Games Workshop Co-founder Ian Livingstone Honoured with a Knighthood

The new year honour’s list isn’t something the gaming community has to pay much attention to usually. This year however a familiar face has earned the title of sir – Ian Livingstone.

Games Workshop was co-founded by Livingstone, Steve Jackson and John Peake. Originally starting out as the only European distributor of Dungeons & Dragons the company eventually released their own Warhammer line of games, and White Dwarf – which Livingstone served as the editor of until 1986.

Sir Ian Livingstone is most known for his Fighting Fantasy series of books, the archetypal ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ game books that taught generations of gamers that it’s a good idea to leave a finger between the previous pages in case you die from whatever’s behind that door. Livingstone published an adventure for the series’ 35th anniversary.

Livingstone’s biggest contribution to the world of Warhammer however is probably in the form of Citadel miniatures, a company originally producing miniatures for many games before becoming the backbone of the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 side of the hobby. 

The newly knighted Sir Livingstone was not knighted for these reasons however, instead, he was granted the knighthood for his ‘services to online gaming’ – which is in reference to Livingstone’s time at Eidos Interactive and Square Enix in the 90’s and 00’s. Livingstone was involved in the acquisition of Tomb Raider and Hitman video game properties.