Personal and Professional Practice 3: 'Research' Studio Brief - Creative Networks: Ian Livingstone

Today I went to a brilliant talk by Ian Livingstone who is the creator, along with 2 other friends, of Games Workshop where they starting selling Dungeon's and Dragons for the company from there flat. They used to meet up and take telephone calls and mail out copies of the popular role playing game so that they could make money. At the time they were also creating a newspaper about games that they liked called Owl and Weasel and eventually had enough money to rent a space which they could make their office. They had to live in a van outside but they really enjoyed what they were doing and even started up a new newspaper in favour for the old one called The White Dwarf. 

They started making their own miniatures and this is where the series Warhammer came from. They never owned D&D and when the owner offered to merge the two companies they declined and even went onto selling Warhammer in the end. They did this in order to begin their book series where it takes the idea of role playing games and makes you the hero of the book.

He believes that we are now in the second golden age of gaming and there are so many things happening to them at the moment where you can see Indie games that provide creativity, originality and new ways of playing games. The biggest challenge that you will have to face in producing a game is marketing, monetisation and how to balance your margins to create a profit. For him, it's all about the game play, it should neither be hard or to easy and not too frustrating either, and apps are definitely the place to be at the moment. 

In the games industry you have to get a credited IP. His influence into creating the iconic character was huge and they took a lot of inspiration from the rise of women power that was happening. They originally wanted to call her Lara Cruz but didn't think this was British enough so settled for Croft. Owning your own IP can really help as you then own all the rights to a character. 

Lastly he went through what you need to invest to get into the industry, and it starts with the 5ps:
- Perception
- Pipes (Have an inferstructure)
- Property (Retain it)
- Pounds (How can you get finance?)
- People (You need a skilled workforce)

This was overall a fantastic talk and it really helped to give a perspective on the industry and how big it actually is. He is a very skilled man and does a lot for the industry. He is currently working on getting a school together which will be free to attend and will teach children about how to create computer games. He is also influencing the government to be able to get computer science into school so that they are learning about how these games are made instead of how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint for 10 years. Their aim is to get children to make things and above all give equal opportunities to everyone.

'Imagination is more important than knowledge' Albert Einstein.