Robert Whitaker

History Respawned: Games Designers as Historians and Games as History, 1971 – 1991

Digital games – which include computer, mobile, and video games – represent the most

valuable entertainment medium in the world, routinely generating more global revenue than music,

film, and television.1 A remarkable facet of the popularity of digital games is the centrality of

history as a topic and setting for the most popular digital game titles. For instance, in 2018, five

out of the twenty best-selling video games were history titles, including the most popular game,

Red Dead Redemption 2.2 Out of the ten top-selling games of the last decade, half were history

games or games with significant historical components.3 Digital games are big business, and

history is often the most profitable and popular setting for digital games.

Historians and other scholars have taken notice of this relationship between digital games

and history, and have begun to analyze digital history games for their historical content as well as

their potential influence on player’s historical knowledge.4 In addition to traditional academic

publications, these scholars also routinely write critiques of popular history games for major

publications, including Rock Paper Shotgun and The Guardian.5 This work has greatly contributed

1 Kevin Webb, “The $120 billion gaming industry is going through more change than it ever has before, and everyone

is trying to cash in.” Business Insider, October 1, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/video-game-industry-120-

billion-future-innovation-2019-9 2 Webb, “‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ beat out ‘Call of Duty’ to become 2018’s best-seller – these were the 20 best-

selling games of the year.” Business Insider, January 23, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-video-

games-2018-2019-1 3 Hope Corrigan, “Grand Theft Auto 5 is the USA’s Best-Selling Game of the Decade.” IGN, January 17, 2020,

https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-5-is-the-usas-best-selling-game-of-the-decade 4 Key works include Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History (New York:

Routledge, 2011); Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History: How Videogames Present the Past and Offer Access

to Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Andrew B.R. Elliot, eds.

Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 5 Holly Nielsen, “Assassin’s Creed Origins: how Ubisoft painstakingly recreated ancient Egypt,” The Guardian,

October 5, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/assassins-creed-origins-recreated-ancient-

egypt-ubisoft; Andreas Inderwildi, “Kingdom Come Deliverance’s quest for historical accuracy is a fool’s errand,”

Rock Paper Shotgun, March 5, 2018, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/05/kingdom-come-deliverance-

historical-accuracy/

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to informed critique of history games, and built a foundation for analyzing the influence of history

games on popular historical memory. However, this work has failed, thus far, to develop in two

important ways: first, understanding the creative process and intentions of history game developers

and, second, understanding the long history of digital history games, outside of the last decade.

With regard to understanding development, scholars have succeeded in bringing their

knowledge to bear on the history presented by recent popular games. Yet only rarely are those

critiques of history games informed by the intent of developers, or, perhaps more importantly, the

historical sources that developers used when developing their history games. Building a knowledge

of this topic through archival research and oral histories could greatly change the consideration of

published history games and enliven the increasingly stale analysis of representations of history

by digital titles. Moreover, archival research and oral interviews would allow scholars to envision

history game creators as historians rather than solely as game developers. This distinction is

important because of the popularity of history games and their influence on the historical memories

of game players. We know that history games represent important touchstones for historical

knowledge among players. Yet when it comes to games, we do not yet know how to answer

questions related to authorship. We assume and infer the perspective of game developers. We

assume and infer their biases. We need to do more in order to understand game development and

learn how the development process plays into a game’s representation of the past.

With regard to the long history of digital games, the current analysis of history titles is,

unsurprisingly, focused on the last ten to fifteen years. This period witnessed the emergence of big

budget, “Triple A” history games, including Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, and Call of Duty. Yet

this focus on recent history often leads scholars to miss the longer history of analog and digital

history games. This is an important problem for two reasons. First, game development is an

