open world

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English

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WOTD – 12 November 2023

Etymology

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From open (adjective) +‎ world.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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open world (plural open worlds)

  1. (video games, also attributive) A gameworld that the player may traverse freely, rather than being restricted to certain predefined areas and quests. [from early 21st c.]
    • 2004, Paul Grover, “Computer Games in Your Hands”, in Visual Texts (The Heinemann English Project), Port Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic.: Heinemann Harcourt Education, →ISBN, page 15:
      Role-play games […] they use a closed visual world of walls or grids or open worlds across computer systems
    • 2007, David Hutchinson, “Kid-friendly Grand Theft Auto”, in Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom, Westport, Conn.: Teachers Ideas Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 110:
      Open world games (sometimes referred to as "sandbox games") are one of the most popular genres of video games. They typically feature non-linear gameplay, the ability to roam the game world freely any way the player chooses, unscripted interaction with non-player characters (NPCs), and a living, breathing city, countryside, or fantasy environment to explore.
    • 2008, Michael Nitsche, “Combining Interaction and Narrative”, in Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, →ISBN, part I (Structure), page 54:
      Liberty City, the virtual space of Grand Theft Auto III, can be interpreted as the spatial universe that qualitatively changes and combines the limited character attributes of the inhabiting non-player characters. Because they all seem to live and act in such a huge open world, they appear to be more complex themselves.
    • 2014, Carolyn Handler Miller, “Video Games”, in Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment, 3rd edition, Burlington, Mass.; Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Focal Press, →ISBN, part 4 (Media and Models: Under the Hood), page 283:
      The Saints Row games are open worlds, and many consider the Grand Theft Auto series to also be open worlds.
    • 2017, Chris Solarski, “Transitions in Open-world Games”, in Interactive Stories and Video Game Art: A Storytelling Framework for Game Design (An A K Peters Book), Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, →ISBN, section II (The Dramatic Curve and Transitions), page 170:
      The second category of storytelling that coexists in GTA [Grand Theft Auto]’s open world takes the form of player-driven stories.
    • 2021 August 6, A. A. Dowd, “The Ryan Reynolds Action-comedy Free Guy is a Truman Show for the Fortnite Age”, in The A.V. Club‎[1], archived from the original on 2023-04-19:
      What Guy doesn’t know, but the audience surely will (it's all over the trailers), is that he's not a real person at all but rather an NPC—or non-player character—in a popular and extremely violent open-world video game.

Usage notes

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When used attributively, the term is chiefly hyphenated as open-world.

Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Compare “open-world, adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2023.

Further reading

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