A few months back, I mentioned Game Seeds, the card game created by Utrecht School of the Arts, Monobanda and Metagama to help game designers brainstorm both character design and entire games, by playfully combining their specific mechanics.

The post quite happily got far more attention than I would’ve imagined, and (especially after I’d posted that Monobanda had sent me an early deck of the cards) I was a bit deluged with people wondering how they might also get their hands on the Seeds. So I’m happy to report, then, that as of today the decks are now available for worldwide purchase at €10 a deck.

The team have also put together the ridiculously adorable video above to explain how the system works, and have created a new official Game Seeds site for more information on the project. Let us know if and when you create anything with it!

Game Seeds [Monobanda]

After the break, for comparison, you can see what’s new with Pac-Man. At last week’s E3 party, Namco Bandai debuted the pilot for a new 3D computer-animated cartoon starring a child Pac-Man and an army of evil ghosts. GameTrailers recorded the footage from one of the party’s TVs, so you can see it now. It’s a bit blurry-looking due to the 3D effect. It also totally lacks Marty Ingels.

Searching the web for the “definition of a game” will unearth many different explanations, each described by someone who sees games in a disparate context. The more diverse definitions you read, the more it becomes clear that “game” is one of those words that’s overloaded with meaning. If you consider that we derive what a game is from our own personal perception of play, it’s not surprising that there are as many definitions as there are individuals.

The flexibility of the term becomes a problem if you want to analyse an existing game, or create a new one. In order to design a game, it’s essential to understand the building blocks at your disposal. We can model a game in an infinite number of ways, all different, and all valid. But to be useful, a model must be complete, whilst remaining simple. It needs to be elegant.

While at this year’s PAX East I attended a panel presented by the creators of the GeekNights podcast, Brandon DeCoster and Scott Rubin. It was called “Beyond Candyland”, and sought to explore the theory behind the best German-style board games. They identified “Decision” as the distinguishing factor between games rooted in “Randomness”, like Monopoly or Trouble, and games of skill, like Puerto Rico or Dominion.

Both Randomness and Decision can determine who will win a game, as an event of either will alter the probability space of the game yet to be played. The difference is, you have complete control over the decisions you make, and can take gratification from your performance if you’re victorious through Decision. This is why we favour games that are more heavily weighted towards Decision over Randomness.

As well as Randomness and Decision, the GeekNights duo completed their model of a board game with “Psychology”. Psychology consists of the elements of a game that can not mathematically change the outcome, but augment the rules, like story. A player could choose to completely ignore the Psychology in a game, as it does not alter the probabilistic outcome of the decisions they can make. Poker is an example of a game that is almost pure Psychology. The cards you are dealt are determined through Randomness, and the probability of your hand winning against an arbitrary number of hidden hands is a solved problem. In theory you should only bet on hands with a probability of winning of more than half, so the Decision is made for you. Poker would be a pretty boring game if everybody followed this strategy, simply becoming a game of the luck of the draw. The fun of Poker is in reading and bluffing your opponents, trying to beat the odds. It is a game of accruing or falsifying information outside of the rules of play, which is achieved by reading and influencing human Psychology.

Randomness, Decision and Psychology comprise an elegant model to describe board games, but it needs a bit of work to be able to be applied generally to all games. Brandon and Scott observed that if you add Physiology as a fourth component, we are able to extend the model to include sports. They proposed that when a game rewards dexterity, strength, speed or stamina, it becomes a sport, and that perhaps videogames can be considered sports. I would draw a semantic line between videogames and sports, but agree that both are categories of games that can be classified by this simple, four-axis model.

The model is intuitively complete. All human faculties are addressed, any rule system can be specified, and we can describe all environments in which a game can be played. We now have an elegant model for the entire universe of games. Every game can be constructed from four components, and four components only: Randomness, Decision, Psychology and Physiology. This is an incredibly powerful observation, as it gives us a vocabulary we can use to accurately describe a game and compare it with any other game.

I’ve dubbed this model “The Quad”, and find it particularly useful when dissecting videogames. It’s a common crutch to say that you like a game because it’s fun. However, fun only describes what you feel when your body produces the chemicals to reward achievement. In order to understand how this state of elation is induced, The Quad can be used to identify which aspects of a game lead to you having fun. You can then look for these components in other games, or aim to recreate them in your own.

To summarise, the four elements of The Quad are:

Psychology
The aspects of a game that do not form a part of the rules, and so do not directly influence the outcome. They can have an indirect effect however, if the the player chooses to let them prejudice their decisions. These aspects can include story, character, and environmental themes.

Decision
The rules of a game whose execution are governed by player decision. The probability space of the remaining game is tangibly altered by the branches of its decision tree the player chooses to navigate. That is, the chance of a player winning or losing a game perceptibly changes with their choices.

Randomness
These are the parts of a game’s decision tree that are traversed randomly, without player input. The probability of one decision occurring over another is either specified when the game is created, or is seeded by a dynamic source during play.

Physiology
This describes the portion of a game whose outcome is influenced by the player’s physical ability. The chances of winning or losing are impacted by a player’s dexterity, strength, speed or stamina.

Let’s consider the practical application of this model to a game that a large number of contemporary titles are based on: Quake. Quake’s core gameplay requires the player to position and orientate a 3D camera, and fire a variety of projectiles along that camera’s line of sight. The targets given to the player in the game comprise of either other players or enemy controlled AI. We can break down the sequence of events in a typical piece of play to see which aspects of The Quad Quake is built from.

First, the player must decide where to position their camera to best target their opposition. This decision will be affected by the player’s memory of the map, and the dynamic information that’s being fed to them through the display and speakers. Once a decision has been made, the player must execute the correct sequence of inputs to move the camera, and release their projectile. Their success will be determined by the appropriateness of their original decision, and the speed and accuracy of their execution. The same measure of success is applied to the player’s opponents, and the winner is calculated in a straight comparison.

Decisions made in Quake can dramatically alter the result of an encounter, but do not trump a player’s superior dexterity. Good decisions alone can not overcome an opponent’s dominance of Physiology. This is mainly because the various guns in Quake require more than one hit to kill an opponent. Although making the superior tactical choice allows you to position yourself to fire the first shot in an exchange, as soon as you do so, your location is revealed, and your initial advantage gives way to who can land the most subsequent hits. Quick reactions and the accurate execution of prescribed firing patterns will dictate the result from the opening salvo. It’s interesting to note that this equation is turned on its head in other games of the genre, like Counter-Strike, where the increased power of the weapons makes landing the first hit more influential.

As well as Decision and Physiology, we must consider the other two elements of The Quad: Randomness and Psychology.

Randomness governs very little in Quake. There may be a slight variation in the spread and damage of a weapon’s effect, but the importance of this in a battle is superseded by Decision and Physiology. The only significantly random aspect of the game is in competitive multiplayer, where the opposition’s skill level is unknown until the time of play. Although this can be frustrating if faced with an inappropriately superior foe, the continually changing experience of these varying encounters results in longevity.

id Software employed sparse Psychology in Quake, as it had done in the Doom series that went before it. Without any notable storyline, context is given through the visualisation of your camera as a gun, and by presenting identifiably hostile targets to aim at. The lack of Psychology did not diminish Quake’s popularity, but provided an opportunity for other developers to evolve the genre by bulking out this aspect in their games.

By combining all of these observations together, we can conclude that Physiology is the primary influence in Quake, followed closely by Decision. Randomness and Psychology are both present, but are proportionally diminutive.

In order to visualise our analysis we can weight each of these elements subjectively. This allows us to draw a waffle chart, whose shape represents the genre of a game. We’re able to compare this type of diagram to those for other games to determine their similarity.

Other first person shooters would have a very similar chart. As mentioned above, most extensions of the genre concentrate on creating unique Psychology to set themselves apart. These variations have done very well commercially, but for me the most valid successors to Quake innovate through their Decision mechanics. Good examples of this include Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. Counter-Strike rewards strategy over dexterity, diminishing the power of a talented run and gunner, and Left 4 Dead dramatically changes your foe, presenting multitudes of weaker targets who can overrun an isolated player. The difference in the balance of Counter-Strike’s Decision and Physiology to Quake’s can be seen when comparing their respective charts.

There are videogames that have a very different shape when mapped with The Quad in this way. To illustrate the visual difference between genres, I’ve created a waffle chart for Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero’s gameplay can be described as requiring a prescribed sequence of buttons to be pushed in time with a piece of music. With minimal Decision to be made, except for discerning when to use Star Power, and no Randomness to speak of, the game would seem to be almost pure Physiology. The twist in Guitar Hero is that it offers the player extremely compelling Psychology, casting them as rock stars. From the licensed music providing the beat, to the heavily stylised visuals and plastic guitar controller, the game works very hard to abstract away from its simple gameplay. Few would argue that the combined experience is not successful. By drawing a chart of Guitar Hero, we can see that it looks considerably different to one of a first person shooter.

Although these “genre maps” are able to quickly portray the proportional influence of each part of The Quad in a game, the perceived success of each aspect is not apparent. However, this information can be conveyed by weighting each area with a score. For instance, Gears of War 2 is a highly acclaimed first person shooter in the same genre as Quake. Below is a chart constructed in the same way as we have seen above.

Notice the Decision, Physiology and Randomness lobes (blue, green and yellow) are balanced similarly when compared to Quake’s or Counter Strike’s. Yet the scale of these elements has been considerably reduced by the notable increase in weight of Psychology. This is due to the effort afforded to the visualisation, characterisation and depth of the world in Gears of War 2 far outstripping that made in either Quake or Counter Strike.

Working with this chart, we can then scale it by an additional “success” factor, or “score”. If we glance at the Metacritic review average for Gears of War 2, it provides a rough scale factor of 93%. Applying this to each of the four elements in the chart results in the below diagram.

Now imagine that instead of using a total score to scale all of the elements, each is assessed and scaled individually. Using the vocabulary of The Quad, these charts can be used to accurately describe a game’s genre at a glance, as well as giving the analyst a method of independently rating the success of each its aspects. The granularity of the information portrayed is not suitable for delivering in-depth analysis, but it’s a considerable improvement over rating a game with a single overall score.

The Quad provides a unified terminology for what we’ve already been communicating in our discussions about videogames. We lose nothing by using the terms Psychology, Decision, Randomness and Physiology in our analysis, as it doesn’t change the subjective nature of it. The benefit is a common language from which we can build and share ideas. To illustrate this I’ve created my own Gears of War 2 review chart, representing my personal reaction to the game.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t really enjoy my time on Sera. My preference is to play something innovative, and Gears of War 2 certainly was not that. These are some of the notes I made when deciding the scale factors to apply to each element:

Psychology
I enjoyed the artwork and visual effects, but found the story hokey, and the stereotypical characters bland.

Decision
I was disappointed with the variety of tactics that I had to apply during the game. Each arena had obviously optimal locations from which to fire obviously preferred weapons. The set pieces could be approached in a similar manner throughout, with no incentive to change tactics. Ultimately, the majority of the depth of Decision in Gears of War 2 had already been explored in the original game.

Randomness
The online matchmaking was competent at grouping me with similarly skilled opponents, but was not as good as Halo 3’s implementation.

Physiology
The controls gave me a wide range of options to manoeuvre in-game, including an excellent cover mechanic. My own movements were accurately translated to my avatar’s movements, and the reward for being more dexterous than my opponents was satisfying. I enjoyed the conflict between having to watch the arena in front of me, and switching my attention to the reload gauge positioned at the edge of the GUI.

My bias towards games that introduce interesting and varied Decision makes my chart significantly different to the Metacritic chart. We could interpret this as the average contributor to Metacritic finding a game’s Psychology more important than I do, and having a reduced requirement for depth of Decision. Of course, they may have simply enjoyed what was in the game more than I did; it’s difficult to tell from just a headline number.

I hope I’ve shown that if we start using The Quad to describe videogames and display our analysis with more transparency, then the quality of our communication will be improved. We all have an interest in understanding why we like or dislike a game. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll spend less money on games that we won’t like, and spend more of our precious time with the ones that we will.

Vocabulary begets understanding, understanding begets discourse, and discourse begets progress.

Jeffrey Sheen is the founder of London-based Stargazy Studios. His newly-formed indie one-man band is currently developing Huscarls, X-COM and Final Fight’s illegitimate love child. Combining A-Team style welding and a design nous built up over decades of play, Stargazy Studio’s mission is to create new, genre-bending games for an audience hungry for innovation.
www.StargazyStudios.com
Stargazy Studios on Twitter

Regardless of whether or not you’ve played any of Sid Meier’s games, or whether or not you find yourself curious as to how he became a gaming luminary, or whether or not you’ve got 24 minutes to kill — you’ve got to watch Motherboard’s latest documentary. Its focus is on the history of Meier’s game development career, as well as his participation in the 7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest held at his Alma Mater, the University of Michigan.

