New Year Honours list recognises UK tech visionaries.docxVIP

New Year Honours list recognises UK tech visionariesBy Leo KelionTechnology reporterMr Livingstone put pressure on the government to teach children computer programming skillshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technologyontinue reading the main storyNew Year Honours.uk/resource-library/new-year-honours-2013The lists in fullhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uklympic heroes head New Year Honourshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environmentonour for Higgs boson physicisthttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-artsn pictures: Entertainment honoursVideo games legend Ian Livingstone, L co-founder Martha Lane Fox and Imagination Technologies boss Hossein Yassaie all feature in the New Year Honours List.Mr Livingstone, life president of Eidos and co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy books, is being made a CBE.Ms Lane Fox - who now acts as the prime ministers digital champion - receives the same recognition.Sir Hossein is being knighted for services to technology and innovation.Over the past two decades he has helped build up his computer chip-designing company from about 40 employees to 1,300 and a market valuation of over ￡1bn.Video game campaignerNews of Ian Livingstones honour coincides with his 63rd birthday.It also comes just over 30 years on from The Warlock of Firetop Mountains release - the first in a series of role-playing game (RPG) books which he helped write. Readers were asked to make choices or roll dice to determine which page they would turn to next, creating the storyline.The format influenced many video game makers, and Mr Livingstone himself went on to found Eidos Interactive - publisher of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex games.Ian Livingstone released a new Fighting Fantasy book in AugustIm genuinely humbled to get something, he told the BBC.My life has been all about games, and I think we learn an awful lot through play.Writing Fighting Fantasy books with Steve Jackson in the 1980s seemed to have got a whole generation of children readi