Rich Carlson

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Rich Carlson, also known as Zdim, is an American game developer.

Carlson was a musician in Minnesota (from 1975 to 1996) long before becoming involved with the video game industry. A keyboardist, guitarist, composer, arranger and studio musician, he performed with dozens of bands of all types in the Minneapolis area and throughout the midwest, most notably with The Bednarchuk/Jensen Band (a.k.a. First Flight) and The Willie Murphy Band (a.k.a. The Angelheaded Hipsters).

In 1997, Carlson changed professions and left Minneapolis to pursue a career as a level designer at Ion Storm, the much-hyped video game development studio in Dallas, Texas founded by ex-id Software founders, John Romero and Tom Hall.

In subsequent years he worked at Looking Glass Studios, Rogue Entertainment and Amaze Entertainment in the same capacity. He has created 3D level architecture for many well known commercial computer games including Daikatana, Anachronox, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Thief II: The Metal Age, American McGee's Alice (as "Zdim") and the first Harry Potter PC game (uncredited).

In 2001, Carlson co-founded Digital Eel, an independent video game development group, with Iikka Keränen (later joined by artist, Bill "Phosphorous" Sears). His Digital Eel credits include game design, music, sound effects and art. He co-designed all Digital Eel games to date (Plasmaworm, Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, Dr. Blob's Organism, Digital Eel's Big Box of Blox, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, Eat Electric Death! and Soup du Jour) with Iikka Keränen.