Though he’s gained a bit of a reputation as being a “jerk” toward his fans, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw insists it’s not because he doesn’t like them – he simply doesn’t understand them.
In an interview exclusive to the downloadable PDF commemorating The Escapist’s 4th Anniversary, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw discusses the challenge of staying enthusiastic about gaming, his surprisingly excellent relationship with developers, and the ex-girlfriend who unknowingly helped put him on the path to fame and glory.
He also discusses how fans make him “uncomfortable,” which seems to have led to him earning a “reputation for being a jerk in real life”:
Complete strangers come up and talk to me like they’ve known me their whole lives, and for that reason I can seem a bit standoffish….[T]he whole “fan” thing confuses me. I like things. Maybe you like the same things as me. That’s cool. But I like a lot of things and it’s almost certain I’ll find other things some day that are even better than the things I currently like, so getting attached is just weird. I’ve seen guys who get ZP tattoos. It would be instructive to wait and see how they feel about that 20 years down the line.
He probably still thinks you’re a tool if you love Super Smash Bros., though.
For more insight into the man behind Zero Punctuation, be sure to download the special edition PDF companion to issue 210 of The Escapist.
