When I was in middle school, I drew sketches for an amazing video game full of blood, huge bosses, epic worlds and a plot leading an immortal hero through hell, the end of the world and beyond.

Then I grew up ... but little has changed.

Super Meat Boy began as a simple Flash prototype that I created in my free time with my Internet friend John McEntee in three weeks. I had no idea that it would become one of my most popular Flash games, not to mention the release of a full-blown console game.

In 2008, Microsoft and Nintendo hired me to create something for their online stores. Initially, I wanted to make Gish 2 for Microsoft , and Nintendo was more interested in the extended version of Aether., but the main factor that influenced me was the friendship that had accidentally started.

I met Tommy Refenes in 2008. Over the years, I managed to work with a lot of programmers, and the relationship between artists and programmers was always a little alienated. Working with Tommy was reminiscent of talking with a college best friend, we quirked and threw tricks that enraged everyone around us. I immediately realized that any of our joint projects would be interesting, that’s how Super Meat Boy turned out .

We just wanted to do something interesting and had fun creating this game.

The contract to create a console game was a big breakthrough, our chance to show everyone who we are and what we are capable of. Without any pressure.

What we did well

1. We used our own engine and tools

Tommy: When I tell people that I made the engine and tools myself, the majority asks: “Why?” My FlashBang friends tried to convince me to use Unity in every conversation, but I firmly adhered to the decision to create my own tools development and engine.

The most important reason for this is the level of control. When it comes to code, I am obsessed with control: I want to understand everything that happens in my code base. Then, if something breaks, I will know exactly where it happened and how to fix it. In addition, I took up games to write them, not scripts. I like all aspects of game programming, from the engine to the gameplay. We are indie and can do whatever we want, and thanks to my skills, I literally enjoy the development of the engine.

It took 18 months to create the Super Meat Boy , from the first line of the engine code to the last line of the error message code before being sent for XBLA certification. Personally, it seems to me that this is a record time for a game with such a volume of content and for two developers. I am sure that we were able to handle this because I was involved in the code. When an error occurred, I immediately tracked it, regardless of the platform on which it was detected. Not many tools were used

for the Super Meat Boy . The in-game level editor turned out to be invaluable because it allowed Edmund to create levels visually, without fussing with the code.

Another tool was the Flash Exporter I created. In general, it was a script that packs all the Flash characters into a single texture and exports animation information with sound tags. He justified himself during the first export made by Ed Meat Boy. We got sounds, animations and everything you need in one quick export operation, which the engine could easily manage and call it if necessary.

2. Design environment

Edmund: Almost from the very beginning, both me and Tommy were a little annoyed by the very strict work environment that most developers advised us to follow, so that we were taken seriously and we could achieve success.

I remember the day we received a letter from Nintendo in which we were asked to take photos of the developers and write our biographies. It seemed crazy to us how seriously everyone takes an industry whose goal is to entertain.

Tommy and I bought the funniest sweaters that we could find that day, went to Sears Photos and took a picture there, which became a photograph of our team. It seems that we also composed completely ridiculous biographies of the developers, which Nintendo then published in its press releases along with our photo.


Tommy Refenes and Edmund Macmillen

I want to say that the most important thing in our work was fun and interest. It was important for us that we always enjoy what we do, and we convey the love of our work in interviews, videos, at conferences, and even in the design of the game.

Tommy and I became very close during the development process, and Super Meat Boy was the result of this. We enjoyed working on this game, and could not restrain our feelings when it came to making decisions. Super Meat Boy was a "for my own" joke that suddenly got out of hand. I think the most attractive thing about SMB is that any video game player can understand this joke.

3. Innovation in design: back to basics

Edmund: When Tommy and I talked about the possibility of a remake of the Mario formula , we never mentioned it in public. It was impossible to talk about Mario, even to remember him closely, but as a designer I wanted to at least try.

Super Meat Boy is Super Mario Bros , but made by me and Tommy. If we wrote a dzdok, then it would be just that.

That is, from this point of view, the design of the game had a very solid foundation, but over the previous 20 years, games have changed a lot. The developers abandoned the complexity, simplicity and accessibility were above all.

We sought to return the complexity of that retro era, as well as reinvent the very idea of ​​complexity. The biggest part of the complexity of the old games was annoyance, which, as we thought, should be eliminated by all means in order to give the players a sense of completeness without disappointing them.

At its core, this idea was very simple: take life, reduce respawn time, make levels short, and goals always visible. On top of all this, we added constant positive feedback, even death became something interesting, because after the player still masters the level, he can watch an epic demonstration of all previous deaths. The replay function allowed the player to be reminded that through his own actions he was improving. In addition, she reinforced the feeling of completeness, of victory in a difficult competition.

