As the end of 2021 comes into view, we thought we would end the year with one final bang. From the age of paper-based gaming to the digital era, the legendary Ian Livingstone CBE has had a career that has spanned many decades and covered gaming in all its many forms. Not only has Ian been involved with the games industry since the mid-1970s, but he is also massively involved in education which is more connected with our games industry than ever before. We wanted to sit down with Ian and discuss how gaming has evolved from the days of tabletop and find out how gaming can be used to help shape the education industry today.
How would you describe your career?
“My career has had four main parts to it, each very different. Firstly launching Games Workshop and White Dwarf then moving onto writing the “Fighting Fantasy” Gamebooks with Steve Jackson. I then got into video games and was involved in launching “Tomb Raider”. Lastly working in education with the Livingstone Academy which gives students the skills they need for the 21st century. It’s all distinct but I think it’s impossible to choose which one gives me the most enjoyment because I still enjoy them all.”
Games Workshop was founded in 1975 and is still running today, how would you compare the two?
“There’s no comparison. When we started Workshop it was 3 school friends who wanted to turn our hobby of playing games into some sort of business. We wanted to reach out into the community and connect with like-minded people. One of our little fancyings was a magazine called “Owl and Weasel” which we sent out to everyone we knew. One of the copies made its way to Gary Gygax who sent us “Dungeons and Dragons”, we played it, became obsessed, ordered 6 copies and became the distributor for the UK for 3 years as we tried to scratch our living selling D&D. But of course, it grew and grew and grew.”
It’s clear games have meant a lot to you, do you still find the time to play?
“We still do. I’m sat here in a room with 1200 board games. I like sitting around a table with like-minded friends, doing deals and backstabbing people whilst having lots of fun. The quality of games today is amazing, not to mention the components and mechanics. In the early days, games weren’t so great apart from a few. We continue to play board games and we have done during the pandemic using things like Tabletopsimulator with an open zoom window for slagging each other off. It’s been the same group of people since the 80s.”
What makes a successful tabletop game?
“Games have to be engaging and they have to be challenging. To my mind, a game is great if the strategy is greater contributed to winning than luck. Everyone likes a little bit of luck, so long as it doesn’t become a total random affair. It just needs a little bit of fairy dust. If you are playing a five player game, it shouldn’t feel like five separate games all happening at once. It needs to have lots of interaction, negotiations, making deals. There are many layers. It has to have a simple idea but be difficult to master. The better player should win invariably but not all the time.”
From board games to gamebooks, Fighting Fantasy made reading a game. What do you think is its impact?
“It’s very, very rewarding to see that we have helped children enjoy the love of reading. Normally a book is a passive experience and a linear storyline. In “Fighting Fantasy” you are encouraged to make choices and you give the reader agency. Specifically, through generation Z who live their lives through social media, I think “Fighting Fantasy” gamebooks speak to that generation. That empowerment and that choice. From an educational point of view, whilst they were criticised as being games rather than books, eventually people realised how marvellous they were for raising literacy levels. They’ve been proven to raise literacy levels by 17%, it improves critical thinking, problem-solving, and allows children to fail in a safe environment and not be punished for making a mistake. Over time everyone can be a winner. It encourages creative writing and creating art. Children enjoy themselves and in my mind learning should be an enjoyable experience and therefore reading should also be an enjoyable experience. I’ve had lots of fun over the years going into schools and reading out the choices. Have a class do a show of hands and find out which decision should be made. A world of monsters and magic and treasure and adventuring really stimulates the imagination. These books stimulate the imagination a lot. Video games tend to stimulate the senses but “Fighting Fantasy” is all about the imagination.”
Education has been a large part of your career, how do you think it could benefit from the games industry?
“I think you can gamify any subject as long as people don’t think children are playing games all day. You can apply that to any subject. In 2010 I petitioned that there was not enough creators and engineers in our industry. We did a review and found that the real problem lay in schools. Schools were teaching pupils how to use Word and Excel and use other peoples software instead of teaching them how to create their own software. They could play a game, but couldn’t make a game. They could use a website, but couldn’t make a website. ICT was effectively teaching students how to read but not how to write. We made several recommendations. The first was to put computer science on the national curriculum as an essential discipline. Creative thinking is not like a vertical in the creative industries it’s actually horizontal, it underpins everything. Stripping out creativity to my mind is a shame when we are so good at being creative as a nation. It’s so important that they know how to code. They don’t need to write all the code themselves but if they know how to build using code they’ll be in a much better place. They can be in control of their future in a world that is being transformed by technology at an unprecedented rate every year. There’s no point teaching like robots when they won’t be able to compete with the real thing when they take over all jobs requiring repetition. So, to my mind, computer science is the new Latin. It underpins the digital world in the same way Latin underpinned the analogue world and for the 21st-century child it’s an essential skill on par with literacy and numeracy.
What’s your advice for those in education?
“I think I was typical of many children where I loved learning hated school. Children love learning, they want to learn and they learn all the time. Their curiosity knows no bounds. I’m not blaming teachers for one second. It’s the system of which we are. There is such a need by the department for a standardised metric where you can mark one person against another. That feeling of failure should be irradicated in my mind because, in time, everybody can be a winner. I think working on projects so students learn cross-curricular, multifaceted learning. We have to make them work-ready and world-ready. Let them enjoy the experience. If they learn by doing they won’t forget that. But if they are learning by having someone talking at them chances are they’ll forget that in a few weeks time. I think it’s key to contextualise learning and give them skills as well as knowledge.”
Do you have any advice for someone trying to break into the games industry today?
“The tabletop and video game industries are booming right now. If you can contact a studio in your area and try and get some experience. You could even design a board game and send it to a publisher or self publish it through Kickstarter. With video games, everything is digital now and so you can monetise a global audience. There are fewer barriers to reaching the consumer. To start, I think you should join a company and learn your craft. Eventually, you will have enough money to start your own company.”
