life-president
Latest
Ian Livingstone resigns as 'life president' of Square Enix
Square Enix "life president" Ian Livingstone has abandoned his post, citing a desire to "focus more time on the important projects he is working on outside of Square Enix." Square Enix acquired Eidos in 2009 and promoted Livingstone to "life president." At the time the new title seemed unprecedented. We polled academics from both Harvard and Wharton's business schools, and none were able to recall such a position, nor offer any commentary on Square Enix's move. Now that he's left Square Enix, Livingstone hopes to turn his attention toward charity efforts. His near-term plans include "setting up The Livingstone Foundation to open Free Schools and Academies" as well as continuing efforts to push UK authorities toward making computer science an element of basic education. Livingstone will also continue working as part of the games industry, both as an entrepreneur and an advisor for mobile and social games.
Eidos 'life president' Ian Livingstone to keynote NLGD's Festival of Games in June
Now that we've lost both Gygax and Arneson, we have to learn as much as we can from the still-living legends of gaming. One of these is Ian Livingstone -- he co-founded the great Games Workshop back in the day with John Peake and Steve Jackson. Currently, he's serving as the "life president" of Eidos, and lambasting the mass media for their portrayal of games (because if there's one thing a living legend should do, it's tell the kids these days that they're doing it wrong). And now De Nederlandse Gamedagen (NLGD, for short) has announced that Livingstone will be speaking at its annual Festival of Games in Holland this coming June. He'll be talking about his career and how he's integrated Eidos with Square Enix over the last year or so. Just do us a favor if you do end up going to see the show: Start your Q&A question off with, "Mr. Livingstone, I presume?"
Eidos Life President Livingstone speaks out against mainstream media's game coverage
During the Westminster eForum this week, Eidos head (and Life President) Ian Livingstone had some less than favorable things to say about the mainstream media's coverage of the gaming industry. "People just couldn't accept that games are a great learning tool," Livingstone told the crowd of "industry representatives and their advisors, interest groups, local authorities, the voluntary sector and academia, along with members of the reporting press," reports MCV. He asked for mainstream news outlets to focus less on violence in games and to instead look at "the poor skills the UK has to make games." In his eyes, the mainstream media's overwhelming focus on violence in games -- and consistent ignoring of the economically beneficial side of the game industry -- certainly isn't helping to bring the development tax breaks he's been pushing in the UK for quite some time now. To help change minds, we suggest that Mr. Livingstone get in touch with the two people who have been most able to clearly convey our feelings on the violent video game debate -- Penn and Teller, of course!
Livingstone becomes 'life president' of Eidos
Longtime Eidos executive Ian Livingstone has been promoted to life president of ... wait, he's the what? Livingstone now holds the title of "life president," following Square Enix's takeover of the troubled British publisher. The executive will continue working in the creative process and "act as a spokesperson for the Eidos group," reports GI.biz.Livingstone will also continue working with the British government to push forward tax credits and the "skills agenda." We Googled "life president" because we figured this was some business term we'd just never heard of. Nope, it appears totally made up. The closest thing we could find was the term "President for Life," a title used by dictators -- which is not what's going on with Livingstone ... we think.Just to make sure Wikipedia and Google hadn't missed anything in their combined infinite wisdom, we decided to contact several major academic business institutions. Harvard and Wharton have yet to return our phone calls; however, Stanford's media relations offered, "I can't think of any academic with serious scholarship wanting to weigh in on this."
