Interviews// Ian Livingstone Interview: Edinburgh Interactive Festival 07

SPOnG Can you tell us more about the appeal of these bad men characters in Kane and Lynch?

Ian Livingstone Sure, well Kane and Lynch is a character-driven action game in which one character is a flawed mercenary and one is a medicated psychopath. So, it’s an unholy alliance of bad people. They would kill each other if they didn’t need each other and the fun is also in how that dynamic works between the two of them. It’s almost humorous how bad they are and that they really cannot stand each other, but that they need each other.


SPOnG So presumably the co-op element in the game is fairly central to the game-play in Kane and Lynch.

Ian Livingstone IO has been, to me, one of the world leaders in character-driven games. Their technology is second to none and they have got this down, wonderfully. I think anyone who plays the game, be it in co-op or in single player, will have a very rewarding experience, whether they want to be the schizophrenic murderer or just the plain old bad guy. [laughs]


SPOnG Other than Hitman’s Agent 47, Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft and Kane and Lynch, what other characters and aspects of character are you going to be talking about at Edinburgh this year?

Ian Livingstone Characters aren’t only in third person games clearly. People are creating their own characters in MMOs and RPGs and you also have character’s that you nurture in games such as Nintendogs or our own Pony Friends. With this in mind it’s hard to describe what a character is these days. In a first-person shooter, for example, you are the character – so it’s your experience. So, I’m really looking at a whole range of characters and aspects of characterisation in games, just to offer a light-hearted approach to try and hopefully make people smile about what’s good and what’s wrong relating to videogame characters.


SPOnG One thing that has come up a number of times in discussions at Edinburgh Interactive Festival this year is the question of how the industry could move towards achieving more coverage in the arts and entertainments sections of mainstream press and newspapers.

Ian Livingstone Well, this is going to be more likely to happen when games have got more mass market appeal – such as with Wii or DS games, or with casual PC download games, where the games appeal to a much broader audience, rather than being niche. I mean, most console games are still pretty hardcore. And of course it’s a big niche, but its still niche.

The newspapers don’t have the journalists to write the articles and they know that it’s only going to appeal to a small audience.

As this move to broaden the appeal of games – which has really been initiated by Nintendo – gathers force, I think there will be more desire to feature that sort of entertainment in the press.
It goes back to the earlier point about Lara appearing on the cover of The Face – which was simply because she had broad appeal across a wide demographic of young and old, male and female. Similarly with the recent games that Nintendo is bringing out, therefore newspapers are more willing to write about them.


SPOnG Next up, there’s the almost mandatory question that I have to ask you about what you think about the current state of play in the console race.

Ian Livingstone Well, clearly Sony won the last two rounds of the console wars and this time around it’s going to be a much tighter thing. Wii has got off to a flying start and overtaken their competitors. Clearly they are going to win in Japan and they might win in the US and Europe. They’ve taken such an original approach to gaming, which appeals to a much wider audience. Microsoft and Sony has gone head to head in this sort of graphics war, where it has got to a point that the budgets to make those games are so high, therefore they have to appeal to more of a niche market. So people who want a different kind of experience are more likely to buy a Wii and a 360 or a Wii and a PS3. People are not going to buy a PS3 and an Xbox. So, overall it seems to me that the indications are that Wii should win in the end.

But, having said that, never write Sony off! They are the best consumer electronics company in the world and gaming is central to their success. They are just waiting for that killer app to sell the hardware. Tomb Raider sold PlayStation, Grand Theft Auto sold PlayStation 2. So as soon as that killer app comes out PS3 should start to fly.

Plus, a price reduction would help of course! [laughs]


SPOnG How does the fact that it’s much more of a closely run race benefit third-party publishers?

Ian Livingstone Well, it gives them choice. If you have one dominant platform owner there is little choice. Now that we have the three consoles, the portable consoles, mobile phones, PC downloads, MMOs etc etc. there is a huge choice for content owners.


SPOnG Finally, when did you write your first Fighting Fantasy book? Can you think back to what you envisaged the future of gaming to be like back then?

Ian Livingstone Twenty-five years ago, almost to the day, is when the first book came out. There’s just been an anniversary re-issue of of it - The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - released in hardback, with loads of extras and historical stuff.

But of course before that Steve Jackson and I started Games Workshop back in 1975, when we really had no idea that the computer games market was going to explode in the way that it has. All I knew was that interactive entertainment was a new and extraordinary way of communicating with other players. Dungeons and Dragons and Fighting Fantasy taught me mostly that people like creating characters and that they like communicating – which has kind of gone full circle now, what with the massive popularity of MMOs and Second Life and you name it, it’s all about communicating with other players. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

SPOnG Excellent, thanks for that, enjoy the rest of the show.

Ian Livingstone My pleasure.