Steve Peterson (game designer)
| Steve Peterson | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Game designer |
Steve Peterson is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career
When George MacDonald started work on role-playing games by adding more detailed super powers to Gamescience's Superhero: 2044 RPG and ultimately creating his own original system, Steve Peterson typed the game up, which eventually became the superhero RPG, Champions (1981).[1]:145 MacDonald and Peterson had only enough money to print 1,500 copies of the game and hand-collated the pages, and they sold their new game at Pacific Origins 1981; they were surprised to see it sell very well, selling 1,000 of their 1,500 copies at the convention.[1]:145 After this early success, MacDonald and Peterson started Hero Games as a publishing label.[1]:145 By 1982 MacDonald and Peterson opened up an office and asked player Ray Greer to join them as a partner and to handle marketing and sales.[1]:146 MacDonald and Peterson designed the game Espionage! (1983), which was later updated with L. Douglas Garrett as Danger International (1985).[2]
By 1986, Peterson was working at Electronic Arts.[1]:147 Peterson later formed a new company, Hero Software, which licensed Champions rights from Hero Games.[1]:148 In 1990, Peterson gathered together a group of four designers and programmers as well as a few long-time Hero artists, as well as Hero founder Ray Greer to create a Champions computer game, but the project was never completed.[1]:148 Peterson was involved, with Ray Greer and Bruce Harlick, in the Hero Games partnership with R. Talsorian Games that began in 1996.[1]:150 Mike Pondsmith of R. Talsorian, and Hero Games owners Peterson and Greer built conversion rules to connect up Interlock and Hero Games, resulting in the Fuzion system.[1]:211 When Cybergames.com acquired Hero Games in 2000, Peterson was hired on as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development.[1]:151