More importantly, this short film contains all the requisite components of a gripping piece of cinema: hardship, confrontation, self-improvement, triumph, and the imbuing of a lingering desire to go back and play all of the Civilization games again. Seriously, go check it out.

Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular “Facebook Games” era.

News reports frequently mention studies that indicate some benefit to playing video games, whether in cognition or critical thinking skills, or physical benefits like hand eye coordination or therapy. Gaynor incorporates some of those examples into his manifesto, which is that games must make the player think. It’s a bedrock design principle that will keep gamers from being an underserved constituency.

All media and genres of art have their schlock; Hollywood is a great example, so are commercialized works of fiction, paintings, you can come up with an example of high art and yard-sale garbage in all cases. But games seem to face a higher barrier to acceptance and legitimacy, both due to their origins and their nature. So it would seem to me that the obligations Gaynor describes for games are not only to gamers, but also to the medium as a whole.

An Obligtion [Fullbright, blog of Steve Gaynor, Jan. 23]

Video games by their nature rely on the input of the player to mean anything. The fact that you can fail at your entertainment is in some ways a barrier to entry for video games. But it’s also the medium’s defining characteristic, and our one inherent hook for engaging the player and making them important.

It’s our opportunity to make the player think. Not to encourage or invite players to in the way that challenging music, art or film might, but to absolutely require demonstrable logical reasoning from our audience. To immerse them in a world and motivate their progress through it with the promise of constantly evolving core interactions and intriguing fiction, then require them to engage their powers of visualization, abstract thinking and mental mapping to proceed. It’s good for the health of the player’s brain. I think of that as being meaningful and enriching entertainment.

This kind of on-the-fly problem solving is accomplished by activity in the player’s prefrontal cortex, employing fluid intelligence and working memory. One’s fluid intelligence decreases over their lifespan, making them less able to formulate new ways of thinking. However, some scientific and military studies have shown that engaging in interactive mental exercises that require us to make these kinds of connections can slow the decline of fluid intelligence, essentially keeping our brains younger and healthier as we age. They’re the kinds of mental challenges that video games can ably provide— creating and maintaining logical connections between new and abstract concepts and spaces to overcome obstacles— that might confer this benefit to players, along with their escapist fun.

Not all games work this way, certainly. As blockbuster, spectacle-focused rollercoaster games rise in popularity, we seem to see less of these sorts of challenge structures in gaming’s mainstream. When the game I’m playing doesn’t need me— when I can sleepwalk through it, when I can tune out and let it wash over me, when it doesn’t make me think— an opportunity has been wasted. Our work can be more than an empty waste of time for our players. We can entertain them while engaging their minds in ways beneficial to their cognitive wellbeing. I think that there is practically an obligation to do so, if we’re going to dedicate ourselves to creating interactive entertainment at all.

- Steve Gaynor

Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Sundays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

One of the most common questions I’m asked in interviews is, “Do you have any advice for independent game developers who are new to the scene, or tips for developers in general?” Well, I actually answered it this time: I came up with this list of indie do-s and don’t-s.

Now, I’m going to make clear that I’m not perfect and I’m sure as the years go by this list will change. But from where I stand right now, having made independent art/games for a living for the past 10 years, the advice below is crucial to all indie game designers, and all artists for that matter.

Also note that when I refer to a “designer” or “artist,” I include programmers. All aspects of art have a fine balance of the technical and creative; just because programming is viewed as a technical field does not mean it is void of creativity. The creative is visible in the work as a whole rather than in the specifics. Light and shadow are vital technical aspects of illustration, but without creativity the piece is nothing more then a photocopy of the subject, void of any personal touch or presence.

This is a list for the creative designer who strives to be independent. This isn’t advice on how to monetize your Flash game or survive financially by copying existing trends and juicing the public for their cash. This is a list for artists who are driven by the desire for creative freedom and/or to “just make some cool shit people will love.”

