The Timeline

Named for the letters D and D, this PLATO dungeon sent players down the multi-level Whisenwood Dungeon after an Orb guarded by a dragon, arguably the first boss in video games.

A 1975 dungeon hidden in a lesson slot on the University of Illinois' PLATO network: one level, twenty-five monsters, and one of the earliest surviving computer role-playing games.

A caver's memory of Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, mixed with a D&D campaign and a little magic, became the first famous text adventure and the namesake of a whole genre: XYZZY.

West of a white house, in an open field, lies the Great Underground Empire: MIT's witty, sarcastic answer to Adventure, home of the lurking grue and the best-selling text adventure of its age.

One of the first mass-market home computers arrives; within a few years it will host Akalabeth: World of Doom, Ultima and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

Two Essex students turned the solitary text adventure into a shared world: MUD, where strangers met, fought and cooperated in real time on the way to Wizard rank, the seed of every online RPG since.

A Texas teenager's Apple II hobby game, sold in Ziploc bags at a ComputerLand: ten quests from Lord British, a wireframe dungeon in true perspective, and the unofficial first chapter of Ultima.

PLATO's most popular game: a multiplayer, first-person dungeon crawl begun by two junior-high students, where parties explored together, chatted in real time and logged more than a million hours.

An @ sign descends through randomly generated dungeons drawn in ASCII, one life only, toward the Amulet of Yendor: the college-terminal obsession that named an entire genre.

A teenager's Apple II epic in which a stranger from another world crosses Sosaria's four continents, rescues princesses, becomes a space ace and travels back in time to shatter Mondain's Gem of Immortality.

Six adventurers, a ten-level maze drawn in green lines, graph paper in the box, and no saving below ground: the Apple II dungeon crawl that defined the party-based computer RPG in America and Japan.

The first Ultima from Origin Systems sends a party of four against Exodus, spawn of Mondain and Minax, with animated tiles, tactical battles, a musical score, and a villain defeated not by the sword but by punch cards.

Real-time sword fights in a maze where your own house can be pushed around the dungeon: Nihon Falcom's 1984 hit that helped invent the Japanese action RPG and launched a sprawling series.

The knight Jim crosses the open fields of Fairyland to rescue Princess Ann from the demon Varalys, pausing to let his health regenerate: the 1984 action RPG that seeded a mechanic now found in nearly every modern game.

Sir Graham walks into a storybook: Roberta Williams's animated fairy-tale adventure, built to show off IBM's PCjr, where you steer a knight behind trees and in front of castles in search of a magic mirror, shield and chest.

A Dutch-born programmer in Japan built Japan an RPG from scratch: a first-person party crawl beneath Utsuro, a town under eternal night, that taught a nation what hit points were.

Four friends, four joysticks, one Warrior who needs food badly: Atari's 1985 arcade dungeon crawl turned D&D's party into a coin-fed, cooperative stampede through monster-filled mazes.

Mangar the Dark has locked Skara Brae in eternal winter, and only a bard, a few rogues and some junior magic users stand in his way: the Commodore 64 dungeon crawl that out-sold every CRPG of the 1980s.

The RPG that asked players to become good rather than merely strong: no dark lord to slay, only eight virtues to live by, a cloth map, a metal ankh, and the Codex waiting at the bottom of the Abyss.

A lone descendant of the hero Erdrick sets out from Tantegel Castle to face the Dragonlord: Yuji Horii's streamlined Famicom RPG, drawn by Akira Toriyama and scored by Koichi Sugiyama, that made the role-playing game a Japanese national pastime.

Jon Van Caneghem's 1986 debut, written almost single-handedly over three years and sold from his apartment: a vast first-person world whose knights-and-dragons surface hides a science-fiction secret.

Nintendo's 1986 open-ended quest through Hyrule, in which a boy named Link pieces together the Triforce of Wisdom — the game that taught consoles to explore, save, and keep secrets.

FTL's 1987 Atari ST landmark: a first-person dungeon crawl that ran in real time, let you grab objects with the mouse, and made you draw spells from runes while monsters shuffled toward you in the dark.

