Meet the control geek

'The perception of gaming has always been that it's for kids and people tend to snigger at it,' says Livingstone. 'They think it's a joke industry and don't see how big it is. It is the only form of entertainment that is constantly getting better as an experience.'

Games have improved exponentially over the past 25 years and Livingstone has played a vital role. He was, and still is, a board games nut. But more importantly, he introduced two pieces of interactive entertainment to Britain that helped make the modern computer game what it is today.

In 1975, Livingstone, in partnership with his friend Steve Jackson, created Games Workshop and brought the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons to Britain, opening the first of their retail stores in West London.

'We'd been selling D&D for over a year through mail order while we lived in the back of a van,' recalls Livingstone. 'We didn't know how big the market was until we turned up to the shop on the first day and there was a queue of more than 200 people. I remember telling Steve that we'd hit on something.' Indeed he had: that company has just broken the £100million sales barrier.

With the retail adventure a huge success, Jackson and Livingstone set out on another, one in which anybody could take part. They wrote the hugely successful Fighting Fantasy book series and introduced millions to the idea of interactive entertainment.

The books, which first came out in 1982 and have sold 15million copies in 23 different languages, put the reader in control of the path the story takes. They have inspired many computer games and were an important part of the industry's development.

This development has, according to Livingstone, seen games lose their nerdy reputation. 'The geek tag used to be fair, as historically they were played by socially inept people with a lot of time on their hands who probably didn't have girlfriends,' he said. 'But Sony and the PS2 have made huge strides to make it socially acceptable. They've made games cool.'

Whatever their reputation, games are clearly popular, as Livingstone's latest creation, Beach Life on the PC, is bound to be. It is anything but PC and puts you in control of a sun-drenched resort with the ability to organise wet T-shirt competitions and spy on your guests as they go topless.

You decide, though, if spying on computer-generated nakedness is geeky or not.