Steve Jackson Games (SJG) is a game company that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games. It was founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson.

History

Founded during the hey-day of role-playing games and the birth of Dungeons & Dragons, SJG created several role-playing and strategy games with a sci-fi bent. SJG borrowed and expanded upon ideas pioneered by strategy game companies such as Avalon Hill and TSR. Despite these similarities, SJG had a unique feel all their own and became popular with their releases. Games such as Ogre, Car Wars and G.E.V (an Ogre spin-off) were popular during SJG's early years.

Today SJG publishes games of various varieties (card games, board games, strategy games) and genres (fantasy, sci-fi, gothic horror); they also publish the book Principia Discordia, the not-so-sacred text of the Discordian religion.

Raid

On March 1 1990, because of a misunderstanding about a game under development called GURPS Cyberpunk, SJG's offices in Austin, Texas were raided by the U.S. Secret Service. The raid was part of Operation Sundevil, a nationwide investigation of computer crime. More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages and attorneys' fees of US$51,040 to SJ Games, ruling that the raid had been careless, illegal, and completely unjustified. Cyberpunk popularizer Bruce Sterling discussed the affair in his book The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. The case also motivated the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. See GURPS Cyberpunk for more information on the raid and the ensuing case.

Best-known games

• Car Wars, futuristic battles between automobiles
• Chez Geek, a card-game parody of Geek culture with many spinoffs and expansions
• G.E.V., a spin-off of Ogre focusing on futuristic but "conventional" infantry, artillery, and armor units
• GURPS, the Generic Universal Role Playing System
• INWO, Illuminati New World Order, the trading card game of world domination
• Illuminati, the original game on which INWO was based
• In Nomine, a game about Angels and Demons based on the popular French roleplaying game In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas
• Knightmare Chess, a chess variant played with cards
• Munchkin, a card-game parody of hack-and-slash roleplaying with many spinoffs and expansions
• Ninja Burger, fast-paced ninja delivery card game, with a supplement called Sumo-Size Me
• Ogre, the classic simulation of future war involving a cybernetic armored juggernaut
• Toon, the cartoon roleplaying game

External links

• Steve Jackson Games' official web site
• "Fantasy for Fun and Profit"article about the company from the Austin American Statesman, April 18 1988