Sandy Petersen

Sandy Petersen
Sandy Petersen at Lucca Comics & Games 2011
Born	Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen (1955-09-16) September 16, 1955 (age 68) St. Louis, Missouri
Occupation	Game designer

Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of RuneQuest and creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. He later joined id Software where he worked on the development of the Doom franchise and Quake. As part of Ensemble Studios, Petersen subsequently contributed to the Age of Empires franchise.

Biography

Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and developed a love for dinosaurs at age 3. He studied paleontology in college and later attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology.^[1]

Work

Chaosium

He became a full-time staff member at Chaosium.^[2] His interest for role-playing games and H. P. Lovecraft were fused when he became principal author of Chaosium's game Call of Cthulhu, published 1981,^[3] and many scenarios and background pieces thereafter.^[4]

He authored several critically acclaimed RuneQuest supplements for Avalon Hill and Games Workshop.^[4] Petersen served as co-designer for West End Games's Ghostbusters role-playing game.^[4]

MicroProse

He worked some time for MicroProse, where he is credited for work on Sid Meier's Pirates! and Sword of the Samurai.^[4] Between 1989 and 1992 he worked on the video games Darklands, Hyperspeed, and Lightspeed. He made some contributions to Civilization.^{[citation needed]} Petersen was laid off in 1992 and was jobless for 5 months. He considered that period as one of the worst times of his life.^[5]

Ensemble Studios

He left id Software for Ensemble Studios in June 1997.^[6] There, he worked as a game designer on several of their Age of Empires titles, including Rise of Rome, Age of Kings, and The Conquerors.^[4] During this time, he was a frequent poster on the HeavenGames forums under the username ES_Sandyman. He ran a popular series of threads, "Ask Sandyman", where forum members could ask him about anything they wanted.^[7]

Other works

Petersen was the executive producer for the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness which was nominated for awards at the Chicago International Film Festival and Warsaw International Film Festival. It was produced by H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Motion Pictures in the style of a 1930s black and white horror film.^{[citation needed]}

In April 2011^[8] he served as the publisher of horror magazine Arcane: Penny Dreadfuls for the 21st Century.^[9]

Petersen took a professorship at The Guildhall at SMU in 2009 following the closure of Ensemble Studios, where he taught several courses on game design.^[10]

Petersen worked at Barking Lizards Technologies as their creative director, after leaving The Guildhall, and worked on their iOS release Osiris Legends.^{[citation needed]}

In mid-2013 Petersen led a successful Kickstarter campaign by his company, Green Eye Games, to produce the boardgame Cthulhu Wars. Over US$1,400,000 was raised achieving over 3,500% of the initial target. This success allowed the creation of more figures (60), map expansions and additional scenario options.^[11] Green Eye Games also produced the unsuccessful kickstarter Cthulhu World Combat (iOS, Android, Windows, PSN, Xbox Live).^[12][13][14]

In June 2015, it was announced that Petersen and Greg Stafford returned to Chaosium Inc.^[15] Petersen retired from the board in 2019, but continues to do occasional freelance work for the company.^[16]

Personal life

Petersen is a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but sees no conflict between his faith and his design of games involving Satanic elements. While working on Doom, he said to John Romero, "I have no problems with the demons in the game. They're just cartoons. And, anyway, they're the bad guys."^[17]

Sandy is married, has five children, and 15 grandchildren.

Credits

Video games

Role-playing games

• Call of Cthulhu (1981)
• Ghostbusters (1986)

Board games

• Cthulhu Wars (2015)
• Theomachy (2016)
• Orcs Must Die! (2016)
• Castle Dicenstein (2017)
• Evil High Priest (2018)
• The Gods War (2018)
• Hyperspace (2019)
• Planet Apocalypse (2020)

Films

• The Whisperer In Darkness (2011)

See also

• Dragon

References

External links

• Official website
• Ask Sandy Series @ Age of Kings Heaven (1999-2001)
• GameSpy interview (2002)
• yog-sothoth.com interview
• "Pen & Paper: Roleplaying Game Credits for Sandy Petersen". Archived from the original on 2008-05-21.
• MobyGames biography
• The Guildhall @ SMU Homepage
• (in Italian) An interview in Italian language on RiLL.it (2011)