Sandy Petersen

Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is a game designer. Image File history File links Sandy Petersen From http://www. ... Image File history File links Sandy Petersen From http://www. ... September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years). ... 1955 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ...

Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology. The Gateway Arch, shown here behind the Old Courthouse, is the most recognizable part of the St. ... University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. ... Zoology (Greek zoon = animal and logos = word) is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals. ...

He is a well-known fan of H.P. Lovecraft, whose work he first encountered in a World War II Armed Services edition of The Dunwich Horror and other Weird Tales found in his father's library. In 1974, Dungeons & Dragons brought his interest to role-playing games. His interest for role-playing games and H.P. Lovecraft were fused when he became principal author of the game Call of Cthulhu, published 1981, and many scenarios and background pieces thereafter. While working for Chaosium he co-authored the third edition of RuneQuest, for which he also co-wrote the critically acclaimed Trollpack, and a number of other Gloranthan supplements. H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890–March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy and horror fiction, noted for giving horror stories a science fiction framework. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the... 1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ... The original Dungeons & Dragons set Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) published by Wizards of the Coast. ... A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which players assume the roles of fictional characters via role-playing. ... Call of Cthulhu 6th edition rulebook cover Call of Cthulhu is a horror role-playing game based on the story of the same name written by H. P. Lovecraft and the so-called Cthulhu Mythos the story inspired. ... 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role_playing games still in existence. ... RuneQuest is a fantasy role-playing game, first published in 1978 by Chaosium. ... Glorantha is the mythical world developed originally by Greg Stafford and that has since been used as the background for many role-playing games, especially RuneQuest and HeroQuest. ...

He worked some time for Microprose, where he is credited for work between 1989 and 1992 on the games Darklands, Hyperspeed, Lightspeed, Sid Meier's Pirates! and Sword of the Samurai. He also made minor contributions for Civilization. MicroProse Software, Inc. ... 1989 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1992 was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... Darklands is a role-playing game produced by MicroProse. ... The 2004 version of the game features a high-end 3D engine, a feature impossible to deliver with the original 1987 release. ... Sword of the Samurai is an action/simulator computer game developed and published by MicroProse in 1989 for the DOS platform. ... Civilization is a computer game created by Sid Meier for Microprose in 1991. ...

Primarily interested by the first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D, Petersen joined id Software about 10 weeks before the December 1993 release of Doom and in that time created 19 levels for it (of which 8 were based to some extent on early drafts by Tom Hall). He later created 17 of the levels for Doom II, and 7 levels for Quake. His Lovecraftian influences also affected some of the monster design for these games. Doom, one of the games that defined the first-person shooter genre. ... Wolfenstein 3D (commonly abbreviated to Wolf 3D) is the computer game that started the first person shooter genre on the PC. It was created by id Software and published by Apogee Software on May 5, 1992. ... id Software is a computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. ... December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... 1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... Doom (sometimes written DOOM) is a computer game developed by id Software in 1993, and is one of the seminal titles in the first-person shooter genre. ... In construction, level (as an adjective) is to horizontal what plumb is to vertical. ... Tom Hall Tom Hall is a game designer born in Wisconsin. ... Doom II: Hell on Earth is a first-person shooter video game created by id Software. ... Zombies attacking the player. ...

He left id Software for Ensemble Studios in June 1997. There, he has worked as a game designer on several of their Age of Empires titles, including Rise of Rome, Age of Kings, and The Conquerors. Ensemble Studios is a Microsoft-owned company that has developed many computer games, including the famous Age of Empires series. ... June is the sixth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Age of Empires, abbreviated to AoE, is a history-based real-time strategy computer game developed by Rick Goodman at Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, released in 1997. ... The rise of Rome to dominate the overt politics of Europe, North Africa and the Near East completely from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD, is the subject of a great deal of analysis by historians, military strategists, political scientists and increasingly also some economists. ... Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (or simply Age of Kings) is a real-time strategy game set in the middle ages, released in 1999. ... The Conquerors is the expansion to the 2000 real-time strategy game Age of Empires II, itself the second installment of the Empires series by Microsoft and Ensemble Studios. ...

Petersen is a Mormon, but his religion has not prevented him from designing 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." The term Mormon is a colloquial name referring to Latter Day Saints, derived in the 1830s from the Book of Mormon, one of their books of scripture, whose compiler was called the prophet Mormon. ... Romero with short hair Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is a famous figure in the computer gaming industry. ...

References and further reading

• David Kushner: Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, Random House Publishing Group 2003, ISBN 0-3755-0524-5
• GameSpy interview (2002)
• yog-sothoth.com interview
• ensemblestudios.com profile
• Pen & Paper: Roleplaying Game Credits for Sandy Petersen
• MobyGames biography