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In a new video posted on YouTube to mark Wizardry's 45th anniversary, the series' co-creator, Robert Woodhead, has reflected on how the success of the game ended up changing his life, attributing it as the reason why he has never had to have "a real job", and the catalyst that led to him meeting the love of his life.
Woodhead co-created Wizardry in 1981 with Andrew C. Greenberg, whom he met while using the PLATO computer system at Cornell University, where he was studying psychology. Together, they would go on to see it become one of the most influential RPGs of all time, alongside similar games like Ultima, inspiring some of the most popular RPGs ever made, like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
As Woodhead states in the video, he and his collaborator Andrew C. Greenberg had no inclination at all, while working on the legendary RPG back in 1981, that anyone would even remember it 45 years later, or, by extension, that it would influence other high-profile creators in the industry. And if anybody told them that at the time, they would have thought them "insane." They simply set out to capture "the essence of tabletop roleplaying", while Greenberg also hoped it would do well enough in the long run "to pay off his school loans." As Woodhead notes, though, Greenberg was way off on his sales projections, with the game remarkably paying off his school loans in the first month alone. Wizardry became an instant smash, leading to a ton of exciting opportunities for the two men.
"Wizardry set in motion a sequence of events that took me to places and in directions that I could never have imagined back in 1981," said Woodhead in the video. "Because of Wizardry, I got to visit Japan. I learned about anime. That resulted in me starting an anime company just for fun.
"I needed an interpreter; she ended up being the love of my life. We've been together ever since. None of that would have happened without Wizardry.
"The freedom that it gave to do things for the love of them is a profound gift. And when I look at how Wizardry has evolved, and now we have Wizardry Variants Daphne, I'm hoping that all of the people that are working on the new game have a similar and wonderful path in life; that they get to do things that they never imagined and that they have an immense amount of joy from the doing of it.
"To the players out there, I hope you have a similar happy accident as I had and [I also hope] you get to have an adventure in real life as amazing as you are having in the game."
You can watch the full video here. While you are at it, you may also want to read our Making Of for the original Apple II game. It includes an interview with Woodhead, as well as the Siroteks, the original publishers of the game.