Tommy "Egghead" Refenes is an American video game designer and programmer. He is most famous for his work on the game Super Meat Boy, a platformer he created together with designer Edmund McMillen.

Early life

Refenes started programming when he was 11 years old and has worked professionally since he was 18. He first worked on a website after the owner threatened to take legal action over a parody Flash game he created. He left North Carolina State University and later told a gaming blog called Brutal Gamer, "If you want to be a programmer, do not go to college." He also has Type 1 Diabetes, as shown in the movie Indie Game: The Movie.

Career

Refenes began working at Seventy-Two DPI in August 2001. He managed their website and servers during this time. In August 2003, he was hired by Learning Station. There, he created server software and applications using programming languages such as Flash, C++, PHP, and ASP. In July 2005, Refenes decided to move into the computer game industry. He joined Streamline Studios, where he helped improve and adapt the Unreal 2.x engine from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360. In May 2006, Refenes and Aubrey Hesselgren, a game designer, started a company called Pillowfort. Their first project was a game they named Goo!. In 2008, Goo! won the grand prize for Best Threaded Game in the 2008 Intel Game Demo Contest. It also received third place for Best Game on Intel Graphics. The game was later canceled, and Refenes left the studio in January 2009.

In 2009, Refenes co-founded a company called Team Meat with game and graphics designer Edmund McMillen. Refenes served as the programmer and co-CEO. The only game they published together is Super Meat Boy. McMillen left Team Meat in 2017, and they are not expected to work on future projects together. In 2020, Team Meat released a game called Super Meat Boy Forever. Refenes worked as a designer and lead programmer on this project, but McMillen was not involved. McMillen later said he would not return to the series.

In March 2010, at the Game Developers Conference 2010, Refenes criticized Apple's App Store. He called it "awful" and "horrible." He compared the games on the App Store to the simple Tiger Electronics games that were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Seven days after Refenes gave this speech, Apple removed a game called Zits & Giggles from the App Store. Refenes had created and sold the game on the App Store to show what he believed were the problems with the App Store. In response to the removal, Refenes and McMillen released a game called Super Meat Boy Handheld on the App Store. The game used the art style and gameplay of the Tiger handheld series. Refenes described it as "all the branding of Super Meat Boy, without the actual gameplay or art from Super Meat Boy… and all for ONLY A DOLLAR."