Eidos life president, Games Workshop co-founder and Fighting Fantasy creator Ian Livingstone has been honoured by the Queen and awarded a CBE.

The honour, which stands for Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, was announced alongside many others in the 2013 New Year’s Honours List.

Livingstone is a legendary figure in the games industry. The author of the influential roleplaying novels in the Fighting Fantasy series, Livingstone also co-founded Games Workshop, the premier retailer of tabletop RPGs.

Livingstone worked for games publisher Donmark in the 80s, going on to become a board member and overseeing the company’s sale to Eidos in 1995 and then Eidos’ subsequent sale to Square Enix in 2009. He is now Eidos’ life president.

“I’m genuinely humbled to get something. My life has been all about games, and I think we learn an awful lot through play,” Livingstone told the BBC.

“Writing Fighting Fantasy books with Steve Jackson in the 1980s seemed to have got a whole generation of children reading again. And I’m delighted that what we created not just manifested itself in interactive books but it’s actually inspired people to join the computer games industry.”