Steve Jackson Steps Back From CEO Role at Steve Jackson Games

Steve Jackson is stepping down as CEO of Steve Jackson Games, handing day-to-day leadership of the company to long-time employee Sabrina Gonzalez. The change, announced in a blog post on 11th September, also sees managing editor Allison Page promoted to Chief Operating Officer.

Jackson is not retiring, nor leaving the company he founded back in 1980, as he will be remaining President of Steve Jackson Games. Jackson has said that the new structure will allow him to spend moe time on design and development rather than executive management.

Sabrina Gonzalez takes over as CEO

Sabrina Gonzalez has worked with Steve Jackson Games since 2013, beginning as a production artist before moving through increasingly senior production roles.

Her early work included Munchkin reprints, advertising material and the visual design for the company’s Munchkin Tavern presence at Gen Con. She later became Production Manager and has servbed on the Steve Jackson Games board since 2021.

Gonzalez also spent a period working outside SJG in game manufacturing, giving her experience of the production side of the industry.

She says her priority will be balancing new games capable of bringing younger players into the company’s audience, along with continued support for SJG’s extensive catalogue.

“The goal is always to make great games that people love,” she said in the announcement.

The company has products such as Ogre and Car Wars whose histories stretch back almost half a century, with GURPS remaining one of the industry’s most recognisable and longer lasting roleplaying systems, and of course Munchkin has been a major part of SJG’s businesses for more than two decades,

A new GURPS4th Edition Revisedrulebook was recently crowdfunded alongside a new supplement called Ring of Fire, based on a novel series by Eric Flint, whilst a new edition of the Munchkin Roleplaying Game was announced in partnership with Lynnvander Studios only last week. The ambitious Seven-Part Pact TTRPG, from imprint Possum Creek Games also raise over $1,000,000 on Kickstarter this summer.

Allison Page becomes COO

Gonzalez will be joined in a senior management by Allison Page, who has been promoted from Managing Editor to Chief Operating Officer. Page joined Steve Jackson Games in 2023.

Before entering the company she worked in narrative design, theatre and comedy, including serving as Executive Artistic Director of San Francisco comedy organisation Killing My Lobster.

Her new job places her closer to he practical running of the company, oevrseeing the processes that take projects from idea through development and into production. Page has described herself as a problem solver and says part of the role will involve making sure staff have clear expectations and the resources needed to keep projects moving.

The pairing certainly gives Steve Jackson Games something of a new leadership generation without breaking continuity with the existing company.

Jackson had only recently returned to the CEO chair

Steve Jackson hasn’t always been the company’s CEO throughout its history. He first stepped down in 2014, when Phil Reed became CEO. Meredith Placko took the position in 2023 but left in April 2025, with Jackson temporarily taking direct control again, with department heads reporting to him while the company worked out its next leadership structure.

Now, 17 months later, with the appointment of Gonzalez, Steve can take a step back from the day to day running of things and concentrate on designing again.

Nearly half a century in games…

Steve Jackson’s first published game was Ogre in 1977.

Created for Metagaming Concepts, the small format science-fiction wargame pitted conventional military forces against a gigantic cybernetic tank and became one of the landmark titles of the early microgame boom.

Jackson followed it with Melee and Wizard, which developed into The Fantasy Trip roleplaying system, which returned with a new edition after a successful 2018 Kickstarter.

After leaving Metagaming, following disagreements over the development if the line, Jackson founded Steve Jackson Games in 1980, with success quickly following.

Car Wars appeared in 1981, combining armed vehicles, post-apocalyptic highways, and tactical combat into one of the defining games of the early 1980s. The fantastic Illuminati followed, transforming secret societies and global conspiracies into a brilliant and hilariously fun card game. Then, in 1986, came GURPS.

Steve Jackson had wanted a roleplaying system that was not tied to one particular genre or fictional world. Developed through the early 1980’s, and released in 1986, Generic Universal RolePlaying System - or GURPS as it is known - became a groundbreaking system and one of the more popular roleplaying games of the following decade.

