for my own personal enjoyment. Brilliant. I had fun.

I mean, that was a project in itself. I thought, hey, I'll have fun doing this little art project for a month and, you know, I'll like, I'll enjoy it. I'll get some information that'll, you know, give me a better idea of how the world works. A lot of helpful information in there. For sure, especially the butt wiping stuff.

That one blew my mind. I had no idea people stood up to wipe. Wow. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's, you know, that is a thing. I think that's intro, God, this is such a stupid way to stop the podcast, but, you know, I think there's a lot of interesting things to cover when it comes to wiping your butt.

And I think, you know, people don't realize that they're locked into a butt wiping cycle. You know, like the way you wipe your butt is like fascinating cause probably you've been doing it for decades and it's like passed on to you by your parents. The best way to loop this back around into a more meaningful conversation would be to say that that question in itself is exactly

what I'm interested in exploring when it comes to art. It's the talking about the things that people don't talk about for whatever reason. I've always been interested in wondering why is it evil that I play Dungeons and Dragons? Why is this band wicked? You know, why is that pentagram so evil? Like what's in it?

What's there? You know, I was the kid that would record myself saying, fuck, and then play it back and try to hear exactly where the power was coming from. What am I missing here? Why can't I be saying this word? You know, like the mystery and the stuff that's not said and wiping your ass is something

that nobody fucking talks about for whatever reason, even though everybody does it and we all seem to do it totally differently. I think that's the most, that's super fucking interesting. Yes. And that's, that's me. I mean, that's what I'm about. That's what I'm most interested in exploring

when it comes to art in general and just, you know, I guess society and how interesting those untold things are. And you are a master at it, Edmund, and I'm so glad that you- I'm far from a master, but I try my best. Hey man, how can people find you? I'm on Twitter, I guess. Edmund, what is this?

What is it? I lost my Twitter a while ago. I'll have all the links. Is it Edmund McMillan? I don't know. Yeah, guys, all the links are gonna be in the comment section of this episode. If you haven't played his games,

definitely download them immediately. Edmund, thank you so much for giving me this time. It meant a lot to me. Thanks for listening, pals. That was Edmund McMillan. Try out the Binding of Isaac. Play Meat Boy if you haven't played it yet. If you like this podcast, subscribe to us, please.

Just go to iTunes and subscribe or give us a nice rating. Try out Blue Apron, go through our Amazon portal. Even better, turn into a portal through which light, love, joy, blissfulness, and abundance pours in to this universe. Won't you do it? I'll see you guys soon. Hare Krishna.

It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off Great Gifts for her just in time for Mother's Day when you use it. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Use your coupon or Macy's card

and take 15% off Beauty Essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last. Plus, Star Rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at Macy's. Sign up today at Macy's.com slash Star Rewards. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices, exclusions apply.