Eric Goldberg (game designer)

• 1. Introduction

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  Eric Goldberg is an American game designer who built much of his career inside the tabletop role-playing game industry. Long before it became a satirical classic, Paranoia started as a home-grown design that Dan Gelber ran for his own local gaming group. Two friends from Gelber's circle, Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan, talked him into turning that home game into something professional. That conversation eventually triggered a dispute over who legally owned the game. Goldberg's design credits also include tactical combat games, a revised edition of an older war game, and a storytelling board game built from written paragraphs. What happened to Paranoia after that dispute, and where Goldberg's design work took him afterward, is the rest of this story.

• 2. Building Games At SPI

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  Commando put players inside a single soldier's boots, running man-to-man tactical combat while also handling character creation and skill systems. Simulations Publications, Incorporated, known across the hobby as SPI, published the design.

  DragonQuest followed in 1980, and it grew into the largest role-playing game that SPI ever released. The following year, in 1981, Goldberg also contributed to Thieves' World, a game built around Chaosium's shared fantasy setting of the same name.

  Greg Costikyan worked alongside Goldberg at SPI, and the two had already been friends for years by that point. During this same period, Goldberg returned to an earlier SPI title. He produced Eric Goldberg's KURSK as a second edition of the original KURSK wargame, which SPI had first published in 1971. That new edition reached print in 1980, the same year as DragonQuest.

  West End Games hired Goldberg in 1983, drawing him away from SPI and into a role that would soon put Paranoia's future in his hands.

• 3. West End Games And Paranoia

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  As Vice President of Research and Development, Goldberg now held a formal position inside West End Games. Dan Gelber had already passed along his notes on the home-grown game he called Paranoia. Goldberg and Costikyan turned those notes into a full manuscript for a role-playing game.

  Gelber, Costikyan, and Goldberg were then able to license Paranoia to West End Games itself, now that Goldberg worked there. Ken Rolston helped rewrite the rules, and West End Games published Paranoia in 1984.

  Tales of the Arabian Nights reached players in 1985, a storytelling board game for West End Games based on written paragraphs.

  Costikyan and Goldberg left West End Games together in January 1987. The pair then formed Goldberg Associates, a game company that did not last long. Paranoia, though, stayed under the ownership of the company they had just walked away from.

• 4. The Fight For Paranoia

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  West End Games declared bankruptcy in 1998, more than a decade after Costikyan and Goldberg had left the company. Costikyan and Goldberg moved to recover the rights to Paranoia, but West End Games founder Scott Palter resisted their claim.

  A judge ruled in 2000, returning the rights to Paranoia to its original creators. Costikyan and Goldberg then licensed the game to Mongoose Publishing, which began producing new Paranoia books in 2004.

  Paranoia XP became the name of this new edition, and writing it involved more than just Goldberg and Costikyan. A colleague named Varney joined them, and the three reached out to and actively collaborated with Paranoia's online fan community. They worked through an official blog and through the fan site Paranoia-Live.net.

  Paranoia had already outlived one company that tried to control it. Years later, Goldberg would help build something with no tabletop precedent at all.

• 5. A New World

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  In 2019, Goldberg and Raph Koster founded Playable Worlds, a new game company. The two are currently developing an MMO called Stars Reach inside it.

  Stars Reach has not yet been released, leaving the newest chapter of Goldberg's design career still being written.