Posted in: Conventions, Events, Games, Games Workshop, Interview, Lucca Comics & Games, Tabletop | Tagged: Dice Men, Ian Livingstone

Interview: Ian Livingstone At Lucca Comics & Games 2023

We had a chance to chat with Games Workshop's original co-founder, Ian Livingstone, at Lucca Comics & Games as Dice Men released in Italy.

During Lucca Comics & Games 2023, we had a chance to sit down and briefly chat with one of Games Workshop's original founders, Ian Livingstone. He was in Italy this week to promote the release of Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop, which has come out a year earlier, but was now being published in Italian. He chatted with us for a few between signings about the book and more.

BC: How's it feel coming to Lucca and being part of this event?

IL: I love Lucca. This is my second time here, and I love the passion of the people who attend here. The fact that we've got comics and board games and video games and incredible art in one convention center, in a wonderfully historic medieval town surrounding is just the perfect mix of future retro conventions. Intense!

Tell us a little bit about this version of Dice Men you're showing off here today.

We're launching the Italian version of Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop. I was the co-founder of Games myself in 1975. We launched Dungeons & Dragons in Europe, and then our claim to fame is Warhammer. So it's also about all the trials and tribulations of starting a business in the 1970s and an area of economic stagnation, trying to turn a passion of playing games into a business, of making them, and how it's impossible to raise finance, and how to live in a band for three months. Two years later, when we started our own magazine.

Even though you're out of it, how does it feel seeing the success of the company at this point?

Well, I guess we watch on as proud parents seeing their child do incredibly better. But no regrets. So it's amazing that it's continued all these years on, and continues to grow and be more successful. It's 500 retail stores now. Why? It was about a circulation of a quarter million copies a month. It's amazing!

You had mentioned you still keep on gaming and playing with people that you know. What kind of games have you been playing lately?

Well, I've got a collection of 15 board games at home. We play at a mid-tier level games like Ticket to Ride and Careless Splendor and Sensory Science Space Road to take pedal to the metal. But I'm also a big video games. But I moved when I sold out of games, which I've moved into video games. I launched Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in the '90s, so I play as many video games as well. But I'm too old now to succeed at the sort of reflex twitch game sites. Places started to gain by civilization.

Are there any TTRPGs that have stood out to you recently or any tabletop titles that you're like "Yes, that's going to be the next great success"?

It's hard to predict what's going to be successful in the future. The one I'd say I've been playing a lot of recently is Pedal to the Metal. Reminds me a bit of an English game back in the sixties called Formula One. But it's it's obviously the card mechanism is a lot smaller makes it a much more of a game.

Do you have anything that you're currently working on that you can talk about that's on the horizon?

Well, at age 73, I'm far too old to run anything. A an executive or as an entrepreneur. But I'm now a partner in the venture capital fund called Hiro Capital, and we invest in game studios. We've made over two dozen investments in the last five years. We've just had our first exit of capital show print. So it's a modern times group. I have a portfolio of companies and can leverage my 48 years of pattern recognition and mistakes, and we give them as much advice as we can, as well as money.

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