Hello! 

I'm Tim Miller and I've been making games professionally for about 15 years.  If you want the quick bio, jump to my portfolio (http://tim-miller.org/) to see my industry work and my company site (http://www.rocket5studios.com/) to see what I've been up to more recently.  For the longish version, keep reading.

I got my start as a tester at LucasArts in 1996 where I was a tester on games like Outlaws and Dark Forces (PSX version) and then lead multiplayer tester on Jedi Knight and lead tester on the JK expansion Mysteries of the Sith.  

Around that same time a little game called Quake hit the scene and I was instantly hooked - so much so that I started making levels for it with the Worldcraft level editor (I think this eventually became Valve’s Hammer editor) in my spare time.  I instantly fell in love with level design and so I knew that I had to try to get a job as a level designer.  

Being a tester at LucasArts gave me a unique opportunity to get to know the developers and luckily LEC was hiring a lot of designers out of the test department in those days so it was kind of a perfect storm for me. One of the programmers on JK, Yves Borckmans who famously made a level editor for Dark Forces and then was hired on to the JK team, hooked me up with the JK engine and level editor (Leia) so that I could make a JK level to add to my portfolio (probably the first user made JK level ever?!).  Soon after LEC posted another design opening and I applied with my JK and Quake levels as my portfolio.  I took the 2 day level design test (I’ll save that story for another post) and then they hired me into the level design department.

My first gig as a level designer was on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine which used the JK engine and level editor and scripting language (COG) so I was already pretty much up to speed on the tools.  Then I did some level design on Star Wars: Obi Wan but left the project to be the lead level designer on RTX: Red Rock which was, sadly, a forgettable platformer on PS2.  After that I was lead level designer on the Star Wars Episode 3 game but I left LEC while the game was still in pre-production.

After LucasArts I went to Secret Level to work as lead mission designer on America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier for xbox.  Once that was done I did a bit of early design work on the Golden Axe game that they did but left before production got going.

From there I went to Nihilistic Software to work as a level designer on the Conan game for next-gen but then I was promoted to lead level designer when the original LLD left the studio.  After Conan shipped I was lead designer and level designer a dual-stick zombie shooter for XBLA and PSN called Zombie Apocalypse (it was called Zombietron when I pitched it).

In 2009 my wife Cathy and I moved to Toronto. We figured this was a good time to start up our own game studio and so Rocket 5 Studios was born.  To date we’ve shipped about 6 mobile games and apps and we’re currently working on our most ambitious game yet, The Phantom P.I. which is “a comedic horror adventure game starring a paranormal investigator who helps ghosts that are being bullied in the afterlife”.  There’s a lot more to the Rocket 5 story but this is already getting too long so I’ll end it here.

Feel free to contact me (tim at rocket5studios.com) if you want to chat.
-Tim