| Ian Livingstone | |
|---|---|
 Ian Livingstone in 2006. |
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| Born | 1949 Prestbury, Cheshire, England |
| Occupation | fantasy author and entrepreneur |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
Ian Livingstone (born December 1949 in Prestbury, Cheshire, England) is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. He is a co-writer of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and co-founder of Games Workshop.
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Early life
Livingstone attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, and left armed with (he claims) only one A level in Geography. He has retained his close links with the school on numerous occasions including to donate money for a refurbishment of the ICT suite, and also to give a speech and present awards to the GCSE graduates of 1998.
Career
Games Workshop
Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop in early 1975 with flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson,[1] and began distributing Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR products later that year.[2]
Under the direction of Livingstone and Jackson, Games Workshop expanded from being a bedroom mail order company to a successful gaming manufacturer and retail chain. In June 1977, partially to advertise the opening of the first Games Workshop store, Livingstone and Jackson launched the gaming magazine White Dwarf, which Livingstone edited for the first 74 issues.
They opened a number of Games Workshop stores and then Ian and Steve together with Bryan Ansell founded Citadel Miniatures in Newark to make miniatures for games.
Fighting Fantasy
In 1981 Jackson and Livingstone devised the concept of mixing a role playing game with a book, resulting in the Fighting Fantasy book series. The first Fighting Fantasy book was co-written by Jackson and Livingstone, but following an instruction from publishers Penguin to write more books "as quickly as possible", the pair wrote subsequent books separately. The series has sold over 14 million copies to date, with Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon selling over 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom alone.
Videogame industry
In the mid 1980s Livingstone did some design work for video game publisher Domark, and in 1993 he returned to the company, this time as a major investor and board member. In 1995 Domark was acquired by the video technology company Eidos plc, which had floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1990, and formed the major part of the newly created Eidos Interactive. In 2005 Eidos was taken over by SCi and Livingstone was then the only former board member to be retained, taking on the role of product acquisition director. He contributed to the Tomb Raider project entitled Tomb Raider: Anniversary, an enhanced version of the original Tomb Raider game which was released in 2007.[3]
Awards
- In 2002, Livingstone won the Gift of the Academy in the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards for outstanding contribution to the community.
- Livingstone was awarded an Order of the British Empire, for "Services to the Computer Games Industry" in the New Years Honours List 2006.
References
- ^ Livingstone, Ian (April 1975). "Editorial". Owl and Weasel (Games Workshop) (3): 2.
- ^ Livingstone, Ian (July 1975). "Editorial". Owl and Weasel (Games Workshop) (6): 10.
- ^ http://au.gamespot.com/news/6161633.html
External links
- Biography
- GameSpot Interview - Interview with GameSpot about the Tomb Raider series and the console wars
- Ian Livingstone's profile at MobyGames
- Ian Livingstone Article at Titannica the Fighting Fantasy Wiki hosted by Wikia
- Ian Livingstone's speech at the Game Based Learning Conference, London, March 2009
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