Da una visión distinta, enfocándose en lo que fue importante para esta persona y en su perspectiva (a veces agridulce) sobre ciertas personas y eventos, en algunos casos muy parcial. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man who would later play a significant role at Eidos, Livingstone is a huge early fan of computer games. Miniatures” there means other people’s; they have been selling miniatures, but they haven’t been making them. Despite being one of the minds behind Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Bryan Ansell comes out of this history looking pretty mercenary.

In a matter of months Bryan Ansell has fucked off all the bits about London GW that he didn’t like, including its London location; gone is the generalist approach to retail, the grab-bag of board games and RPG licences and dicking about with video games. Make your own decision but I think there are a lot of people who are going to enjoy this, overall I did. The excuse of a ten-book Fighting Fantasy contract to deliver looks a little thin when you remember that just a few pages ago Livingstone mentions that they’d started subcontracting them out.The thing that jumps off the page with every mention of his name is his single-mindedness and clarity of vision. In the end they go with Ansell who wants it so badly and who does seem to have a bit of a talent for making money and so now he’s the group managing director. Great run through of a company close to my heart, mostly covering a time period before I was a gamer myself, and told with some excellent humour from life starting to build the brand we know today. Ultimately it’s hard to escape the idea that they just didn’t want it that much, and Ansell really did. In summary, if you have any interest in the history of GW and the men behind it then this is a must read.

To my understanding the book is now on general sale, but it was originally funded through Unbound, a crowdfunder for boutique publishing like this. It’s all interesting stuff in its own way, and adds richness to the tale being told, but in the interests of both brevity and preserving the book’s contents to be read in their own right I am largely skipping over it. The idea to start our own company first cropped up during one of our many ‘beer and a board game’ sessions after work at our flat.From the launch of Dungeons and Dragons from the back of a van, to creating the Fighting Fantasy series, co-founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson tell their remarkable story for the first time. The focus is clearly what he has always wanted it to be – Citadel manufactures miniatures in ever-increasing ranges and volumes, and the rest of the company exists to sell those miniatures, whether by making up games for them to be used in or by marketing them or by literally handing over boxes of them to punters for cash. When Ian arrived home later that evening we excitedly told him of our plans, but it took him about 10 days or so to come around to the idea, following much cajoling, mainly by Steve. I don’t think this will have particularly wide appeal, but then I’m also not sure it was really intended to.

Other sections are like this too; often critical early figures appear in the narrative, disappear, re-appear, and then are finally introduced properly in a later chapter which deals with the particular subject they’re most relevant to. It doesn’t exactly smack of a text that was overburdened and had to shed some weight, especially with its particular publication method which surely allowed the author as much freedom over content and page count as he could have cared to utilise, and if you were going to cut for space you probably would not look first to drop the bits about goings-on in Nottingham. Not long after, the whole company – one born in and run from London for a decade – relocates up to Nottingham. They don’t give much away at first with the operating board in place and two of “their” guys in London on there along with Ansell, but not long after it’s clear that the board isn’t working and the choice is stark. Some of that just isn’t in the scope of this book; Livingstone’s last link with GW is severed in 1991, before even the second edition of 40k, let alone such far-off ventures as GW becoming truly multinational or the Lord of the Rings licence or Age of Sigmar or any of that.Ian was executive chairman of Eidos until 2002, where he launched global games franchises such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The book is full of great photos, fun anecdotes, and a good insight into the UK side of the gaming industry and how much Ian and Steve struggled utterly in the early days, but were carried by belief and blagging.

If you've come here for dirty laundry, insight into the conflicts between the artistic and commercial, or ruminations on the greater cultural significance of gaming, you're going to be disappointed. For those with either a nostalgic memory of, or an interest in the seminal era of the 70s and early 80s for role-playing games (TTRPG under current nomenclature) this is a great read.Of course it’s much easier to see this pattern with the benefit of hindsight, when you’re reading a written account of it for leisure, than it would have been to identify it in the heat of the moment while also running a business that is successful but clearly still finding its identity and of course writing those Fighting Fantasy books.