Eric Goldberg (game designer)
| Eric Goldberg | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Game designer |
Eric Goldberg is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career
For Simulation Publications (SPI), Eric Goldberg designed Commando, a man-to-man tactical combat game featuring character creation and skills.[1]:99 Goldberg also designed DragonQuest (1980), SPI's biggest roleplaying game and perhaps its first true roleplaying game.[1]:99 Goldberg also contributed to Chaosium's Thieves' World (1981).[1]:85 Goldberg and his long-time friend and SPI co-worker Greg Costikyan approached Dan Gelber about turning Gelber's RPG design called 'Paranoia' from a game he ran for his local group into a professional product.[1]:186 Gelber gave Goldberg and Costikyan his notes and they turned those ideas into a complete manuscript.[1]:186 In 1983, Goldberg took a job at West End Games as the new Vice President of Research & Development.[1]:187 Gelber, Costikyan , and Goldberg licensed Paranoia to West End Games, and Ken Rolston helped rewrite the rules before it was published in 1984.[1]:187 Goldberg designed Tales of the Arabian Nights (1985), a paragraph-based storytelling board game.[1]:189
Greg Costikyan and Goldberg left West End Games in January 1987, forming the short-lived Goldberg Associates.[1]:191 When West End Games declared bankruptcy in 1998, Costikyan and Goldberg tried to recover the rights to Paranoia; although West End's founder Scott Palter fought this, a judge gave the rights back to the creators in 2000.[1]:194 Costikyan and Goldberg licensed Paranoia to Mongoose Publishing, which began producing new books for the game in 2004.[1]:398 In writing the new edition called Paranoia XP, Varney, Goldberg and Costikyan reached out to and actively collaborated with Paranoia's online fan community through an official blog and through Paranoia-Live.net.[2]
Goldberg was also an Editor at National Lampoon. He also made the video game "Midnight Movie Madness" with his college friend and co-worker at National Lampoon, Mark Howard.