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iterative process in which new games build upon the design techniques and methods of previous

titles. To ignore the past, in this regard, is to ignore how the genres and gameplay types we discuss

in the present are the result of long-term trends in development. Second, much like game

development, the representation of history is an iterative process. Scholars of historical games

often write about the history in these titles as though they are solely a product of current conditions

and concerns rather than iterations on longstanding tropes and themes within the history of

historical games. If we can accept that digital games are a medium for influential historical

knowledge, then historical games also have a historiography, in the same way as historical films,

documentaries, and scholarly monographs. To be sure, the representation of the past in current

history game owes much to contemporary circumstances. Those representations, however, also

draw inspiration and respond to the history depicted in foundational titles of the late 20th century,

particularly Age of Empires, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and the sine qua non of digital history games,

The Oregon Trail. Current history titles not only respond to these games, but also often share

developers or development teams with those classic titles.

The purpose of this study is to consider the long history of digital history games through

archival and oral history sources. It will focus on the critical period from 1971 to 1991, which saw

the early development of digital games as well as the personal computer and the first video game

consoles. Although this work will consider elements of game design, the primary focus will be on

the development of digital games as a medium for historical knowledge. Furthermore, this project

will study the academic and pedagogical backgrounds of many early game designers associated

with history games, and reveal how their backgrounds influenced the development of digital games

more generally.

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History hits the Trail

One of the more common and pernicious aspects of games studies is the habit of mind of scholars

to cordon off educational games from the history of digital games more generally. This habit often

results from a narrow focus on the last twenty years, during which time educational games became

poorly funded, over produced, and easily forgettable. Yet by extending one’s focus into the late

twentieth century and avoiding the teleology of reading the history of educational games through

their current state, it is impossible to escape the importance and popularity of educational titles.

Indeed, there is an argument to be made that digital games as we know them today would not exist

without the educational game industry of the late twentieth century. In the years when computers

were prohibitively expensive and even more prohibitively large, schools and universities

represented one of the few places people could use a computer, let alone play a computer game.

And given the limited availability of computers, early digital game developers, unsurprisingly,

often began their careers using campus-based machines and working on educational software. The

game genres and gameplay modes we take for granted today often existed first in educational titles.

No title better represents this fact than The Oregon Trail, a game which most people

associate with the 1985 Apple II version, but which began life in a junior high classroom in

Minnesota in 1971.6 The game was the brainchild of Don Rawitsch, a senior history undergraduate

at Carleton College (Northfield, MN) working as a student teacher at Bryant Junior High School

in Minneapolis. For his student teaching assignment, Rawitsch had been tasked with instructing

junior high students on the history of 19th century westward expansion. His training at Carleton

had encouraged the use of innovative techniques to reach students and “get their noses out of the

6 Jessica Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its path,” City Pages, January 19, 2011,

http://www.citypages.com/news/oregon-trail-how-three-minnesotans-forged-its-path-6745749; “Classic Game

Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video, 1:02:01. “GDC, Don Rawtisch,” March 15, 2017,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdGNFhKhoKY

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textbook.”7 During previous student teaching assignments, Rawitsch and another instructor had

roleplayed as Lewis and Clark, and had students interview them while they were dressed and

speaking in character.8 In another session, he participated in a mock trial, which began with Don

and another instructor getting into a heated argument followed by Don being “shot” with a track

coach’s starter pistol – a pedagogical technique that is probably best left in the 1970s. After the

“murder,” students would then take on the roles of attorney, judge, or jury to determine the legal

response. For westward expansion, Rawitsch quickly latched on to games as a possible way to

achieve his goal of engaging students. His first solo teaching assignment had involved leading a

lesson on the American Revolution at a local high school, for which he created a rudimentary paper

and pencil game to illustrate the collection of colonial taxes. Rawitsch initially envisioned a new

analog game for westward expansion with pioneer trails drawn on large sheets of butcher paper.

