John Peake is a

game designer Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

who has worked primarily on

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

Career

In early 1975, John Peake and his school friends –

Ian Livingstone Sir Ian Livingstone (born 29 December 1949) is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. Along with Steve Jackson, he is the co-founder of a series of role-playing gamebooks, ''Fighting Fantasy'', and the author of many books within that se ...

and Steve Jackson, who shared a flat in London's

Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a district of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character, i ...

with him – decided that they wanted to make games; they chose the name "

Games Workshop Games Workshop Group (often abbreviated as GW) is a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, based in Nottingham, England. Its best-known products are ''Warhammer Age of Sigmar'' and ''Warhammer 40,000''. Founded in 1975 by John Peake (gam ...

" for their company because it reflected the fact that they would be crafting their games by hand. Peake was a craftsman and started out making

backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...

games with inlaid mahogany and cherry veneer and soon expanded into crafting sets for

mancala The mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some ...

nine men's morris Nine men's Morris is a strategy board game for two players dating at least to the Roman Empire. The game is also known as nine-man morris, mill, mills, the mill game, merels, merrills, merelles, marelles, morelles, and ninepenny marl in English. ...

, go,

tower of Hanoi The Tower of Hanoi (also called The problem of Benares Temple or Tower of Brahma or Lucas' Tower and sometimes pluralized as Towers, or simply pyramid puzzle) is a mathematical game or puzzle consisting of three rods and a number of disks of va ...

and other games. To support their newfound games business, Jackson, Livingstone and Peake started publishing a monthly newsletter, ''

Owl and Weasel ''Owl and Weasel'' was a newsletter for Board Game, board gamers, role-playing gamers and Wargaming, wargamers, published in London, England, by Games Workshop. A total of 25 issues were published from February 1975 until April 1977; it was edite ...

'' (1975–1977). In 1976, Peake, who had no interest in the new

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

industry, saw that Games Workshop was getting more involved with RPGs and decided to leave the company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peake, John Board game designers British retail company founders Living people Year of birth missing (living people)