Eric Shadrach Miller
PhD in Arts & Technology, based in Tampa. I spend my time figuring out how to make AI agents feel like real people, and I got here through game design, creative writing, and a lot of tabletop RPGs.
How I Think About Work
A few things that come up in everything I build.
I Build What I Research
I don't write papers and move on. Every framework I propose ends up as code in a real product.
Everything Is a System
Board games, VR sims, personal productivity tools. I see the same patterns everywhere and I can't help but design them.
AI Should Help People
Not replace them. The stuff I build is meant to teach, to build empathy, to make people better at the hard conversations.
Where I've Been
Games, academia, Switzerland, EA, and eventually Axon.
Lead Narrative Systems Designer
Catalyst and lead inventor of the patent-pending agentic system (WO2025072878A1) powering verbal skills training in VR.
Senior Game Designer
Designed gamified fitness experiences blending game mechanics with exercise hardware.
PhD in Arts & Technology
McDermott Fellow. Dissertation on interactive storytelling games and computational thinking. Worked with the Narrative Systems and Games Research Labs.
Technical Artist / Game Designer
Built Unity applications for medical clients and designed new game projects. Bridging creative and technical workflows.
Writer & Quest Designer
Wrote dialogue, story structure, and mythos for SkyKeepers, including 15 sidequests and the full main storyline.
Associate Technical Artist
Validated game assets using Python and C#. Streamlined 3D artist workflows in Perforce, Photoshop, and Maya.
Technical Teaching Assistant
Mentored students in Unity, C#, C++, and Perforce across Game Design and Programming programs.
Narrative Designer & AI Coder
Coded creature AI and animations while writing game narrative, scripts, and character concepts.
MFA in Creative Writing
Graduate study in creative writing. Teaching assistant and tutor at Sylvan Learning Centers.
BA, English Lit & Creative Writing
Double major in English Literature and Creative Writing.
Areas of Expertise
Patent
Automatically Generating Audio Responses for Simulation Systems
WO2025072878A1 • Patent Pending • Filed September 2024
Lead inventor. Co-inventors: Mark Cusick, PhD & Robert Murphy. Assigned to Axon Enterprise Inc. A system for dynamic NPC dialogue generation in VR, where agents respond contextually to user verbal and physical inputs. One of the first “agentic” narrative loops shipped in a production enterprise environment.
“I identified the limits of decision trees in my dissertation. At Axon, I got to build what comes next.”
The through-line of my career
Let's Talk
If you're working on AI for training, education, or anything that needs agents to act like people, I'm interested.
That's the Short Version
I wrote about the future of interactive AI, then I helped build it. If that sounds interesting, take a look.