For Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone, life is but a game

A gaming icon speaks on plotting gamebooks, movie ideas, and gory endings.

THE word “legend” is not one that should be thrown around lightly. But when it comes to British fantasy author and gaming entrepreneur Ian Livingstone, no other word could possibly do him justice.

A veteran of gamebooks, computer games, and tabletop games alike, the worlds Livingstone has helped create have sparked the imaginations of countless people around the world.

Take his groundbreaking Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. The series began with The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain in 1982 and has now sold over 17 million copies worldwide and been translated into multiple languages.

“They were a new kind of book at the time,” says Livingstone at an interview in Kuala Lumpur last month

“Traditionally, books were linear, with a predescribed hero, but we created an interactive gamebook system where the reader was the hero. It was taking the appeal of role-playing games and putting them into a single player experience,” the 65-year-old explains.

“We had absolutely no idea how popular they were going to be. I was very surprised that they were being picked up around the world!”

Some of Livingstone’s more well-known works, including the renowned The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain.

Livingstone’s impressive career in gaming began in 1975, when he co-founded legendary British game production and retailing company Games Workshop with his flatmates Steve Jackson and John Peake (who left the company in 1976).

The business slowly expanded into a successful gaming manufacturer and retail chain, especially after Games Workshop secured the exclusive rights to sell the Dungeons And Dragons game in Europe.

Jackson and Livingstone proved an unstoppable partnership, changing the gaming landscape forever with products such as gaming magazine White Dwarf and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and by helping to found Citadel Miniatures, a company that manufactures miniature gaming figures.

In 1995, Livingstone became executive chairman of videogame company Eidos. He helped launch a number of major video game franchises, including Thief, Deus Ex, Legacy Of Kain, Hitman, and the legendary Tomb Raider.

He later became president for life of Eidos, stepping down in 2013 after 20 years with the company. Livingstone was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2006, and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2013, both times for services to the computer gaming industry.

On the gamebook front, Livingstone has penned many popular Fighting Fantasy titles, including Island Of The Lizard King, City Of Thieves, and Trial Of Champions. He and Jackson are also responsible for Warlock, the book that started it all.

One of his favourite creations is Deathtrap Dungeon, published in 1984, which featured a very unique dilemma for the reader.

“Through the adventure, you travelled with a non-player character, whose help you needed to get through certain circumstances. But you’re told later that only one character can survive. So you had to have a fight to the death with your friend! Which was quite a tough thing for some readers to take,” Livingstone says.

“I’m hoping that one day, a movie will be based on it. It has a dungeon exploration theme, which has never really been done before. Imagine a movie set underground, where death lurks around every corner, with deadly traps to survive! I’ve received a screenplay from a fan, which is pretty good, but there’s still a long way to go.”

Asked about gamebook plotting, the author says his methods have remained unchanged from his early days: Planning out plot branches on a flowchart, with a narrative told through 400 numbers.

(Gamebook text is numbered, with players told to go to 23, 34, or whatever option is available – hence Livingstone’s reference to “400 numbers”.)

“The most challenging part is keeping track of all the individual storylines, to make sure you don’t get caught in a never-ending loop.

“There’s also balancing it: this is a game, after all, and you can’t make it too hard or easy,” Livingstone explains.

The most enjoyable part of the process? Creating gory fates!

“That’s a real joy for me. Luring readers to fall into a horrible death trap, like landing on poisonous spikes, or being fried by a dragon. I guess you could say I have a very active imagination,” the author laughs.

While Livingstone mostly works in the video gaming industry now, he recently returned to the Fighting Fantasy world by penning Blood Of The Zombies, a new gamebook to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain.

“I realised I’d never done a book on zombies before,” he says.

“Being in the video games industry, I know there’s an everlasting desire for people to interact with zombies. So I figured now’s the time.

“I didn’t want to make it too present day, because most of my worlds are in medieval fantasies. But I needed the right weapons: killing a zombie without a shotgun doesn’t feel right. So I fused the two genres and made it in a contemporary setting, but in a remote castle.”

True to modern gaming, Blood Of The Zombies also comes with a mobile app, created by digital gamebook developer Tin Man Games. The Australian company has also converted several other Fighting Fantasy titles into apps, including House Of Hell, Starship Traveller, and Livingstone’s Caverns Of The Snow Witch and The Forest Of Doom.

“(The apps) are really good representations of the book, which add extra dimensions to them,” says Livingstone. “The record-keeping in your inventory is done for you automatically, and the dice rolls are done with 3D physics, which is really fun.

“And they also allow cheating. Because everyone cheats when they play Fighting Fantasy! The five-finger bookmark – I used to laugh when I saw it everywhere.”

(Livingstone is referring to players holding certain pages of an adventure before making a decision so they can go back if it turns out to lead to sudden death.)

Asked about the future of Fighting Fantasy, Livingstone says that he is planning to work with an old friend again.

“I talked to Jackson, and we’ll probably write one for the 40th anniversary of Warlock At Firetop Mountain,” says Livingstone.

“We haven’t done one together for a long time. It’ll probably revolve around Firetop Mountain in some way. I think we owe it to our fans, and to ourselves.”

In the meantime, however, Livingstone will keep on doing what has been a reliable source of both joy and income for him over the years: playing games.

“We learn a lot of things from games. A lot of things that happen cognitively when you’re playing games are actually building life skills. Solving problems. Learning from your mistakes. Failing in a safe environment,” Livingstone points out.

“For me, life is a game. Play comes naturally to us, and it helps define who we are as human beings.”