The History of The Oregon Trail

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The History of The Oregon Trail

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 2, 2013 @07:30AM from the you-have-died-of-dysentery dept.

Rick Zeman writes "Those of us of a certain age recall The Oregon Trail with fondness as the pioneering educational game that had the audacity to make learning fun! This article takes a look at the history behind the game, even going back to its initial text-based offering, showing how some programming magic pulled a generation of kids together. Quoting: '[F]or two weeks, the roommates holed up in a former janitor’s closet at Bryant Junior High School, where the school’s teletype was stored, and spent their evenings programming. Using Rawitsch’s historical knowledge, Heinemann and Dillenberger developed a series of algorithms, punching hundreds of lines of code into the teletype. But just because they created the program didn’t mean they could breeze through it. When Heinemann tried The Oregon Trail for the first time, he died of pneumonia midway!'"

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Surprising... by guytoronto · 2013-08-02 07:34 · Score: 5, Funny

That he didn't die of dysentery.
1. Re:Surprising... by drcheap · 2013-08-02 09:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That he didn't die of dysentery.
  It's because that was added in a later revision of the code.
  
  Geez...doesn't anybody read RTFA?
  /sarcasm
The Oregon Trail ... pioneering educational game by Nutria · 2013-08-02 07:41 · Score: 3, Funny

I see what you did there!

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"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It's shaped like a wagon wheel... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-08-02 07:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm sure it's been updated for modern audiences, as game makers see it. Which is to say, the hundreds of options are now just 4 to fit on a console controller: 2 offensive, one block, and one break-free-from-hold.
It's ok. Just use in your announcement that you have "re-imagined Oregon Trail and it is now an Action RPG MOBA!"
You might wanna use three exclamation points, but that's up to you.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
1. Re:It's shaped like a wagon wheel... by mysidia · 2013-08-02 16:31 · Score: 2
  
  I'm sure it's been updated for modern audiences, as game makers see it. Which is to say, the hundreds of options are now just 4 to fit on a console controller: 2 offensive, one block, and one break-free-from-hold.
  I remember the original versions of Organ Trail being very simple with only perhaps 5 or 6 options for supplies and 3 or 4 professions.
  If I recall correctly; later updates to it didn't remove options they added more options, and made it more complicated....
Very educational game by dj245 · 2013-08-02 07:50 · Score: 5, Funny

I took away exactly one thing from this game.

Q: Why did buffalo become an endangered species?
A: Because hunting buffalo is fun.

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Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
1. Re:Very educational game by XiaoMing · 2013-08-02 08:24 · Score: 2
  
  I took away exactly one thing from this game.
  Q: Why did buffalo become an endangered species?
  A: Because hunting buffalo is fun.
  For me, that takeaway was actually a pleasant consequence of the very educational fact that it's way more cost-efficient to start your cross-country wagon trip with 99 boxes of bullets in lieu of "real food" and whatnot.
2. Re:Very educational game by interkin3tic · 2013-08-02 08:30 · Score: 2
  
  I took another lesson away from the game that is probably much more useful:
  
  Under absolutely no circumstances should you ever try to walk or drive across a river. You'll tip over and Zeke will drown. Somehow an Indian will help you though.
3. Re:Very educational game by coolsnowmen · 2013-08-02 08:32 · Score: 2
  
  You're joking, but in someway this is the classic "teach a man to fish" vs "give a man a fish"
4. Re:Very educational game by Teancum · 2013-08-02 10:36 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  While it is a common to think that the settlers were responsible for hunting buffalo to near extinction, it really was a combination of a deliberate program by the U.S. Army to hunt buffalo (where they wouldn't even take the hide or meat.... leaving the animals to rot on the ground where they were killed) and the fact that much of the range of the buffalo was consumed by cattle... creatures that pretty much fill the same environmental niche.
  The deliberate hunting of buffalo was done explicitly to drive the plains Indians into reservations by destroying their food sources. I'm not defending this practice as I consider it to be a war crime and unethical in so many ways, but it was a measured and purposeful act that killed far more buffalo than anything taken by the wagon trains going over the various westward migration trails.
  The buffalo herds were so vast and the unoccupied land at the time of the game so large that it would be like somebody with a single fishing rod depleting the fish stock of the south Pacific Ocean. Bullets and weapons also offered protection not just from "Indians", but also a large number of "highwaymen" that hung out on the trails (often dressed up as native tribes to shift blame).
  I'll also note that the pioneers also ate berries, nuts, roots, and pretty much anything else that they found along the trail. They even went fishing in many of the streams that they found along the path too. Why do you think all of this kind of food gathering was such a bad thing?
5. Re:Very educational game by YalithKBK · 2013-08-03 00:34 · Score: 2
  
