hub world

English

Etymology

From hub, meaning the central point or are of an activity, region, or network.

Noun

hub world (plural hub worlds)

1. (video games) An area in a video game from which most or all of the game's levels are accessed.

   Peach's Castle in Super Mario 64 is an early example of a hub world.

   • 2009, Game Informer Magazine: For Video Game Enthusiasts, page 62:

     First of all, the game is split into discrete levels joined by a hub world.

   • 2010, EZ Guides: The Games of the Decade:

     The loot system is as constant and unyielding as the endlessly respawning enemies: it's an obsessive's nirvana, leading to as much time navigating the inventory screen as the game's hub world and dungeons.

   • 2014, Tobias Winnerling, Early Modernity and Video Games, page 206:

     Souls, which function as both currency and experience points, are slowly collected as the player works through a stage, and can only be spent at Nexus, the hub world that players are transported to between stages.

2. (science fiction) A planet which serves as a hub.
   • 1965, John Wood Campbell, editor, Analog Science Fact/science Fiction, page 43:

     Otherwise, our beautiful tree might become a definite nuisance on any Hub world to which it is introduced.

   • 2007, Aaron Michael Fanthorpe, Genesis Project: Prelude to Destiny, volume 1, page 8:

     A hub world in the Kasna Republik, Kasnearfar was a cosmopolitan port for beings across the Four Galaxies.

   • 2012, Ted White, Sideslip‎^[1]:

     But something was shaping up—something incomprehensible and vast, concerning the Hub Worlds, something that was apparently tangled in and directly related to tens of thousands of years of interacting histories.

Synonyms

• hub
• (video games): overworld

See also

• open world
• overworld