NEWS

'The Binding of Isaac' was "meant to fail"


Edmund McMillen, creator of The Binding of Isaac, has gone on record stating that he thought his game was "meant to fail" but instead was saved by fans of the title.

In a feature written by McMillen himself, he stated;
“From any mainstream marketing perspective, I designed Isaac to fail – and that was my goal from the start,” he said.
McMillen's financial success of Super Meat Boy, he thought he could create something challenging and in three months The Binding of Isaac was born.

After five months of averaging about 150 sales per day the game suddenly saw an increase in sales;
“Our daily average started to climb. 200 copies per day turned into 500 copies, then 1,000 copies, and by the seven-month mark Isaac was averaging sales of more than 1,500 copies a day and climbing,” the developer revealed.

“I couldn’t explain it – we hadn’t put the game on sale or anything, so I was clueless as to why sales were continuing to grow.”
Gamers began posting videos on YouTube promoting the game;
“Over 100 videos every day, each getting tons of traffic. Isaac had found its fanbase, and that base was growing larger and larger. Not bad for a game that was meant to fail,” McMillen noted.

“At the time of this writing, there are well over 30,000 videos of Isaac on YouTube, countless pieces of fan art, animations, and plush toys all over the Internet, and over 30 fictional fan blogs where people can ask characters in Isaac questions and get in-character responses. It’s totally surreal. Something in Isaac just spoke to a large group of creative people, and they held him up and ran with him,” he added.
Have you played The Binding of Isaac? Let us know in the comments.