Square's 1987 all-or-nothing gamble: four Warriors of Light, four darkened crystals, and a time loop, built by a small team out of Wizardry, Ultima and D&D — and the first chapter of the most famous name in Japanese RPGs.

The open-source roguelike first released in 1987 and still maintained decades later: descend some fifty procedurally generated levels, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and die in a thousand inventive ways along the way.

Sega's 1987 answer to Dragon Quest: a heroine named Alis, a talking cat, three planets, and full-screen 3D dungeons that the Famicom could not match — science fantasy on a four-megabit cartridge.

The wargame publisher Strategic Simulations, Inc. secures the rights to official AD&D computer games, which led to Pool of Radiance and the Gold Box series.

SSI's 1988 adventure in the ruined city of Phlan was the first computer role-playing game built on the full Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, and the engine behind a golden shelf of D&D games.

On February 10 it sells over a million cartridges in a day, and almost 300 students are reportedly picked up for truancy. Enix then chose to release later games on weekends.

Seth Robinson's 1989 text-based dragon hunt for dial-up bulletin boards: a few forest fights a day, a flirt with Violet at the Inn, and a village of callers racing to slay the Red Dragon.

Nintendo publishes the first Dragon Quest in the U.S. In late 1990 it gives the game away to Nintendo Power subscribers, drawing nearly 500,000 new subscriptions.

The 1990 Famicom game in which Prince Marth leads an army across a grid-map war — and every soldier who falls stays dead. It made the tactical RPG a genre in Japan.

Nintendo publishes Square's 1987 game in the U.S., a modest start for the series in the West.

Westwood's 1991 descent beneath Waterdeep married the real-time, step-by-step dungeon of Dungeon Master to official AD&D rules, and gave PC owners the VGA dungeon crawl they had been waiting for.

From 1991 to 1997, AOL subscribers dialed into a shared Forgotten Realms city built on SSI's Gold Box engine — the first online role-playing game with graphics, and the seed of the MMORPG.

Hiroyuki Ito's Active Time Battle system gives each combatant a timer, a hybrid of turn-based and real-time combat that the series used for years.

A tiny New England studio's 1992 'dungeon simulation' let players look up, jump, swim and fight in a texture-mapped 3D Abyss beneath Britannia — and changed first-person games forever.

Origin's 1992 murder mystery in a Britannia where you could bake bread, change a baby, and follow a smiling cult to the door of an invading god — the most richly simulated world of its day.

Months after releasing Ultima Underworld and Ultima VII, Origin is bought by EA, a sign of the big publishers absorbing independent studios.

Square's 1993 real-time adventure for three friends at once: a boy pulls a rusted sword from a stone, and a hero, a girl and a sprite set out to stop an empire raising a flying fortress.

Square's 1994 16-bit masterpiece: an empire strip-mining magic from captive Espers, a clown who becomes a god, an opera, and a world that actually ends halfway through.

Bethesda's 1994 gladiator game that became something else entirely: a first-person RPG spanning all of Tamriel, with procedurally generated wilds, a day-night cycle, and the first of the Elder Scrolls.

Square's 1995 time-travel epic, made by a 'Dream Team' from the rival Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest camps, in which a boy, a princess and an inventor cross millions of years to stop the world's end.

New World Computing's 1995 turn-based fantasy strategy game, in which heroes lead stacks of mythical creatures across a map of mines, castles and treasure — the start of one of PC gaming's most beloved series.

A roguelike dungeon crawl turned real-time over a weekend, Diablo sent players 16 levels down beneath a haunted cathedral, clicking through demons and loot, and invented the modern action RPG.

A first-person 3D world opened to the internet a year before Ultima Online, Meridian 59 pioneered the flat monthly fee, guild politics and player justice, then refused to die for two decades.

Satoshi Tajiri turned a childhood of insect collecting into a Game Boy RPG about catching and trading 151 monsters, and the 1996 release became the seed of the most lucrative franchise in entertainment.

Bethesda's 1996 sequel to Arena built a procedurally generated realm the size of Great Britain, with 15,000 places to go, custom classes, vampirism, bank loans and a plot with multiple endings, and shipped full of bugs.

Richard Bartle's paper 'Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs' names achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers.

Square's leap to CD and 3D, Final Fantasy VII followed a spiky-haired mercenary from the Mako reactors of Midgar to the edge of the Lifestream, and brought the Japanese RPG to a mass Western audience.

Richard Garriott's Britannia turned into a living, lawless shared world: thousands of players building houses, running shops, and killing one another. UO popularized the MMORPG and taught a generation of designers how hard virtual societies are.

Released on September 7 with a large Sony TV campaign, it becomes many Western players' first RPG.

An orphan from the library-fortress of Candlekeep discovers the blood of a dead god of murder in their veins, and BioWare's debut RPG brings the computer role-playing game roaring back to life.

A 2D feudal war of castles and blood pledges, adapted from a Korean comic, that rode the PC-bang boom to millions of subscribers and made NCSoft one of Asia's great game companies.

Nintendo's Game Boy RPG arrives in the U.S. on September 28 and starts a craze among children.

By December 1998 Origin's online Britannia has 100,000 subscribers; some accounts date the milestone to within six months of the 1997 launch. It peaked at about 250,000 in 2003.

Turbine's seamless island of Dereth let players walk a whole continent without a loading screen, swear fealty to one another, and follow a story that advanced every month for fifteen years.

Sony's 3D world of Norrath turned the text MUD into a nightly obsession: camped spawns, corpse runs, forty-player raids, and a player base so hooked it nicknamed the game EverCrack.

An immortal amnesiac wakes on a mortuary slab in Sigil, a floating skull at his side and instructions tattooed on his back, and asks the question the whole game is built on: what can change the nature of a man?

Imprisoned and dissected by the elven mage Jon Irenicus, the child of Bhaal breaks out into the merchant city of Athkatla, and BioWare builds one of the richest party RPGs ever made.

Blizzard North's 2000 sequel chased a possessed hero across deserts, jungles and Hell, and its skill trees, rune-socketed loot and Battle.net economy made it the model every action RPG would copy.

A caravan-guard job in the frozen north turns into a war against a demon and his giants, as Black Isle strips the Infinity Engine down to its bones: six heroes you roll yourself, and wave after wave of monsters.

Sega's December 21 release brings online RPGs to consoles through the Dreamcast's built-in modem.

Three kingdoms rise from the ruins of Arthur's Britain and go to war forever: Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot made faction warfare over keeps and relics the reason to log in.

Two brothers' Java game, launched from a family home in Nottingham, became a free online world in a browser tab and the MMO with the most users on Earth.

Square staked its flagship series on an online world: one Vana'diel shared by Japanese, American and European players on PlayStation 2 and PC, and quietly the most profitable Final Fantasy of all.

BioWare hands players the Dungeon Master's screen: a D&D campaign in plague-struck Neverwinter, plus the tools to build worlds of their own and run them live for friends online.

Bethesda's handcrafted alien island of giant mushrooms, silt striders and a sleeping god-villain, Morrowind shipped with its own construction kit and turned The Elder Scrolls into a modding culture and a console hit.

The makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, longtime rivals, combine as Square Enix on April 1.

Blizzard took the grind out of EverQuest, poured in quests, cartoon color and Warcraft lore, and built the online world that twelve million people paid to live in and that is still expanding two decades later.

Three ex-Blizzard veterans bet that players would buy an online RPG without paying monthly. Guild Wars won the bet with instanced adventures, an eight-skill bar built like a card deck, and guild-versus-guild battles.

Two brothers, one text screen of smiley faces, and a simulation deep enough to track every dwarf's liver and grudges: Dwarf Fortress generates whole histories, then lets you watch your fortress drown, burn, or go mad.

The emperor dies in a sewer, the gates of a demon realm open across a green and golden province, and the player walks out into Cyrodiil free to ignore it all: Oblivion was the first 'next-gen' open-world fantasy.

