Ian Livingstone

Ian Livingstone CBE is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. Along with his friend Steve Jackson, he is the co-founder of the popular and influential series of "Fighting Fantasy"roleplaying gamebooks and the author of many books within that series. He is also one of the co-founders of the prominent games company "Games Workshop".

Livingstone co-founded "Games Workshop" in early 1975 with flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson. They started publishing a monthly newsletter tilted "Own and Weasel", and sent copies of the first issue to subscribers of the recently defunct fanzine "Albion", Brian Blume received one of these copies and so sent them a copy of the new game "Dungeons and Dragons" in return. Livingstone and Jackson felt that this game was more imaginative than anything being produced in the UK at the time, and so worked out an arrangement with Blume for an exclusive deal to sell "Dungeons and Dragons" in Europe.

In the late 1975, Livingstone and Jackson organised their first convention, the first "Games Day". While selling game products directly out of their flat, their landlord eventually evicted them after people kept coming to the property looking for a store that did not exist. But while they were living in a tiny trailer, the two were expanded "Games Workshop" from being a bedroom mail order company to a successful gaming manufacturer and retail chain, with the first store opening in Hammersmith in 1977.

Sadly in 1976, Peake, who had no interest in the new role-playing game industry, saw that "Games Workshop" was getting more involved with RPGs and decided to leave the company.

 

In 1980, Livingstone and Jackson began to develop the concept of the Fighting Fantasy game book series, the first volume of "Fighting Fantasy" was published by Puffin in 1982. While the two co-wrote the first book together in the series, the pair began writing subsequent books separately upon receiving instruction from publishers "Penguin" to write more books faster.

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 formed the major part of the newly created Eidos Interactive. In 2005, Eidos was taken over by SCi and Livingstone was the only former board member to be retained, taking on the role of product acquisition director.

Livingstone secured many of the company's major franchises, including "Tomb Raider" and "Hitman". He has especially been with the former series since the very beginning, proudly watching as it became the huge commercial success it is today.

More recently, the Livingstone Foundation is trying to gain permission from the government to build a publish school in Hammersmith that would specialise in teaching 800 students aged 11-18 STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. The idea emerged as Livingstone, then Life President of Eidos, launched the next Gen skills campaign, which successfully lobbied government to add computer science to the national curriculum. If the Livingstone School is approved, it should open next year and begin teaching kids not just how to use technology, but how to create with it as well!

Livingstone wants to teach computer science to the next generation in a different way. He wants to move away from what he calls the "Victoria broadcast model of talk and chalk" to "actual learning". This, he says, is essential to the UK's economy, digital future and, hopefully, the video game industry. "We're educating children for jobs that don't even exist today".

Despite the fatigue I was experiencing that day as I rushed to meet a deadline for a certain school module (Same old, same old...), I really did find myself enjoying this talk and frankly found it to be rather different to the past ones I had attended. I thought it was a splendid idea that he is planning to open a school for children that teaches computer science, and I suppose I envy those children once they get the chance to enrol there.

Honestly all I really knew about Ian Livingstone before I attended this talk was his involvement with the "Tomb Raider" series, but it is pretty amazing to know how much he has contributed to the game industry over the last few decades, I am even tempted to pick up a few of those "Fighting Fantasy" books now.

James G. Wall

James G. Wall is freelancing film maker and a recent graduate from (From 2010 to be exact) Leeds College of Art. "The Truth About Romance" came out in 2013 on Youtube and was his debut feature film (After having worked on a number of short films back during his college years), it was shot over 14 days in July 2012 under a budget of only 250 sterlings.

It probably doesn't sound like much when you hear that a film was made under such a small budget in such a short period of time, but imagine that this was your first ever feature film and that you aren't actually a big name to anyone around you. Imagine how difficult it is to get an entire cast and crew to work with you until the end unless you have some decent enough connections. Image that you are still a small timer and that most people just won't even spare you any attention. Just... imagine if you had started it all on your own.

While we probably could do most of the voice acting for our own animations (If we are good enough). When it comes to films, different actors and actresses are most definitely needed. It just really helped that James already knew a fairly decent network of people to work alongside him on this project, as well as other people that specialise in other areas, such as camera work.

Promoting his film was another incredibly stressful and tiring process, which James did not let up on. When he had held his first fundraiser (Obviously for such things as travelling costs and equipment), luck was unfortunately not on his side as a bid deal charity had came out at exactly the same time, and so he had to try again a little while later when his first time failed.

Not surprisingly (Up to this point), social media played an incredibly big part, it was also through there that he had received a surprising amount of support and promoting from folks he didn't know (Even through Instagram), as compared to people he knew in real life... that unfortunately didn't give him the faith and support he really needed for such a project. 

James never stopped promoting his film, making sure that he would reach every single person he knew in life, spending late nights just emailing folks and kindly asking if they could do some preview reviews of his film (That they will of course post on their own blogs, or whatever social media they happen to use the most) too as a another way to spread the word and generate interest.

During filming, there were many issues that he and his crew had many issues to deal with, such as locations, bad weather, or even worse, when one of his actors or actresses decide to pull out at the last minute due to better offers. But despite all of that, despite how he probably groaned a little in dismay each morning he woke up after a short period of rest, James had admitted that it had probably been the best time of his life, seeing that this was after all what he had trained himself to do, and isn't that one of the most important things to remember when we push ourselves to the brink of insanity working on such huge projects? To remember that we really loved it in the first place?

While James makes more money freelancing than he did when he use to work full time, it still wasn't as easy as that from the beginning, before he could actually leave his previous job, he first had to make sure that his freelancing career would actually kick off, that there were enough folks that would like him to hire him on a more regular basis.

All in all, social media is once again known to create the biggest impact when one wishes to get themselves into their desired industry. One needs to get as many connections as possible, have a professional side to them (Especially when it comes to the social medias they reach out form), and relentlessly work away at promoting themselves.

Of course, you must also remember not to act like an overconfident douche who thinks he is better than everyone, and be courteous and respectful to everyone (Especially the professionals). It will take a lot of hard work, but it will be worth it in the end