Overview
Ashley Pannell (also known as Ash Pannell) is the Senior Creative Director on Blight: Survival at Behaviour Interactive. He became the primary public-facing voice for the project after the Behaviour partnership, leading interviews and developer presentations. He is a veteran game designer with over two decades of experience in the industry.
Career history
Pannell's career in game development stretches back to 1999. Before joining Behaviour Interactive, he worked at several studios across the UK, including Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Computer Artworks, Blue 52, Ubisoft, and Climax Studios.
He joined Behaviour Interactive in 2007 as Lead Designer. By 2010, he had risen to Senior Creative Director. At Behaviour, Pannell has worked across multiple high-profile projects:
Project | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Dead by Daylight | Creative Director | Helped start development of the asymmetric horror multiplayer game. Worked on the project through the end of 2016 |
Deathgarden | Senior Creative Director | Led development of Behaviour's asymmetric multiplayer shooter |
Fallout Shelter | Creative Director | Developed by Behaviour Interactive, published by Bethesda Softworks |
Blight: Survival | Senior Creative Director | Current role. Primary creative lead on the Behaviour side of the partnership with Haenir Studio |
His experience with Dead by Daylight is particularly relevant to Blight: Survival. Dead by Daylight is one of the most successful horror games ever made, and Pannell's years working on its psychological horror mechanics, asymmetric tension, and live-service structure inform his approach to Blight's design. In a 2016 E3 interview about Dead by Daylight, Pannell discussed how the game's heartbeat audio cue was designed to "stress you out," creating a feedback loop where "when you're stressed you panic, and when you panic you run," leading to escalating mistakes. That understanding of psychological horror carries into his work on Blight: Survival.
Future Games Show 2026
Pannell represented Blight: Survival at the Future Games Show: Spring Showcase 2026 on March 12, 2026, and did an extended interview with IGN. The appearance coincided with the game crossing 1.5 million Steam wishlists. During the interview he discussed the game's design philosophy, responded to community skepticism, and provided details on the extraction-lite mechanics.
On community expectations and skepticism
Pannell has been direct about the pressure the team faces. At the FGS 2026 interview, he said: "We understand the heightened expectations of what we are being asked to deliver upon here." He acknowledged that some players have been "burned by things that have been released" and view Blight: Survival with skepticism, but framed this as motivation: "Our ultimate goal is to prove that we are making a real game, that it is awesome."
He also emphasized that the community is not just watching from the sidelines: "One of the things that we have as a result of this is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We're not alone here. It wasn't just comments from three years ago." He noted that the team has been "very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can," even during periods of public silence.
Design philosophy
Pannell describes Blight: Survival as "a combat driven game with elements of exploration, with extraction light elements that are in there, and other elements also from games of that genre that help us drive the internal tension and the risk the players take whenever they're in a given space." He positions the game at the intersection of multiple genres rather than as a clone of any single one: "Action horror is where it lands closest."
On combat, he has said: "We're designing Blight: Survival to be a brutal, visceral game, from the first clash to the final deadly blow." The risk-and-reward philosophy is described as "a key element of the overall driving part of many features in the game." Every fight and every investigation carries potential consequences.
On extraction mechanics
Pannell has provided the most detailed public explanation of how the extraction-lite system works. He distinguishes it from traditional extraction shooters: "We have extraction elements, but it's not driven exclusively as the extraction genre." The studio takes "extraction influence from other types of games, like for example, Helldivers or Deep Rock Galactic."
He described the structure: "We have both elements of what we normally consider a round-based game with extraction, plus a pure extraction game too." The core loop, as he put it: "You go in, you try and amass what you can, and you can always push for more, but you could always back out when you feel like you've got something meaningful."
On loss: "We have loss in our game, and the decision whether to bank that or preserve it at some point in the game will become a key choice the player makes."
On development focus
Pannell has framed the team's priorities simply: "We're focusing on the fun, we're focusing on the things that really matter to making a good quality, fun game that fulfills these expectations." This statement came in the context of explaining why the game has taken longer than some fans expected, and why the team chose to rebuild core systems after the Behaviour partnership rather than rushing to release.