| Steve Peterson | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Game designer |
Steve Peterson is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Steve Peterson typed up the ideas and spent hours reviewing the rules for the superhero role-playing game that George MacDonald had been working on, and which eventually became Champions (1981).[1] MacDonald and Peterson had only enough money to allow them to print 1,500 copies of the game and hand-collated the pages to save money, and they sold their new game at Pacific Origins 1981; they were surprised at how well it sold, selling 1,000 of their 1,500 copies at the convention.[1] After this early success, MacDonald and Peterson started Hero Games initially as a publishing label.[1] MacDonald and Peterson opened an office for Hero Games in 1982 and asked Ray Greer to be their partner handling marketing and sales.[1] MacDonald and Peterson designed the game Espionage! (1983), which was later updated with L. Douglas Garrett as Danger International (1985).[2]
Peterson began working at Electronic Arts by 1986.[1] Peterson later started the new company Hero Software, and used this to license the rights to Champions from Hero Games.[1] Peterson got four designers and programmers together in 1990 with some established artists from Hero Games, as well as Hero founder Ray Greer to create a Champions computer game, but the project was never completed.[1] Peterson was involved, with Ray Greer and Bruce Harlick, in the Hero Games partnership with R. Talsorian Games that began in 1996.[1] Mike Pondsmith of R. Talsorian, with and Hero Games owners Peterson and Greer built conversion rules to connect the Interlock and Hero rules systems, resulting in the Fuzion system.[1] Cybergames.com acquired Hero Games in 2000, and they hired Peterson as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development.[1]