Students, playing as pioneer families, would move along the trails using dice rolls while attempting

to avoid various disasters, including disease, injury, and theft.9

Rawitsch began outlining the game he called “Oregon Trail” at his apartment in the

Minneapolis suburb of Crystal, Minnesota. He shared this apartment with two other student

teachers from Carleton, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, who taught math at another area

school. Both Heinemann and Dillenberger studied computer programming at Carleton, and

Heinemann suggested to Rawitsch that they could use their programming knowledge to turn

“Oregon Trail,” with its unwieldy butcher paper map, into a computer application.10 Over the next

7 Jeremy Shea, “An Interview with the Teacher-Turned-Developer Behind ‘Oregon Trai,” Yester: Then for Now,

February 24, 2014, https://yesterthenfornow.kinja.com/an-interview-with-the-teacher-turned-developer-behind-o-

1529659314 8 Robert Whitaker, “History at GDC: Don Rawitsch on The Oregon Trail,” March 5, 2017,

https://www.historyrespawned.com/home/2017/3/5/history-at-gdc-don-rawitsch-on-the-oregon-

trail?rq=oregon%20trail 9 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 10 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.”

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two weeks, Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger worked together at night to devise the game

and encode it into Bryant Junior High School’s monitor-less teletype machine. This machine used

phone lines to access a central computer owned by the state of Minnesota in downtown

Minneapolis. Because the teletype used phone lines and relied on the limited processing power of

the central computer, use of the machine was based on a timeshare system and had to be scheduled

beforehand. However, by developing the game in the evening, Rawitsch, Heinemann, and

Dillenberger were able to work on “Oregon Trail” largely unhindered by the timeshare schedule.

Rawitsch debuted the game in his history class at Bryant Junior High School on December

3, 1971.11 He brought in the school’s teletype, which was normally parked in a janitor’s closet,

and instructed his students on how to play the text-based game on the monitor-less machine.

“Oregon Trail” was a turn-based, resource management game in which each turn would start with

the teletype printing out a tally of the player’s resources (i.e. food, clothing, ammunition, etc.)

followed by the player typing in their decision on what to do next (e.g. stop at a fort, hunt, or

continue on the trail). After the player made their decision and chose how well to eat, they would

then encounter a random event, for instance a broken wagon wheel or missing child, which would

force them to react. Each turn in the game was designed to represent two weeks on the trail, so that

the game could be completed in ten to twelve turns.12 At the midway point in the game, players

encountered the Rocky Mountains, which then unlocked the potential for more unfortunate events,

including blizzards and getting lost. Although there were a limited number of events coded into

the game, their occurrence was randomized by the computer, meaning that each journey on the

trail tended to be different. The occurrence of events was also dependent on where the player was

on the trail. For example, players would not run into a blizzard until they reached the mountains

11 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 12 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video.

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and they would be much more likely to run into other people on the trail, called “riders,” when

they were closer to the start of the game at Independence, Missouri.13

With this first version of “Oregon Trail,” Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger

established a number of gameplay elements that would become inextricably linked with digital

history games, and digital games more generally, going forward. They became the first developers

to apply analog game notions of turns and resources management to a digital title, while also being

the first to apply those notions to a digital game where history was the primary topic and setting.

Today, turn-based resource management history games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization series

and the Total War series, make up some of the most popular digital games. Moreover, because of

the random nature of the game’s events set along a repeatable journey, “Oregon Trail” became the

first digital example of a roguelike, a genre of gameplay associated with randomized, procedurally

generated levels that are designed to be replayed over and over again for a new experience. Current

popular examples of this genre include Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, FTL: Faster Than Light, and

Dead Cells. In his postmortem presentation for the Game Developers Conference in 2017,

Rawitsch argued that “Oregon Trail” could even be considered the first shooter game based on the

title’s hunting mechanic.14 In this mechanic, the teletype would print out “Type BANG” and the

player’s success in hunting would be based on how quickly and accurately they typed out and

entered the word “BANG,” “POW,” or “BLAM.” If the player typed the word incorrectly, the

result would be no food; if they spelled the word correctly but typed slowly, the result would be

some food; and if they spelled the word correctly and typed quickly, there would be “Good eatin’

tonight.”

13 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video. 14 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video.

