Julian Benson
Julian Benson is a technology and games journalist at Rock Paper Shotgun who focuses on the rhythm of the PC release calendar and what makes new games worth a player’s time. His work stands out for turning routine listings into vivid, tightly written rundowns that link together big-budget launches and unusual independent projects under a clear weekly theme. He writes with a light, playful voice, but always with enough concrete detail that a reader can quickly grasp what each game is about and how it feels to play.
This week in PC games
Benson’s signature work at Rock Paper Shotgun is his recurring “This week in PC games” column, a curated survey of the most notable titles landing on PC in a given week. In one installment built around “Tokyo-drifting in Forza Horizon 6, communist grifting in Disco Elysium follow-up Zero Parades, or dystopia tifting in puzzle game Phonopolis,” he anchors the week around three sharply contrasted games and then builds out a broader release snapshot from there.
He uses that structure to give equal footing to a headline-driving racing sequel, a politically sharp narrative follow-up, and an artful puzzle dystopia, signalling that his coverage is led by ideas and playstyles rather than marketing tiers.
Within this format he does more than list titles and dates. Each pick gets a short, concrete description that captures its core hook - whether that is a specific driving fantasy, a strain of political storytelling, or a distinctive visual and mechanical conceit. The result is a column that functions as both a release calendar and a recommendation engine, highlighting not just what is new on PC, but what is interesting about it.
Balancing blockbusters and indies
A consistent thread in Benson’s coverage is the balance between high-profile franchises and smaller, more experimental projects. By pairing a series like Forza Horizon with a follow-up to Disco Elysium and a stylised puzzle title such as Phonopolis in the same weekly frame, he treats them as peers in a shared landscape rather than separate tiers of coverage.
This approach helps surface games that might otherwise be crowded out by marquee releases, while still accounting for the big titles that define a week for many PC players.
He writes about each game in similar, matter-of-fact terms, describing setting, mechanics, and tone without inflating one over another. That parity in treatment is a defining feature of his work: the scale of a project is less important than whether it offers a clear, distinctive experience that is worth pointing out to a PC audience.
Highlighting inventive PC game worlds
Benson gravitates toward games with strong, unusual concepts or worlds and makes those concepts the entry point to his coverage. References to “communist grifting” in a Disco Elysium follow-up or “dystopia tifting” in a puzzle game show how he compresses a game’s political or thematic angle into a memorable phrase.
That emphasis on premise and atmosphere helps communications and development teams understand that what will interest him most is not just a feature checklist, but the specific worldview, narrative angle, or mechanical twist that sets a PC game apart.
Across his writing, this focus on inventive worlds and clear hooks is matched by clean, concise prose. He explains what a player will do, where they will do it, and why it matters in just a few lines, making his pieces well suited to readers who want to scan a week’s releases yet still come away with a strong sense of which games match their tastes.
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