GURPS greatest strength was not only its core rules, but the extraordinary range and quality of supplements that followed. GURPS books covered fantasy, science fiction, horror, superheroes, espionage, historical eras, technology, religion, alternative history and dozens of highly specific subjects. A number of licensed setting books came out, including GURPS Riverworld, GURPS Wild Cards, GURPS Lensman, GURPS Witch World, and GURPS Discworld. Even other TTRPGs got the GURPS treatment, with titles such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Traveller, Conspiracy X, Castle Falkenstein, and Deadlands among them.

One of my own very early credits appeared in a GURPS title, GURPS Cliffhanger, which I helped playtest was released in December 1989.

GURPS supplements were fantastic resources regardless of whether or not you actually played the game itself. Many of the books developed reputations as useful reference works and some of the highest quality of writing and content in TTRPGs of the time.

For a generation of RPG players, the phrase “theres probably a GURPS book for that”, become only half a joke.

Then Came Munchkin

The Munchkin Card Game appeared in 2001. The game took familiar dungeon-crawling RPG behaviour - kill monsters, steal treasures, gain levels, and sabotage your friends - and reduced it into an accessible card game built around John Kovalic’s artwork and an endless supply of RPG jokes.

Players begin at Level 1, kick down dungeon doors, fight increasingly ridiculous monsters and collect equally ridiculous treasure and equipment to make themselves more powerful. Defeat a monster and you generally gain levels and loot. Reach Level 10 and you win! The complication is that everyone else at the table can interfere, strenthening the monsters you fight, throwing curses at you, or offering you help at usually an extortionate price. Alliances therefore tend to last precisely as long as they remain advantageous. Steve Jackson Games own wonderfully concise description remains “Kill the monsters! Steal the treasure! Stab your buddy!”.

The game become a phenomenon. Steve Jackson Games has sold well over 12 million Munchkin games and its many supplements worldwide, and the range has grown vastly beyond the original fantasy parody. By 2021 an official collector’s cehcklist already stretched to scores of core games, expansions, and mini-expansions - and deliberately omitted 44 licensed properties because there were so many of them! Those licenses have included Marvel, Harry Potter, Rick and Morty, Batman, South Park, Scooby-Doo, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, Pathfinder, Conan, Shadowrun and, more recently, Critical Role’s Vox Machina. Steve Jackson Games own home-grown offshoots have ranged from Star Munchkin and Munchkin Cthulhu to Munchkin Zombies, Super Munchkin, and Munchkin Apocalypse.

The game, at times, kept Steve Jackson Games alive with the game accounting for 30% of the companies turnover in 2003, growing to around 75% in 2008!

Jackson later created the lighter push-your-luck Zombie Dice and sanity crushing Cthulhu Dice games.

The Secret Service Raid

Of course Steve Jackson Games also gave us one of the weirdest episodesin tabletop gaming history.

On 1st March 1990 agents from the United States Secret Service raided the offices of Steve Jackson Games while investigating computer crimes linked to employee Loyd Blankenship, a hacker and author of the forthcoming GURPS Cyberpunk book.

Computers and other equipment were seized, including anything connected to the GURPS Cyberpunk book, with the Secret Service claiming the book was a “handbook for computer crime”. The manuscript was rewritten using older drafts when the material wasn’t returned, eventually being published later that year.

Steve Jackon Games went on to successfully sue the Secret Service for damages arising from the loss of revenue due to the removal of their computers, as well as invasion of piracy. The case was supported by the newly formed Electronic Frontier Foundation.

What’s next for Steve Jackson?

Steve Jackson Games is 46 this year, and its founder is 73.

Rather than announcing his retirement, Jackson has said he intends to focus on game design and development. Something he has been involved with for over half a century, with the 50th anniversary of his first published game (Ogre for those who may have skim read this article and missed it’s earlier mention) coming up next year.

Given the number of classics he has created over the decades it’ll certainly be interesting to see what comes next.

Regardless, Steve Jackson has played a major part in the industry, from its early days in the 70’s all the way through to today, and many of his designs are still enjoyed as much today as they were when they were first released. In fact, after writing this article I have a strong urge to get a copy of Illunimati off the shelf and back on to the gaming table. Thanks for all the fun Steve, and good luck with the next chapter!