Open World Video Games

Open world is a term for video games where a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given freedom in how or when to complete objectives, rather than other games with a linear structure.  Examples of high level autonomy in computer games can be found in MMORPGs or in other games with the "open world concept."  The main appeal is that they provide a simulated reality and allow players to develop their character and its behavior in the direction of their choosing.  There is also usually no concrete goal or end to the game, so you can play for as long as you want.

Open world games date back to the 1980s; the role-playing game Ultima was released in 1981 and used an over world concept, thus being cited as possibly an early open world PC game. In 1984, the first Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo was released and is considered another early example of open world. The game Wasteland, released in 1988, is another open world game. The game has an open world where the player's actions have a permanent effect, keeping areas in the state it was when the player left them. It had a non-linear game play where the player could complete quests in any order, with the quests having many possible endings. The game was also a sandbox, where the player could change the world in any way with tools like shovels. Fast forward until 1999 where the adventure game Shenmue was released. It was a major step forward for 3D open world gameplay; it had an expansive sandbox city with its own day-night cycles, changing weather, and voiced NPCs going on daily routines.

Moving on to the 21st century, the series that had the greatest cultural impact was Grand Theft Auto. Other notable examples include World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls game series. The popular Assassin's Creed series, which began in 2007, allows players to explore historic open world settings. Another example is Watch Dogs, where you control your surroundings with electronic devices. Recent ones include Fallout 4 and Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

A future open world game is No Man's Sky, a video game with an open world universe so gigantic it would take all of Earth's inhabitants 505 billion years to explore it all at the rate of one planet per second. According to developers, through procedural generation the game will be able to produce more than 18 quintillion planets for players to explore. It is an adventure survival video game scheduled to be released in June 2016--I'M SO EXCITED. By the way, procedural generation refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually, and is often used to generate game levels and other content. It is an important factor in reducing game development time, and makes it possible to generate larger and seamless game worlds on the fly and using fewer resources. This is procedural generation is also called "world-building," where general rules are used to construct a believable world.


2015 and this year, perhaps more than any other, has seen more examples of the open world genre. You're more likely to ditch a linear game that done in a few hours than a open world that can take up to 100 hours or more. This change in perspective has strong implications for how we conceptualize the design and play of such games. It allows us to move away from an emphasis on filling open worlds with meaningless stuff, repetitive experiences, and canned encounters. Freed from those constraints, developers can focus on crafting places for exploration and depth. Also, you move at your own pace and when you leave, you come back at the same point. Digital worlds have the ability of standing the test of time. 

This is an emerging trend because, while they've been around for a while, there is now only sufficient technology to create an open world of a massive size. As consoles, PCs and other gaming devices become more powerful, developers are poised to make the open world game the defining genre of this generation. In recent years, a kind of open world fever has gripped the gaming industry as it races to create ever-larger and more complex sandboxes for us to play in. Not only that, it is just becoming popular with gamers. We're in the midst of a wider cultural transformation, one that has people embracing sandbox games like never before. Gone is the first-person-shooter, point-and-click, or simulation games--it's all about the sandbox world now.