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Sunday Comics: Dead Island It’s been a little more than two months since I last saw Fighting Fantasy – the DS action/adventure RPG based on a choose-your-own-adventure book series of the same name. Here’s what’s changed since then.
A British actor listing voice and mo-cap work for Hitman 5 through U.K. dev Rocksteady sent around the buzz that series developer IO Interactive might be off the case. Not so, says Eidos chief Ian Livingstone.
Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was a 1982 choose-your-own-adventure book written by now-game developers Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. Now it’s a 2009 DS action role-playing game.
Eidos’ Ian Livingstone, recently named Wookiee Life President or Square Enix Proconsul or something, gave a kitchen-sink interview in which sequels for nearly every major Eidos IP were tipped, teased or confirmed.
In the wake of British game company Eidos being acquired by Japan’s Square Enix, Order of the British Empire honoree Ian Livingstone has been awarded a new title.
The image of video games has been steadily improving for some time now. Besides gaming’s entertainment value, the mainstream folks are realising that games make tons and tons on moolah. Countries like Canada, France, Singapore, South Korea as well as in Scandinavian countries and two states in the US. But in the United Kingdom, no dice. Ian Livingstone, Eidos’ creative director, explains why: It seems to me the UK government would rather see our great industry go into decline than help it maintain its prominent position in the world, and that is madness…
We’re still seen as the red-headed stepchild of the creative industries, one notch up from pornography in the eyes of most of the establishment. They forget that half of the world and half of the UK’s population play games. Games help define who we are as human beings — they are as important, culturally and socially, as music and films.
Publisher Eidos has been having a tough time of late. Earlier this year, the company slashed 25 percent of its workforce and revamped its internal structure to a more studio-based one. While Eidos has been quiet since February about how things are panning out, creative director Ian Livingstone says:
“The restructuring is going very well. We have been very upfront about what we are as a business and where we are going. We have put in place a studio-led and product-centric operation and everybody is now happily on board… Having a focused team based around our cornerstone franchises means one team based in the same office, country and time zone so that they can explore every opportunity directly alongside the game’s development.
Well, that’s good.
The State of Play at Eidos [Edge via MCVUK]
You know all is well with the world when the sun rises, sets, and you hear that the Tomb Raider series is still kickin’ around. Tomb Raiders Legend & Anniversary have given the once-flagging series a major kick in the ass, and now we have news that the next game in the series is well underway. No thanks to Core, though, they were stinking up the place, it’s all down to Crystal Dynamics. Eidos’ Ian Livingstone: The next Tomb Raider is well in development now. It was a very bold move for us to move the development from [developer]Core over to Crystal Dynamics in the US. It was a difficult decision, but we had to do it, because of Angel of Darkness not meeting our expectations.
Poor Core. They didn’t do it on purpose! Eidos’ Ian Livingstone On The Future of Tomb Raider [SPOnG]
