ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

PC Connects London 2018: Meet the Speakers - Ben Andac, Good Shepherd

PC Connects London 2018: Meet the Speakers - Ben Andac, Good Shepherd

Ahead of PC Connects London on January 22nd and 23rd, we have been speaking to some of the wonderful speakers who are going to be sharing their insight at the show.

Today, we sit down with Ben Andac of indie publisher Good Shepherd.

Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Sure, my name's Ben and I'm a business/product development person; I've worked in the games industry for around 15 years - in development initially before moving into publishing and then biz dev at PlayStation. After a pretty long run in big companies I decided to go independent and start my own consultancy early in 2017 so I now work directly with devs to help them develop their pitches and get investment, and I'm also a part of the Good Shepherd squad - leading their portfolio strategy and checking out pitches every day.

What are you going to be talking about at PC Connects London 2018?

I'll be holding a pretty informal session where I'll be opening the floor up to developers in the audience to ask any questions they have about the pitching process and how to go about preparing material, approaching investors, publishers and so on, and generally covering what good practices to follow when trying to get your game to market successfully.

What is your favourite PC game from 2017 and why?

I always find it difficult to pick just one thing, so I'm not going to! There's been a bunch of games I've really enjoyed on PC this year: Stories Untold, Tacoma, Subsurface Circular, and Player Unknown's Battlegrounds to name a few.

What do you think are going to be the biggest trends and releases of 2018 for PC?

I think while we'll continue to see big open-ended multiplayer experiences like Playerunknown's Battlegrounds continue to thrive, that kind of game when repeated by others will likely fall by the wayside in many cases. We're also probably going to see a rise in shorter experiences on PC (and across the industry in general) - ones that present smaller, contained, vignette-like experiences that explore specific subjects and resonate with a large audience. I won't attempt to predict the PC hits of the year but I'm looking forward to Psychonauts 2, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Phantom Doctrine, and Cyberpunk 2077 - if it comes out in 2018. Full disclosure: two of those games are being published by Good Shepherd so I may be biased!


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.