Anyway, here’s the list. Take what works for you and leave what doesn’t:

1. Be honest.
When I say “be honest” I mean to speak from your heart. Don’t be manipulative or condescending in your work; treat the player how you’d wanted to be treated. Honesty is extremely valuable when making art.

2. Realize you’re making art.
Game designers are artists and have advantages over non-creative jobs; think about what they are and exploit them. Your goal shouldn’t be to make tons of money. If it were, you would have gone to business school or become a doctor. This is a creative field and should be treated as such first and foremost. Financing your art comes later. This is probably your greatest advantage as an indie designer.

3. Design from the heart.
Write / design around things you’re passionate about. Put yourself into your work and show the world who you are. What do you love? What do you hate? Why? All notable film makers have a stamp, something that appears in their work and speaks to who they are. These themes will always come through to your audience, giving your work a sense of your self.

4. Take big risks.
Try to innovate the hell out of anything you make. From how your game plays to how it looks, be unique and you’ll stand out. Push your personal limits, try new genres, mechanics and aesthetics. Experimentation and risk are the keys to growing as an artist. Don’t be scared of failure; you don’t have much to lose and you’ll only learn from your mistakes.

5. Don’t bite off more then you can chew.
If you’re just starting out, think small, then think smaller. If you start on something big you won’t finish it and if you do you’ll be burnt out and probably won’t make another. A filmmaker never starts his career with a blockbuster movie. One of the easiest mistakes to make starting out is letting ambition drive you down a path you’re not ready to travel. Slow down, take your time and start simple. Prototyping is crucial for all designers.

6. Practice (make lots of small games).
Make lots of small ideas quickly; build on the ones that work. If you look at any successful or “fully realized” game in the indie scene you’ll note that it began as a simple prototype. If you get an idea that feels right, simplify it. Strip it to its core element; this element will become the glue that holds your work together. The stronger the glue the more you can add. On the opposite end, if the glue isn’t holding, move on. Don’t waste your time trying to fix something that won’t work. If it’s not interesting or fun in its primitive form, it’s not going to be when it’s finished.

7. Make the games YOU want to make.
Go with what moves you. If you’re no longer feeling something, put it down and work on what you want. I’ve found that all of my best games were ones I made quickly and felt passionate about. The ones that sucked were ones I lost interest in but forced myself to finish. If things have gone sour and you feel yourself losing interest in a project, try looking at it differently. A simple change of perspective or reinvention of an existing mechanic can make all the difference when you’re losing motivation.

8. Stand out.
Don’t make something that looks or feels exactly like an existing work. When people experience something new they’re more forgiving of its design, and in the end your creation will get more attention. This should be obvious, but somehow goes over the heads of most designers. If you notice a trend in aesthetics or play mechanics: DON’T DO THAT. Avoid trends; innovate and break new ground. Stop making goddamn ninja and zombie games and if you’re making a shooter don’t put it in space. Seriously.

9. Think critically.
99% of game design is critical thinking. Try to find holes in your designs: if you can’t fill them, move on to something else. Before you set out to work on your project you should have already given plenty of thought to how it might NOT work. Start asking how these core elements cpi;d be exploited and how might things come back to haunt you in the future. Thinking critically is the key to avoiding later conflict; always look before you leap. Take a step back from your project. Consider it the same way you would someone else’s work. If you hadn’t made it, what would you see as its strengths and weaknesses?

10. Play games.
You can’t expect to learn anything if you aren’t playing what’s out. Even if they suck, games that sell well in the mainstream do it for a reason: pick them apart and find out why. If you don’t play them, you won’t know what NOT to do when you make your own.

11. Dissect existing formulas.
All game “genres” are formulas. Level design, teaching rules, jumping patterns: it’s all according to a formula. Pick apart those formulas and see how they work. Play a shit load of games: find out what elements you like, decide why you like them, then redesign them. It’s as vital to be able to deconstruct a game’s formula as it is to be able construct one. In most cases you’ll learn much more from deconstruction. You already have thousands of existing formulas at your disposal.

12. Grow up.
Chances are you’re not a fucking kid anymore, so if you feel like making a more adult game, do so. When you’re indie you don’t have to answer to anyone, so stop designing games like you have to have to pass ESRB. I’m not saying everyone should make porn games, but why do all video games seem to have immature themes? People aren’t stupid: stop treating them like they are. Speak through your work like you would to your friends, design for yourself and don’t censor your ideas.

