Steve Peterson (game designer)
# Steve Peterson (game designer)

Steve Peterson is an American 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 $(1981).^{:145}$ 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 $convention.^{:145}$ After this early success, MacDonald and Peterson started Hero Games as a publishing $label.^{:145}$ 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 $sales.^{:146}$ MacDonald and Peterson designed the game Espionage! (1983), which was later updated with L. Douglas Garrett as Danger International (1985).

By 1986, Peterson was working at Electronic $Arts.^{:147}$ Peterson later formed a new company, Hero Software, which licensed Champions rights from Hero $Games.^{:148}$ 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 $completed.^{:148}$ Peterson was involved, with Ray Greer and Bruce Harlick, in the Hero Games partnership with R. Talsorian Games that began in $1996.^{:150}$ 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 $system.^{:211}$ When Cybergames.com acquired Hero Games in 2000, Peterson was hired on as Vice President of Marketing and Product $Development.^{:151}$

