02: Creative Networks 02

Games Workshop

Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop in early 1975 with flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson. They started publishing a monthly newsletter, Owl 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 sent them a copy of the new game Dungeons & 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 D&D in Europe. They began distributing Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR products later in 1975. In late 1975, Livingstone and Jackson organised their first convention, the first Games Day. While selling game products directly out of their flat, their landlord evicted them in the summer of 1976 after people kept coming to the property looking for a store that did not exist.

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, with the first Games Workshop store opening in Hammersmith in 1977. In June of that year, partially to advertise the opening, Livingstone and Jackson launched the gaming magazine White Dwarf, with Livingstone as the editor. Livingstone picked the title as it had meaning for both fantasy and science fiction readers: a white dwarf could be a stellar phenomenon, or a white dwarf could be a fantasy character. Livingstone stepped down as editor of the magazine after White Dwarf #74 (February 1986).

In 1980, Livingstone and Jackson began to develop the concept of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, the first volume of which (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain) was published in 1982 by Puffin Books (a subsidiary imprint of Penguin Books). Livingstone and Jackson sold Games Workshop in 1991 for £10 million.[5]

The pair, together with Bryan Ansell, founded Citadel Miniatures in Newark to make miniatures for games.

Owl and Weasel

The publication was initially launched to complement Games Workshop’s business of producing hand-crafted wooden board games. The magazine issued a challenge to British game producers to match the efforts of U.S. and German game producers. Copies of early issues were sent speculatively to anyone within the industry in order to generate business, nurture longer-term connections and build partnerships.

Owl and Weasel #6: Dungeons & Dragons special issue

The sixth issue, a key point in Games Workshop’s early history, was released as a Dungeons & Dragons special – a first in the UK – and issues #11 and #23 doubled as programmes for their early Games Days, leading to coverage in The Times of these events and of their magazine.

The editors had expected that the publication would run on beyond issue #25 (in #23, for Games Day II, results for a competition were to be announced in #27), but it was soon decided that a more professional image was required in order to keep up with TSR’s transition of their first periodical, The Strategic Review, into the “glossy” roleplaying and wargaming magazines, Dragon and Little Wars.

Although Owl and Weasel’s circulation would be considered tiny by modern standards (having only exceeded 200, including 80 direct sales through hobby shops, by early 1976), its influence in expanding what were previously niche hobbies into the general British marketplace dominated by traditional games was considerable, and it played a key role in setting up Games Workshop for an extended period of rapid growth.

Ian Livingstone

‘Everything about Ian Livingstone is tidy and strictly managed. The manicured version of his life is, by now, public knowledge. He grew up in what he calls “a Coronation Street terrace” in Rusholme, Manchester, the only child of a Belgian mother and a salesman father who had met during the war. After a degree in business studies at Manchester University, he found himself in London, working for an oil company and “staring out of the window”.

At 25 he moved into a flat in Shepherd’s Bush with his old school pal and partner-in-games Steve Jackson, and set up Games Workshop, manufacturing and retailing fantasy games and models. The two routinely worked 18-hour days, returning home from their day jobs to run the games business.

The big break came when Gary Cygax, the American inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, got in touch after seeing a newsletter put out by Games Workshop. Cygax was looking for a European distributor for D&D. Livingstone and Jackson persuaded him that they had something more to offer than a couple of square feet in Shepherd’s Bush.

“It was nail-biting stuff,” says Livingstone. “On no account must Gary find out that the business was housed in a run-down flat.” The distribution business took off and Jackson and Livingstone quit their day jobs.

Eventually, their landlady got fed up with the endless mail and phone calls for Games Workshop and kicked them out. Undeterred, the pair hired an office, bought a van, joined a squash club with loos and a shower, and lived in the van. “Even though we were destitute because the bank wouldn’t lend us any money, we were happy because we believed in what we were doing,” Livingstone says.

In 1977, the two friends opened Games Workshop’s first retail store in Hammersmith. Their phenomenally successful Fighting Fantasy series of role-playing gamebooks for children (typically boys aged eight to 12) followed five years later. At their most productive, Jackson and Livingstone were churning out one Fighting Fantasy title every two months. In an age of hyped-up publishing phenomena, this was the real thing. The Fighting Fantasy series has sold more than 14 million copies in 23 languages.

Livingstone and Jackson sold Games Workshop in 1991 for almost pounds 10m (it is worth more than pounds 200m now). At the age of 41, Livingstone retired to a life of fancy cars, plush yachts and golf courses. “I’d gone nuts. Penguin were just screaming for more [Fighting Fantasy books]. There’d been such huge pressure.”

Livingstone’s “retirement” lasted a year, during which he wrote two books, developed board games and got “bored crazy”. With his entrepreneurial antennae twitching, he invested in a computer games company, Domark, and when Domark was acquired by Eidos in 1995, Livingstone followed.

Always on the look-out for the next big thing, Livingstone spotted an artist’s drawing of a big-breasted Riot Grrrl on a visit to a games development company called Core, in February 1996. “I just thought, this is it, so I bought the company.” The Riot Grrrl became Lara Croft, the infamous heroine of the Tomb Raider series of adventure/slasher games which have gone on to sell millions of copies.’

(A visit to the fantasy world of Ian Livingstone, The Independent, June 1998)

Notable work that could be looked into further
Games Workshop
Tomb Raider
Distribution of Dungeons&Dragons
Fighting Fantasies

As this wasn't really someone that interested any of us, we struggled to come up with a clever or interesting concept. Therefore, due to time constraints, we decided to just create simple and clean posters. These are my ideas and developments.

Considering we had no idea what we wanted to do for this event, I feel like the final posters I created are visually interesting (which is all they really have to be). Photographs of the event: