Open world
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
Roberta Williams
In the 1980s and 1990s, Roberta and her husband, Ken Williams, were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. In 1980, they founded the company On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line. The first Williams' title was "Mystery House" (1980), the first graphical adventure game. The second title, "Wizard and the Princess" (1980), added color graphics. But the first serious success was the "King's Quest" series, which featured a large expansive world that could be explored by players. "King's Quest I" (1984) was the first adventure game to have animation, and "King's Quest V" (1990) was the first to use an icon-based interface. Roberta Williams also designed such titles as "Mixed-Up Mother Goose" (1987), "The Colonel's Bequest" (1989), and "Phantasmagoria" (1995), which was the first in her career to be developed in the full-motion video technology. "Phantasmagoria" featured extreme violence and rape scenes. The game has received mixed reviews. Though Sierra was sold in 1996, Williams' production credits date to 1999, when she retired from Sierra On-Line. Roberta posed for the cover of the game "Softporn Adventure" by Chuck Benton, published by On-line Systems. She also posed much later with her children as Mother Goose for the cover photograph of "Mixed-Up Mother Goose". The end sequence of "Leisure Suit Larry 3" features her as an in-game character. She was also a source of inspiration for Cameron's character in the AMC television drama "Halt and Catch Fire".