Matt Chat - Wizardry A Rip-Off of Oubliette?

Since a lot of you are Wizardry fans here is Matt Chat blog post this weekend about whether Sir-Tech’s Wizardry A Rip-Off of Oubliette.

I was writing a chapter about one of my favorite silver-age CRPGs, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord today. It’s been awhile since I dug into the research, and was intrigued by one of CRPG Addict’s posts about its key inspiration, Oubliette. Oubliette was one of many highly innovative and ahead-of-their-time games for the PLATO system, which has been on my mind since my most recent interview with Richard Bartle, the main main responsible for MUD (forthcoming on Matt Chat). Bartle got pretty animated when the subject of PLATO came up. In his opinion, the influence of PLATO and its games is highly exaggerated. In his case, apparently people tend to claim or insinuate that he himself was inspired to create MUD after playing some MUD-like games on the system, though he’d never even heard of it.

was writing a chapter about one of my favorite silver-age CRPGs, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord today. It’s been awhile since I dug into the research, and was intrigued by one of CRPG Addict’s posts about its key inspiration, Oubliette. Oubliette was one of many highly innovative and ahead-of-their-time games for the PLATO system, which has been on my mind since my most recent interview with Richard Bartle, the main main responsible for MUD (forthcoming on Matt Chat). Bartle got pretty animated when the subject of PLATO came up. In his opinion, the influence of PLATO and its games is highly exaggerated. In his case, apparently people tend to claim or insinuate that he himself was inspired to create MUD after playing some MUD-like games on the system, though he’d never even heard of it.

Of course, in my interview with Robert Woodhead (co-creator of Wizardry), the subject of PLATO came up, too. Woodhead was very passionate about how influential PLATO had been, and as far as I know never made a secret of his passion for several PLATO games, including Oubliette, whose influence on Wizardry is clear to see (as CRPG Addict makes clear). Anyway, I noticed some pretty heated comments on CRPG Addict’s post, including some from Corey Cole, co-designer of Quest for Glory. Cole pointed out that basically there was no wrongdoing here, since the development context of Oubliette was entirely different (even though its designers did go on later to attempt a few commercial releases, one for the C64 and a more recent one for mobiles). In any case, I do have to agree with CRPG Addict that it’s a little odd that there wasn’t even a slight nod to the original game to be seen.

So, I decided to contact the Oubliette team and get their take on it. Following are the emails I received back from creator Jim Schwaiger. Specifically, I asked Jim to comment on the post by CRPG Addict and the claims that are made there about the similarities between the two games.

I never played either, but appreciate the detective work. Very interesting stuff. And too bad for the Oubliette guy…

Each game has influences of its predecessors.
Ultima was copied, Wizardry was copied, Dungeon Master was copied, Skyrim was copied… so what's new?

Early ultimas were influenced by other media sources (i.e. U2 influenced by the movie The Time Bandits) but ultimas as a computer role playing series were not copied works unless you're referring to other games that copied ultima.

Well, you can also trace Ultima's influences back even further. A sub-routine in Ultima was the pre-Ultima called Akalabeth. Akalabeth in turn was inspired by a game called Escape. http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/escape___
Dickie Garriot mentions this during the video interviews included on the Ultima compilation which came with the Ascension dragon edition.

I think Matt has a little bit to say on the Wizardry topic in his book "Desktops & Dreamers*. Thanks for the write-up Couch!

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Well, you can also trace Ultima's influences back even further. A sub-routine in Ultima was the pre-Ultima called Akalabeth. Akalabeth in turn was inspired by a game called Escape. http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/escape___
Dickie Garriot mentions this during the video interviews included on the Ultima compilation which came with the Ascension dragon edition.

I think Matt has a little bit to say on the Wizardry topic in his book "Desktops & Dreamers*. Thanks for the write-up Couch!

Influences and inspirations are one thing. But Ultima was not a copy of anything like it at the time. I know this, because I was there.