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Remarkably, these gameplay elements that would become the mainstay of popular digital

games were first developed for use in a junior high history class. They were the result of innovative

history pedagogy rather than commercial development under the umbrella of a large, publicly

traded company. Given the original purpose of the game, however, the question must be asked:

did “Oregon Trail” work as a pedagogical tool? There were obvious flaws with how the game

portrayed westward expansion, most notably related to what the game lacked, including any

mention of Native Americans or slavery. These problems can be tied back to the way westward

expansion was taught in public schools at the time; the age, perspective, and education of the

developers; the two week development period; and, to a certain extent, the technological

limitations of the hardware involved. As with any other history – whether it be a book, film, or

game – there is room for improvement and often an inability to cover all facets of a topic in a

complete and satisfying manner. With these important content issues set, temporarily, aside, how

well did “Oregon Trail” achieve Rawitsch’s goal of getting “noses out of the textbook” and

students engaged with the past?

In his class, Rawitsch divided his students into small groups to play the game, and they

followed their pioneer’s progress using a separate printed map. Because of the nature of the

teletype system, student groups often had to wait up to thirty minutes to play their turn on the

machine. While one group had a turn on the teletype, the other groups would be occupied with

westward expansion source readings or a map exercise. According to Rawitsch, this rotation from

game to non-game activity worked for the benefit of the class because “Oregon Trail” was never

designed to be used in isolation, but instead as part of other classroom activities and instruction.15

Although the students encountered several bugs in the code and were annoyed with having to wait

15 Whitaker, “History at GDC: Don Rawitsch on The Oregon Trail.”

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for their turn on the teletype machine, the game was an instant hit. Rawitsch discovered that his

students, after much initial bickering, developed an order for decision making on the trail, with

certain groups even having assigned roles like wagon leader or supply accountant.16 After the

initial class, Rawitsch loaded the program onto the teletype system’s mainframe so that it could be

accessed outside of class. Bryant students, many of them from other classes, were soon “lined up

six or seven deep outside the janitor’s closet. They began arriving early to play and staying until

teachers kicked them out.”17 Students found the game fascinating not only because of its content,

but also because of the game’s medium: for many of them, playing “Oregon Trail” represented the

first time they had used a computer. For those that had used a computer already, it was the first

time they realized it could be used for something other than mathematics.18

From our current perspective, the promise and potential of this first version of “Oregon

Trail” is obvious, but from Rawitsch’s view at the time, it was merely a successful element of his

westward expansion lesson plan that he used for a temporary student teacher position. As Paul

Dillenberger later put it, the three developers “were student teachers…our world was our

supervising teachers and our classrooms. We didn’t have enough political savvy to share it with

the faculty or the principal at the time.”19 After the semester ended in December 1971, Rawitsch

used Bryant Junior High’s teletype machine to print out the code for the game. He removed the

printout, deleted the game from the teletype system mainframe, and went home. A game that would

go on to sell 65 million copies spent the next three years as a rolled-up piece of paper in Don

Rawitsch’s desk drawer.

16 Whitaker, “History at GDC: Don Rawitsch on The Oregon Trail.” 17 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 18 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video. 19 Kevin Wong, “The Forgotten History of ‘The Oregon Trail,” As Told By Its Creators,” February 15, 2017.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkx8vw/the-forgotten-history-of-the-oregon-trail-as-told-by-its-creators

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History stops at Fort LaFrenz

After graduation from Carleton, Rawitsch’s number came up in the Vietnam War draft lottery, and

he applied for exemption as a conscientious objector.20 He was given his exemption under the

stipulation that he spend two years doing alternative service for the country. Unfortunately,

teaching did not count toward this service. Through a Carleton professor, however, Rawitsch met

Dale LaFrenz, a former high school math teacher, who offered Don a job with his newly formed,

state-run organization, the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium (MECC). The purpose of

