Sir Ian Livingstone CBE (born 29 December 1949) is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. He is perhaps best known for co-founding the Fighting Fantasy series of role-playing gamebooks with Steve Jackson. He also founded Games Workshop in 1975 and played a role in the development of Eidos Interactive as executive chairman of Eidos Plc in 1995.
Early life
Livingstone attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, at which he attained only one A-level, Geography. He has maintained strong ties with the school and visited it many times.
What is Games Workshop, and how did Sir Ian Livingstone contribute?
Livingstone and flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson started Games Workshop early in 1975. They launched a monthly newsletter, Owl and Weasel, whose first issue was given to fanzine Albion subscribers. A copy fell into the hands of Brian Blume; he reciprocated by mailing them the brand-new game Dungeons & Dragons. Livingstone and Jackson found this game more imaginative than games produced in the UK at the time and so worked out an arrangement with Blume for an exclusive deal to sell D&D in Europe.
They started distributing Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR products later in 1975. Livingstone and Jackson organized a convention for the first time in late 1975, which became known as the first Games Day. They were selling the products out of their flat, and customers used to come there looking for a store that did not exist; due to this, their landlord evicted them in the summer of 1976.
First Game Workshop
Under the guidance of Livingstone and Jackson, Games Workshop went from being a bedroom mail-order company to becoming a successful gaming manufacturer and retail chain, opening the first Games Workshop store in Hammersmith in 1977. In June of that year, partially to promote the opening, Livingstone and Jackson launched the gaming magazine White Dwarf, with Livingstone as the editor. Livingstone selected the title, which was a concept applicable to the fantasy and science fiction genres as well: the white dwarf referred to a phenomenon in astronomy as well as the fantasy creature type. White Dwarf ended the run of editorship after February 1986’s #74.
What Is the Fighting Fantasy Game Series?
In 1982, Jackson and Livingstone co-wrote The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first book in the Fighting Fantasy series, but following an instruction from publishers Penguin to write more books “as quickly as possible,” the pair wrote subsequent books separately. The series had sold over 18 million copies as of 2017, with Livingstone’s Deathtrap Dungeon selling over 350,000 copies in its first year alone. Livingstone wrote another twelve Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, including The Forest of Doom, City of Thieves, and Caverns of the Snow Witch, before marking the 30th anniversary of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain with a new gamebook, Blood of the Zombies, in 2012, and with The Port of Peril in 2017 for the 35th anniversary.
Video games
During the mid-1980s, Livingstone did design work for video game publisher Domark; he went back to the company in 1993 as a major investor and board member. Later on, Livingstone reflected, “After the success of Games Workshop, I retired, got bored, and invested in Domark to fund their cartridge development. I got in at just the wrong time—it was all going flat.” In 1995, Domark was bought by the video technology company Eidos, which had floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1990, and became the major component of the newly established Eidos plc, whose best-known division is Eidos Interactive. Livingstone resigned as executive chairman in 2002 and was appointed creative director.
In 2005, SCi acquired Eidos, and Livingstone was the only past board member retained, becoming product acquisition director. Livingstone helped maintain many of the franchises Eidos had acquired during its time, such as Tomb Raider and Hitman. He was involved in the Tomb Raider project, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, an updated version of the original Tomb Raider video game released in 2007. In 2009, Japanese video game company Square Enix acquired all of Eidos Interactive’s shares, and Livingstone was appointed Life President of Eidos, a role he resigned from in 2013.
Appearance in Bedrooms to Billions
In 2014, Livingstone made an appearance in the documentary feature film From Bedrooms to Billions (2014), a film that chronicles the British Video Games Industry from 1979 till the present. In 2021, Freeway Fighters won an adaptation over Viber and Messenger, a creation of a Talk-a-Bot company over Viber and Messenger. In 2015-2022, he became the non-executive chairman for Sumo Group. He is currently a general partner at Hiro Capital, where the company invested in Skybound Entertainment in 2022.
What is the significance of the NextGen report?
In 2010, Livingstone was appointed Skills Champion by government minister Ed Vaizey, who asked him to produce a report reviewing the UK video games industry. The ‘NextGen’ report, co-authored with visual effects firm Double Negative’s Alex Hope, was published in 2011; Livingstone described it as a “complete bottom-up review of the whole education system relating to games.” A school named Livingstone Academy was planned for 2021.
Why was Ian Livingstone knighted?
In 2002, Livingstone won the BAFTA Interactive Special Award for outstanding contribution to the industry. Livingstone was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 New Year Honors and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honors, both for services to the computer gaming industry. In 2011, Livingstone received an honorary doctorate of arts from Bournemouth University. Livingstone was awarded a knighthood in the 2022 New Year Honors for her services to the online gaming industry.
Bibliography
Here is the bibliography:
Fighting Fantasy
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- The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982) with Steve Jackson, Puffin Books
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- The Forest of Doom (1983)
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- City of Thieves (1983)
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- Deathtrap Dungeon (1984)
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- Island of the Lizard King (1984)
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- Caverns of the Snow Witch (1984)
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- Freeway Fighter (1985)
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- Temple of Terror (1985)
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- Return to Firetop Mountain (1992)
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- Eye of the Dragon (2005)
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- Blood of the Zombies (2012)
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- The Port of Peril (2017)
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- Assassins of Allansia (2019)
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- Shadow of the Giants (2022)
Fighting Fantasy First Adventures: Adventures of Goldhawk
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- Darkmoon’s Curse (1995)
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- The Demon Spider (1995)
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- Mudworm Swamp (1995)
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- Ghost Road (1995)
Other works
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- Dicing with Dragons (1982)
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- Eureka! (1984), Domark
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- Casket of Souls (1987)
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- Board Games in 100 Moves: 8,000 Years of Play (2019) with James Wallis
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- Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop (2022)