Start in Bree just after Frodo leaves, trail the Fellowship across Eriador, down into Moria and on to the Black Gate: Turbine's online Middle-earth let thousands walk Tolkien's roads, and play lutes at the Prancing Pony.

A Polish studio's first game revived Andrzej Sapkowski's white-haired monster hunter as an amnesiac in a plague-ridden city, and taught the world that a fantasy RPG could be about lesser evils rather than good and evil.

The studio behind Baldur's Gate joins EA, two years before Dragon Age: Origins.

The second World of Warcraft expansion sells 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours after its November 13 launch.

A failing Sony–FromSoftware project, rescued by a director who had nothing to lose, became a cruel, fog-shrouded kingdom of five worlds and one hub, and the seed of the entire soulslike genre.

BioWare's own answer to Baldur's Gate: six origin stories, a blighted kingdom, a circle of sharp-tongued companions, and a war against the darkspawn in which every hard choice is yours to live with.

Square Enix's second online Final Fantasy launched so broken the company apologized, replaced its leaders and dropped a moon on its own world. Rebuilt as A Realm Reborn, it became the most profitable Final Fantasy yet.

Blizzard announces the high point of the subscription MMORPG, six years after launch.

An undead pilgrim, a dying age of fire, and a single interlocking kingdom of castles, sewers and cathedrals that fold back on themselves: Dark Souls made 'prepare to die' a promise and a genre.

Dragons return to a cold, Norse-flavored province at civil war, and the player, the last Dragonborn, can shout them out of the sky, or ignore destiny and wander off: Skyrim became the open world everyone has played.

An adventure game's roughly $3.3 million Kickstarter is quickly followed by Brian Fargo's Wasteland 2 (about $2.9 million).

Obsidian's Kickstarter for an Infinity Engine–style RPG raises about $3.98 million, then a video game record on the site. The game became Pillars of Eternity.

A small New Zealand studio built the dark successor to Diablo II that fans wanted: exiles on a cursed coast, a passive tree of well over a thousand nodes, and an economy with no gold, only orbs.

The whole of Tamriel online: three alliances war for the Ruby Throne while a Daedric prince tries to drag the world into his realm. A lukewarm subscription MMO at launch, ESO became a billion-dollar success.

Veterans of Black Isle asked fans to fund the kind of isometric RPG publishers had abandoned, raised almost $4 million, and built a new world of soul-reading Watchers in the style of Baldur's Gate.

Geralt of Rivia crosses a war-torn land in search of his adopted daughter, and every village has a monster, a grudge and a story worth hearing. Its side quests set the standard for open-world RPGs.

Your ancestor dug too deep. Now you must send doomed mercenaries into the ruins beneath the family estate, and watch them crack under the strain as a gravel-voiced narrator reminds you that ruin has come to your family.

Shipped to an island prison as a Sourcerer, you and three companions can talk to animals, ignite poison clouds, betray each other in co-op and decide the fate of the gods: Larian's systemic masterpiece.

Larian releases an unfinished version on October 6 and revises it for nearly three years using player feedback.

FromSoftware opened the Souls formula onto a vast, haunted open world, George R. R. Martin wrote its ancient myths, and thirty million players rode out across the Lands Between to die, learn, and try again.

A mind flayer tadpole behind your eye, a camp full of beautiful liars, and a twenty-sided die deciding everything: Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 turned fifth-edition D&D into the most celebrated role-playing game of its age.

On December 7 Larian's adaptation of 5th Edition D&D wins the top prize at The Game Awards, the first of many.

The artist behind Dragon Quest's monsters and Chrono Trigger's characters dies on March 1, aged 68.

Elden Ring's expansion arrives on June 21 and later passes 10 million copies sold.

Bethesda releases the remake on April 22 with no advance announcement, and more than four million people play it within days.

The Interplay co-founder and lead of The Bard's Tale III dies on November 17, aged 62.

On December 11 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wins nine awards including Game of the Year, a record for the show. Larian reveals its next game, Divinity.