Oregon Trail - Developing A Classic

Via Press the Buttons, an interview on the site Deadly Hippos with Philip Bouchard, designer for the original "Oregon Trail". The classic game of food, hunting, and cholera was a staple for many folks around my age growing up, and the piece makes for interesting reading. From the article: "Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill. That was one of the reasons for allowing the player to carry back no more than 200 pounds of meat. I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game - to say "We should not shoot more meat than we can carry". Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective."

Comments

Relive a Memory!

[DavidLeeRoth]

Use AppleWin to emulate an Apple 2 Game. Download the Oregon Trail images from Here. After getting both pieces of software, load each disk image into a separate emulated drive in the emulator, then press run. Enjoy!

Helpful hint

[sirboxalot]

Caulk your wagon if the river is above 3ft. Also, heres the Apple II emulator: http://www.virtualapple.com/oregontraildisk.html if you'd like to try your hand at avoiding dysentery.

Re:Don't Read It

[MBCook]

1. The game commences with the player asked to choose among three choices: Banker from Boston, Carpenter from Ohio. and Farmer from Illinois. Was there ever any discussion of including a Slave Owner from Mississippi?

I wanted to have 3 difficulty levels representing different amounts of initial resources. We tied this into the real world by connecting these levels to 3 different professions. This was also an opportunity to get kids to think about the fact that the emigrants came from different places and had different backgrounds.

Although we did not choose to address slavery issues with this product, a decade later I worked on another historical simulation game called Pony Express Rider, published by McGraw-Hill Home Interactive. In this product we addressed the slavery issue quite directly.

After The Oregon Trail, but before Pony Express Rider, I designed and programmed two other historical simulation games (both published by MECC) that also dealt squarely with ethnic relations - Lewis & Clark Stayed Home, and Dr. Livingstone, I Presume? In Lewis & Clark you explore the American West, interacting with dozens of different Native American communities. In Dr. Livingstone you explore Africa, interacting with dozens of different African ethnic groups.

2. Were you ever informed that some religious schools in the south insisted their students select Carpenter from Ohio because Jesus was a carpenter? Was it your intent to cloak the Carpenter from Ohio in religious symbolism?

I had never heard this before, and any religious symbolism in the product is purely accidental. But I was born and raised in the Deep South, so I witnessed on many occasions the deep attachment that many southerners have to their religious beliefs.

3. [Stupid question about the general store owner's name being Matt]

I understand that Matt is short for Mathew, a name with a very long history. The son of the then-president of MECC was also named Matt, and our president was convinced that we named the store's proprietor after his son. Please don't let him know the real story - he would be so disappointed!

4. Matt's character has a pipe. If this game were designed today do you believe you would be required to remove the pipe from Matt's mouth? Did you feel any responsibility about the high rate of tobacco use among children of the 1980's?

If all those kids had taken up pipe smoking, then I would definitely feel guilty - but I think I'm in the clear! Honestly, if I were to design another Oregon Trail, I don't think we would see Matt using any form of tobacco.

Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer's idea - not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.

5. How did your team settle on five as the requisite number of individuals attempting the trek on the Oregon Trail and were there any names that were disallowed from selection as choices? For instance are names like stinky, cooties, and gayey allowed?

I chose 5 as the number of individuals on your team strictly from the standpoint of game play, and not for any actual historical reasons. That's one of the rare exceptions, because I made of point of weaving real history or geography into almost all of my other design decisions.

We talked about building a filter to disallow certain terms as keyboard input. This was a concern not only for the name input, but even more so for the gravestone epitaph. However, as we were designing this product to fit on a 2-sided Apple II floppy disk, we didn't have the space to incorporate such a filter. This was just one of many features on our wish list that did not make it into the finished product.

The lack of a profanity filter came back to bite us. Some teachers began to complain that we had

Play it online!

[antdude]

Play it online if you have Internet Explorer (ActiveX required). Go to Virtual Apple and load the game up.

The history behind bison killings

[Allen Varney]

Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill.

I swear I'm not trolling here, but I think the designer could more instructively have discussed the actual historical reasons hunters killed bison:

Hunters were paid by large railroad concerns to destroy entire herds for several reasons:

• The herds formed the basis of the economies of local Plains tribes of Native Americans.
• Herds of these large animals on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time.
• Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. This could hold up a train for days.

Besides this, Bison skins were valuable for industry, clothing such as robes, and rugs. Old West Bison hunting was very often a big commercial enterprise, involving organized teams of one or two professional hunters, skinners, cartridge reloaders, cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, security guards, teamsters and large numbers of horse and wagons. Some of these professional hunters such as "Buffalo Bill" Cody killed over a hundred animals at a single stand and many thousands in their career. A good hide could bring $3.00 in Dodge City, and a very good one $50.00 in an era when a laborer would be lucky to make a dollar a day.
Proposals to protect the Bison were discouraged, as it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on Bison for their way of life. General Phillip Sheridan spoke to the Texas Legislature against a proposal to outlaw commercial Bison hunting for that reason, and President Grant also "pocket vetoed" a similar Federal bill to protect the dwindling Bison herds. By 1884 the American Bison was close to extinction.

I suggest this kind of history is valid for inclusion in a historical game about the Oregon Trail.