He became a full-time staff member at Chaosium in 1982.[2][3] 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,[4] and many scenarios and background pieces thereafter.[5]
Petersen was hired by id Software in August 1993. During his interview, John Romero introduced him to DoomEd and simply asked him to build a level. Romero was ultimately happy with the results, so Petersen was brought on to production for Doom. The level from Petersen's interview eventually became E2M6.[7] He was a fast level designer and produced all maps for the third episode of Doom, Inferno. Petersen designed 17 levels for Doom II, a little over half of the 32 total. An 18th, Dead Simple, was redesigned by American McGee before release.[8]
Petersen was then involved with The Ultimate Doom in 1995 as well as the R&D phase for Quake. At the time, Quake was based on an id staff D&D campaign. Petersen was enthusiastic about the project, though he had not been a player in the original campaign as it was before his arrival at the company.[9] With id Software's designers waiting for the Quake engine to be ready for its design team, the studio sent Petersen to work temporarily at Rogue Entertainment, which was licensing the Doom engine to develop Strife.[10] Romero also credits Petersen with coming up with the title for the Hexen expansion Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. When Quake was reformulated as a first-person shooter in late 1995, id removed Petersen from the Strife team to focus on the game. The revised Quake storyline is credited to Petersen, along with 7 levels.[11]
Ensemble Studios
He left id Software for Ensemble Studios in June 1997.[12] 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.[5] 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.[13]
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.[17] Green Eye Games also produced the unsuccessful kickstarter Cthulhu World Combat (iOS, Android, Windows, PSN, Xbox Live).[18][19][20]
In June 2015, it was announced that Petersen and Greg Stafford returned to Chaosium Inc.[21] Petersen retired from the board in 2019, but continues to do occasional freelance work for the company.[22]
Peterson has a website, Peterson Games,[23] where he had sold various tabletop games, often based on his work with Call of Cthulhu. Although the site remains active, sales are now handled through Quimbly's Toys and Games.[24] As part of his ongoing work with Call of Cthulhu content he has published sourcebooks for Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder 2e. Those books adapt the Cthulhu mythos for those systems to allow for several mythos-based player character options, many monsters, new insanity rules, and much more.
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."[25]
Sandy is married, has five children, and 15 grandchildren.