13. Go outside.
The world outside your room is important. It can also be very inspiring. Go take an adventure, then come home and write a game about it. That’s what Miyamoto did. I believe that you can’t be inspired without living. Life is what every artist pulls from; how could you pull from something that wasn’t there? We all strive to be great, and most of us tend to obsess over our work, but it’s important to have balance. Go do things that don’t involve video games and computers. Don’t become stagnant.

14. Stay balanced.
Many designers are prone to depression or other mental disorders. Take care of your brain and, most importantly, yourself.

15. Stay Grounded.
No matter how good you think you are there’ll always be someone better. stay humble and accept that you’re not perfect. A designer’s ego can easily put up walls that will stunt his growth just because he doesn’t want to admit he might be wrong. The moment you think you have nothing to learn is the moment you should quit. Be honest with yourself, admit your flaws and shortcomings and accept that you’re probably wrong.

16. Be open to feedback.
If a bunch of people say your game is lacking in some area, but you insist it’s perfect, chances are you’re wrong. It’s hard to take critical feedback, especially when it’s right. Loosen up, stay humble, remember you’re not as great as you think you are. If players agree that something’s wrong, you should probably take a step back to reconsider what you’re doing. But don’t make the mistake of just doing what your audience expects. If they have an issue with something, figure out why. If people don’t like how your game controls, this could mean one of hundreds of things, from how things move in the game to what buttons it uses. When responding to feedback, ask specific questions and try to find the root of the problem. Don’t attempt a quick fix by just cutting out the problem.

17. Work with people.
People are nice. Some are good at things you aren’t. Game design uses your whole brain; chances are you’re lacking in some area. Find someone who can fill your hole. In my experience, there’s a yin/yang dynamic between a person with a technical mind and one with a creative mind. I’ve found in this a perfect marriage of ideas and approaches. That’s not to say this will be everyone’s experience. But I do think it’s important to work with at least one other person. The indie game designer can easily become a hermit and having someone else in the room to validate an idea can be the one thing that stops you from becoming that recluse who bathes with bleach.

18. Network.
Talk to other designers, fans, the media about what you’re doing. You might gain some perspective on how others view your work, maybe even make a few friends. There’s no shame about wanting to talk to people about your work. The biggest misconception is to assume that people don’t want to hear about creative folks. They do. Writers love to write about you, fans want to know about your next project, and designers want to share their ideas and experiences with you. Talk!

19. Be excited about your work.
If you can’t get excited about something you’ve done, how can you expect others to be? Talk about your work and sell yourself as well as your game. If your work doesn’t excite you, why are you doing it? If you’re not happy doing what you do, stop. It’s impossible to be properly motivated unless you love what you’re doing; don’t be scared to let that passion spill into the press. Being indie means making your own rules: if your own rules don’t excite you, rethink them.

20. Join communities.
Indie game communities are booming: join one. You don’t have to post anything, but reading them will give you an understanding of the dos and don’ts of beginning game development, as well as insight and opinions about design in general.

21. Learn a little about business.
Business sucks ass, but it’s important to know something about it so you’ll know if you’re getting fucked over. This goes hand-in-hand with networking: ask like-minded people about business situations they’ve been in. Find out how much things go for, percentage cuts, sales numbers and the best places to sell your wares. It’s easy to get caught up in a seemingly amazing publishing deal if you have no perspective on how things work, and just as easy to get totally fucked over and lose your intellectual property in the process.

22. Don’t worry about being poor.
Indie game designers are starving artists. Be frugal and humble. Again, your goal shouldn’t be financial gain first and foremost, If it is, you will most likely fail. A profitable indie game designer is a rare thing. If you value money over “a job well done” then this isn’t the field for you.

23. Try to make money.
Selling your work, getting your games sponsored, using online ads or asking for donations are all means of making money from your work. You need money to eat, so try to make some.

24. Have fun.
If you’re not having fun then quit. You only live once; there’s no reason to keep doing something if it’s not making you happy.

[Edmund McMillen is an independent game designer & illustrator based in Santa Cruz, CA. Best known for his work on Gish, Braid and the upcoming Super Meat Boy. Edmund has also spent the past 6 years working on honing his craft by releasing smaller, more personal online projects like Coil, Aether and Time Fcuk.]