Open world
| |
| Open world | |
| Developer | See open world video games |
|---|---|
| Publisher | See open world video games |
| Platforms | See open world video games |
| Released | 1970-present |
| Added to Museum |
See open world video games |
An open world in a video game is one that allows free exploration.
Early history
In 1970, Sega released an electro-mechanical arcade game titled Jet Rocket that was the first flight simulator that gave players free-roaming opportunities.
Hunt the Wumpus, or simply Wumpus, was a text-based action-adventure game that was created by Gregory Yob and was published as Dartmouth BASIC source code in the People's Computer Company newsletter and on on tape for computers running the Dartmouth Time Sharing System in November 1973.
Wumpus expanded on earlier text-based games by People's Computer Company such as Mugwump. That project was a "hide and seek" game set in a 10-by-10 grid which was created by Bud Valenti and his students at Project SOLO, expanded by Bob Albrecht, and published in the PCC newsletter and on tape in April 1973.
Gregory Yobb wanted to set the game apart from the simple "hide and seek" games, so Hunt the Wumpus had cave passages set on the vertices of a dodecahedron, which allowed the caves to be more freely explored.
A text-based role-playing video game titled dnd was named after Dungeons & Dragons. It was released for PLATO computer system in 1974 and 1975 by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, then extended by Dirk Pellett and Flint Pellett from 1976 to 1985. It offered non-linear gameplay.
Hunt the Wumpus inspired a text-based adventure game titled Colossal Cave Adventure. It was released on the ARPANET by Will Crowther from 1975 to 1976, then extended by Don Woods in 1977. This game offered free exploration as there were many caves to explore in the colossal cave system.
Sublogic released FS1 Flight Simulator for Apple 8 in 1979. This free-roaming flight simulation video game started Sublogic's flight simulators which were released by Microsoft as Microsoft Flight Simulator beginning in 1982.
Colossal Cave Adventure inspired Adventure, which was an action-adventure game released by Atari for Atari 2600 in 1980. This game was a medieval-themed fantasy game that featured quests within multiple freely-explorable castles.
