Greg Costikyan has been a game designer since the 1970s. Costikyan worked at SPI until it was closed by TSR in 1982; he came to West End Games in 1983. His 1983 game "Bug-Eyed Monsters" brought West End Games into the science-fiction and fantasy genres, and the following year he licensed his "Paranoia" role-playing game to West End Games for publishing after trying unsuccessfully to find a publisher. Costikyan designed "Toon" (1984) for Steve Jackson Games after developing it from an idea suggested by Jeff Dee; Costikyan felt that the game system was largely "arbitrary" and that the theme behind the game was more important. West End Games acquired licensing to make a game based on "Star Wars", and Costikyan designed "", published in 1987, with help from Doug Kaufman and others.