Ted Peterson is an American writer and video game designer, best known for his foundational work on The Elder Scrolls series of role-playing video games. He is widely regarded as one of the principal creators of the franchise alongside Julian LeFay and Vijay Lakshman.
Career
Peterson joined Bethesda Softworks in the early 1990s as a junior writer after responding to a classified advertisement in The Washington Post. His first projects at the company were writing for The Terminator 2029 and The Terminator: Rampage. He then worked as a designer and writer on The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994) and served as lead designer on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996). During his tenure, Peterson wrote nearly 200,000 words of prose for in-game books found throughout The Elder Scrolls universe. He left Bethesda in 1996 shortly after Daggerfall was completed.
After departing Bethesda, Peterson joined Activision, where he worked as a writer on Heavy Gear II and Zork Grand Inquisitor. He also performed freelance writing for Bethesda on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). He spent ten years at Savage Entertainment, contributing to titles such as Star Wars: Battlefront II (PSP, 2005) and WALL-E (2008). He has also worked for Electronic Arts and Disney, and served as a story writer and editor on the twelfth season of the television series Bones.
OnceLost Games and The Wayward Realms
In 2019, Peterson co-founded the independent game studio OnceLost Games alongside Julian LeFay and Vijay Lakshman. The studio is developing The Wayward Realms, an open-world fantasy RPG described as a spiritual successor to Daggerfall. The project was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.
