Benjamin "Yahtzee" Croshaw is one of the first AGS members who created a proper adventure game with AGS. He is also known for his spectacular parting from the community. "To pull a Yahtzee" is to leave the community by no apparent reason, often in a pompous or bitter-sweet manner. Yahtzee is also a popular dice game published by Milton Bradley.

Biography

A fan

Yahtzee was born in England, where Chris Jones and AGS were born. He was a big fan of both the LucasArts and Sierra adventures. During his high school years, he created a series of adventure games using Visual Basic known as the Arthur Yahtzee series.

Yahtzee was inspired by the Space Quest games to create his next series, which he called Rob Blanc. Rob Blanc I became the first proper game made with AGS, luring people from all corners of the world to try the newly-redeveloped AGS editor. Next, he released both Rob Blanc II and III, both games being of similar quality to the original Rob Blanc. Later on, he made the first Reality-on-the-Norm game, entitled Lunchtime of the Damned.

During game development of "The Vestibule" between 2000 and 2001 Yahtzee initiated a plan for Mittens which was later held but he did not attend. Yahtzee was also a driving force behind the formation of the AGS Awards, originally called the AGD Awards.

An ego

Yahtzee became focused on both his writing and a comic book based on Arthur Yahtzee known as Yahtzee Takes On The World. Yahtzee also became a well known member of the AGS community, and it got to his head. He became rather arrogant and egotistical. Some of the members of the AGS Community began to dislike him. He eventually declared that he was too busy with his writing to work on games, and left the AGS community.

A comeback

Yahtzee could not stop making games that easily. He made The Trials of Odysseus Kent based on his nostalgia for the Monkey Island games. After Odysseus was well-received by the AGS community, he wrote an article explaining himself and apologizing for his earlier actions. He also claimed that would be the last game he would ever make.

He was wrong. He released a serious game, inspired by horror movies and Maniac Mansion, called 5 Days a Stranger, considered by some to be one of the best AGS Games ever made. This has gone on to have 3 sequels, making it a quadrilogy: 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice. All of these have a connection to the DeFoes.

6 Day Assasin is not part of this series!

An outcast by choice

Yahtzee now lives in Australia, and has continued to make games since he left the community. He has admitted lurking around the AGS forums under different names, and he also runs a popular blog.

Awards

Yahtzee is the only person to have been nominated in every year of AGS Awards, totalling 44 nominations (the most of any person), his most being for 5 Days a Stranger, which garnered 11 nominations. His games have won 15 AGS awards over 5 years.

Games