4. Soundtrack

Edmund: Danny Baranowski is an amazing musician, but in my opinion, one of the reasons for his music to match the game was the internal work of the system.

From the very beginning, I thought it was important that Danny had all the rights to the music he created for the game. It seemed logical that the artist would invest more in his work if he feels that it reflects himself. We wanted Danny to get all the income for his work, and that seemed logical.

Danny's work became an expression of his self. The music is crazy, obsessed, complex and full of life. It was all these elements that were needed for us for the SMB soundtrack , and this was achieved: we just let Danny create music that he could be proud of.

Soundtrack SMBbecame a terrific addition to the game - it strengthens the heartbeat, enriches all aspects of the gameplay and is not forgotten for a long time. I think it all came out because we trusted Danny as an artist and just let him do what he did well.

5. Steam

Tommy: Steam is an awesome platform and I can't find words to express my admiration completely. The ability to quickly release updates within just a few hours after detecting an error greatly simplified the release on PC. If Steam had a different code update system, everything would be more complicated.

In addition, Steam listens to its developers. The Steam team took into account our proposals on how to develop sales, and we, in turn, listened to them. Working with Steam has never been like the traditional relationship between the publisher and the developer, it resembled a mutual collaboration in order to earn more money and release a quality game.

We love Steam.

Something went wrong

1. Personal expenses

Edmund: It cannot be said that our personal expenses were some serious mistake, because they became a huge motivator for the completion of the game, but they definitely represented a problem in the last few months of development.

At some point I needed to have an emergency operation on the gallbladder, which made a hole in my budget of 50 thousand dollars, because I could not afford insurance.

We had no real money at all, even all the comics that we printed for GDC and PAX were obtained thanks to barter: my wife made plush toys for sale in the Newgrounds store in exchange for the cost of printing.

The situation was critical at several key development points, but I have been on the verge of poverty for the past 10 years, so for me this was not a big problem. And, frankly, we had problems much more serious.

Tommy: There was a period when my bank account was -800 dollars. It’s bad when you go to the supermarket to buy Coke Zero and you get a refusal. It turned out that each of these Coke Zero cans cost me about $ 40.

2. Missed WiiWare

Tommy: When We Initially Announced Super Meat Boyfor WiiWare, we planned no more than 100 levels, without cutscenes and unlockable characters. We wanted to make a direct port of the Flash game with some additions, and nothing more. Then we suffered, but I don’t think it’s bad, because we made just the game that we wanted. The bad thing was that we could not publish the game for Wii.

In the process of creating the game and adding content, it became clear to us that it would be almost impossible to fit into the WiiWare size limits. I always subconsciously sought to publish, but cutting the game down to 50 MB meant removing a bunch of content that was an integral part of the game.

Edmund: I’m still saddened by the fact that we did not release on Wii, and I would like that. When publishing on WiiWare became impossible, we looked at SMB sales options.in Wii retail stores, but alas, none of the publishers we met saw Wii as a profitable investment at that stage of development. Therefore, we finished the story with Wii.

3. Release on PC

Tommy: Publishing a game on several platforms with a two-person team is quite difficult. PC release was a bit problematic due to testing. It seemed to me that we have a sufficient set of test machines. We had computers from the minimum suitable for the game (Acer netbook) to powerful quad-core. I thought we took into account all the options: we had ATI and NVidia video cards. But obviously this was not enough.

On the day of release on the PC, we were inundated with a bunch of bug reports, start-up and exit failures, and much more. In the first few days after the release, I answered about two thousand letters. I felt like the last jerk before the release on XBLA: every time I fixed something, something else broke.

It was very difficult to switch from stress release in XBLA to release on PC within one month. We had a sense of completion, immediately replaced by a sense of failure. The next game we will test more thoroughly on the PC, and most likely, we will outsource this task to companies specializing in testing.



4. The last two months of hard work before the release in XBLA

Edmund: At the end of August 2010, our producer from Microsoft called us. He told us that an autumn advertising campaign similar to Summer of Arcade was coming. At that moment, we had four months to complete, but in order to be able to graduate during this campaign, we had to pass certification in two months.

Such a term seems impossible. We were told that if we do not have time for the autumn campaign, then we will have to postpone the game until spring or try to release it on our own, without much support. At the same time, we risked significant losses. Microsoft explained that all games in the campaign will receive their own week of release, very active coverage, Major Nelson reviews and a demonstration at PAX and other events. This ad campaign was to be called Game Feast.

At that time, our financial situation became dangerous and it seemed to us that if we did not get into this autumn campaign, then there would be no hope for us. We couldn’t postpone it until spring, and the release without Microsoft’s support was like suicide, so we decided to put everything on the line and try to manage in two months what was planned for four. These two months were the worst in my life.

The pressure, the amount of work, and the overall stress of development were extremely exhausting. In those two months, we both did not have a single day off, we worked 10-12 hours daily. At the end of development, it turned out that for several weeks I slept less than five hours a day. I remember my breakdown in September, when it seemed to me that we were stuck in some sort of nightmare, where one day repeats itself again and again.



Tommy: Due to such tight deadlines, we added new functions in parallel with error correction, that is, every time I turned on the computer and checked the error database, all the work that I did the previous evening turned out to be useless. I worked and fixed 100 errors in the evening, reduced their number to 50, and the next morning there were already 200 errors.

This lasted for long weeks. I was weak, angry and tense. My parents brought me food, because I literally didn’t leave home during these two months. I remember constantly repeating to myself: “Don’t die until you make a game,” because I really was afraid of this. I felt miserable, my blood sugar jumped [approx. Per .: Tommy Refenes - Diabetic]but I had to plow and fix the mistakes. I don’t know if it made me stronger ... but at least I somehow managed to survive!

Edmund: I think we were hiding from each other the complexity of the whole situation, so as not to push even more.

In the evenings, I often told my wife that I could no longer, I did not want to make this game anymore, it was not worth it, and I would readily leave and survive all the losses just to return to normal life. She answered: “let's talk when you calm down”, I went to bed, got up after five hours and again lived the same day.

5. Release at XBLA

Edmund: The development process has been completed, Super Meat Boyreceived several awards at PAX, and the press was already starting to aim its spotlights at us. Many websites and magazines said the Super Meat Boy would easily become a Feast hit, and possibly a major new indie hit, but Microsoft businessmen weren't sure.

We were told that the price is too high, the graphics are too rough, and does not catch the eye, like other games for Game Feast: Comic Jumper and Hydrophobia . Our heart sank when we were informed that according to forecasts our game will be sold in the same way as Hydrophobia , if not worse, and yet, in their opinion, it will become the second most profitable game in Feast.

These forecasts were even more disappointing after the release of Hydrophobia: according to statistics, in the first week less than 10 thousand people played it. If Microsoft's forecasts were correct, then we were in full ...

A week later they released Comic Jumper , to which the public reacted in the same way, although sales were slightly better, but still insufficient by XBLA standards. Game Feast seemed like a huge bomb, and some sites have already written about it, as the failure of the

Super Meat Boy was released on October 20, along with Costume Quest. For four days it was advertised third. We did not receive any promotional bonuses during the release, like previous Game Feast games (exclusive release week, first ad slot and Major Nelson review), but we were told that if Metacritic’s pricing and sales were good, we would be more actively advertised.

By the third day after the release, we already overtook the total results of Hydrophobia and Comic Jumper for the week, on Metacritic our game was in second place in the list of XBLA games, and word of mouth spread information about it at an insane speed.

We were placed in first place in advertising on the fifth day, and have never been removed from there. We never got a Major Nelson review, nor did we explain why Microsoft released SMBalong with Costume Quest . We were not told why, despite the fact that we exceeded all expectations, we were still not treated as promised, even when active advertising of other Game Feast games, such as Comic Jumper, continued .

Therefore, we were baffled and it seemed to us that they were using us. I still don’t understand why everything turned out that way. Maybe Microsoft just wanted to pull away from Game Feast? Perhaps they did not believe in our success? Or maybe we were very unlucky in the most competitive time of the year for the video game industry?

Be that as it may, the biggest mistake in the development of SMB was that we were killed for the sake of advertising, from which we essentially did not get anything.

Meat itself

Tommy: It's hard to talk about some kind of disappointment ... we're not done yet! We needed to complete the editor, portal and Mac version. It was difficult, because we already felt that it was over, as if we had crossed the finish line. But then, as if someone said: “Do you want to participate in another race?”, And we are like: “Yes, it will probably be fun.”

Edmund: And then you understand that it will be the same race, there will be no prize at the end, and at that moment you begin to feel sick.

In my opinion, all this was worth it, because I did the game with a friend. If I did it with some stranger, with someone you can’t joke with, then the whole process would be very sad and I would regret everything.

Tommy:In general, I feel that the game was worth all this stress. We started out as two simple guys without a single finished game, and ended up creating the fourth-rated PC game in 2010, sold 400,000 and won over 15 Game of the Year awards.

Edmund: It was an honor for me to create a game in which we have invested so much soul, and which so many have appreciated. It's nice to be living proof that two college-abandoned guys with no money will be able to make a multi-platform console game at the cost of just a little brain injury.

Technical details

Developer: Team Meat
Number of developers: 1 Edmund, 1 Tommy, 1 Danny
Development time: 18 months
Release date: October 20, 2010 (XBLA), November 30, 2010 (Steam)
Platform: Xbox 360, PC