  This was the first game taught me how to rage quit.
Press A for genocide by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-02 07:59 · Score: 2

Yeah! Why didn't the generation of kids growing up in the '80s self loathe and carry guilt over what other people did generations before they were born? Might as well blaming the latest generation for the holocaust with thinking like that.
1. Re:Press A for genocide by Anne_Nonymous · 2013-08-02 09:12 · Score: 2
  
  >> they are directly responsible due to their race
  LOL
Re:Not a word about the genocide? by toygeek · 2013-08-02 08:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

Man, what the hell are you talking about? It doesn't even touch on the subject and makes no justification for those things, nor does it even acknowledge it in a positive or negative light. Its a kids game focused on the journey, not genocide and politics. For its purpose, it does a great job. From TFA:

Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1974, Rawitsch exhumed his old yellow roll of code. Looking at the game again, he knew he could do better. Over the next year, he would thicken the plot, using facts he found from the diaries of Oregon Trail survivors. He discovered how often settlers ran out of water. He tallied the ways people died, and he took note of how Native Americans, contrary to popular belief, were actually quite generous with survival tips, letting settlers know whether it was safe to cross a river, for example.
Just because it doesn't have a big story line saying "genocide is wrong, mmmkay" doesn't mean it condones it.

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Rehash from 2011 story? by Walking+The+Walk · 2013-08-02 08:04 · Score: 2

Looks like a rehash of the story we saw here a couple of years ago. I've only read the first few paragraphs of this new article, but I haven't found anything different from the previous one. I'm not suggesting plagiarism, I'm just saying it looks like the author just took the information from previous stories and rewrote it in his own words, without adding anything new.

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1. Re:Rehash from 2011 story? by wonkey_monkey · 2013-08-02 09:18 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yeah, it totally does look like a rehash of the story we saw here a couple of years ago! I've also only read the first few paragraphs of this new article, too, but I also haven't found anything different from the previous one. I'm not suggesting plagiarism either, I'm just also saying it looks like the author just took the information from previous stories and rewrote it in his own words, without adding anything new. What a douche!
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Re:Not a word about the genocide? by Imagix · 2013-08-02 08:41 · Score: 2

Seven Cities of Gold? In that game if you made it a habit of killing the indigenous leaders they eventually got the idea and immediately surrendered when you showed up.
Death of MECC was death of educational computing by spopepro · 2013-08-02 08:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

Ah MECC. I sometimes wonder how different the world would be if SoftKey hadn't MBA'ed all of the great educational-entertaining software companies into oblivion. After MECC, games went back to assited rote practice of basic skills, which is basically the entire educational games segment today. I kind of wonder if it would have happened anyway; was the time right just then, or would it have sustained and grown? The key is: I don't see games like Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, Rocky's Boots, etc. anymore--unless it's just re-skinned versions of those games.
Fun fact: the two major rights holders these days to the SoftKey (aka, The Learning Company) IP are Houghton Mifflin Harcort and Ubisoft. Yeah... those are some fun people to try and work with...
Re:Not a word about the genocide? by Culture20 · 2013-08-02 10:18 · Score: 2

Anger leads to hate. Hate.....leads to SUFFERING!
Life is suffering, and life arises from good ol' fashioned lovin'. Therefore, hate is similar in nature to good ol' fashioned lovin'.
Silly Buddha. People have known about angry sex for ages.