Andrew C. Greenberg has died. He was the co-creator and influential Wizardry RPG series.

Andrew C. Greenberg has died aged 67. He was the co-creator and creator of the Wizardry RPG series. Robert Woodhead, his collaborator on Wizardry and David Mullich, a game designer and developer, shared the news via Facebook.

It's difficult to overstate Greenberg's and Woodhead's impact on RPGs, and PC gaming. Wizardry: The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is one of the earliest recognizable RPGs that you could play on your home computer. It was a translation of the tabletop RPGs as well as the games developed on the PLATO mainframes, which were present on college campus at the time.

Wizardry was one of the first RPGs to let you control an entire group of characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. Wizardry asked players to explore a wireframe labyrinth, in first-person, on the lookout of secret doors, traps and challenging enemies. The "Mad Overlord Werdna"--Andrew written backwards--was found at the bottom of the dungeon. Greenberg carried the playful nickname with him even after leaving the games industry. He used it as the username for his YouTube channel and a personal email.

Wizardry, and the rival Ultima series, were hugely popular in the 1980s. Wizardry and its successors were ported to the most popular PCs of the era such as the Commodore 64 or MS DOS PCs. Wizardry's influence in Japan was a surprising result. It has had a more lasting popularity there and inspired the creation of the JRPG. Dragon Quest creator Yuji Hori has cited Wizardry for many years as a major inspiration. In a tweet from 2022 about meeting Robert Woodhead, Horii wrote: "When I look back, everything started 40 years ago, when I really got into Wizardry."

Greenberg, who co-created the Star Saga games between 1988 and 1989, eventually left the games industry in order to practice law. He first focused on intellectual property in Florida, before becoming general counsel at renewable energy company Xslent. Greenberg never gave up his interest in computer coding, however, as an archived snapshot from his personal website and YouTube channel shows. According to a letter Greenberg sent to a Wizardry website in 1999, the couple had two children.

Andrew Greenberg has left the games industry for a long time, but his influence is still felt in everything from Baldur’s Gate to Persona. Greenberg's influence on Wizardry can be felt more directly in Digital Eclipse's remastering of the first game. This remaster was created with input from Wizardry's original creators and includes a picture-in -picture view that shows the original's 1 bit graphics.