MECC was to provide computers and necessary support staff to educators and schools throughout

the state. Unlike other states, Minnesota did not wait for the digital revolution to slowly trickle

into education. Instead, the state government created a body that would actively look for ways to

incorporate computing into the classroom, and – perhaps most surprisingly – it put experienced

educators in charge of this process. As a teacher, LaFrenz had led the movement in his school to

include computers in instruction and had won a federal grant to provide teletype machines to

several school districts.21 Now as head of MECC, LaFrenz worked with Rawitsch and others to

increase the availability of computers in Minnesota schools and to develop a catalog of educational

software to use on those machines (most of them using the same timeshare, teletype system used

by Bryant Junior High in 1971). Knowing that MECC was desperate for new content, Rawitsch

opened his desk in 1974 and pulled out the code for his student teacher experiment. In this way,

the Vietnam War put history back on the trail.

Rawitsch received Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger’s permission to add “Oregon

Trail” to MECC’s software catalog. As he added the code to the mainframe, however, Rawitsch

20 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 21 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.”

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decided to make improvements to the game’s mechanics and how it presented the past. Working

over Thanksgiving weekend in 1974, Rawitsch consulted several sources, including published

pioneer diaries.22 He recalled that when the game was first developed, he “was more going by the

textbook,” but in this new version of the game, called simply Oregon, he was “able to bring a more

specific and focused historical research” to the development process.”23 Although the exact books

Rawitsch used that Thanksgiving weekend remain unclear, the final game’s bibliography,

published in the eventual user manual, included titles such as William Ghent’s The Road to

Oregon, Basil Longworth’s Diary of Basil N. Longworth, Samuel Hancock’s Narrative of Samuel

Hancock, Ezra Meeker’s Ox Team Days on the Oregon Trail, and Dale Morgan’s Overland in

1846.24 In Morgan’s Overland, Rawitsch relied on the referenced diary entries of William Taylor,

Nicholas Carriger, and Virgil Pringle, all of whom travelled to Oregon in 1846.25 As he read this

material, he kept count of how often these sources mentioned different events on the trail, including

“bad weather,” “animals lost,” “wagon breakdown,” “illness,” “injury,” and “met friendly

Indians.”26 Rawitsch used this count to create event probabilities for the updated game, so that the

player would experience these events at a frequency similar to historic settlers. Furthermore, he

used detailed maps to include actual mileposts and locations (e.g. forts, rivers, and towns) from

the historic trails.27 He completed this process by writing a user manual, which included not just

information about how to run the application and play the game, but also suggestions for how to

incorporate the game into a lesson plan.28

22 Whitaker, “History at GDC: Don Rawitsch on The Oregon Trail.” 23 Shea, “An Interview With the Teacher-Turned-Developer Behind ‘Oregon Trail.’” 24 Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC) collection, Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of

Play at the Strong, Box 1, Folder 11, “Oregon User Manual, 1977.” 25 MECC collection, “Oregon User Manual.” 26 MECC collection, “Oregon User Manual.” 27 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video. 28 MECC collection, “Oregon User Manual.”

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Released, for free, on MECC’s mainframe in 1975, Oregon became the organization’s most

played title. Rawitsch remembered that “it was accessed thousands of times a month,” and that

“the only other program on the large system that was used more was an early [version of] email.”29

Despite the popularity of the game, he maintained that it was designed to work with additional

pedagogical techniques rather than as an independent classroom exercise. In the user manual,

Rawitsch wrote:

The OREGON simulation was not designed to simply stand alone as a classroom activity,

a game of “beat the computer.” Nor was it intended to be the focal point of a historical unit.

It is assumed that the study of the Oregon Trail in a class is used as a case study of some

larger theme, such as the American westward movement, human emigration in history, or

people’s ventures into the unknown. Within such a theme, the OREGON simulation would

be used as a source of information which provides the student the chance to personally

experience what he has previously read or heard about.30

In his “suggested activities” to go along with the title, Rawitsch recommended giving students

background lectures and documents related to the history of westward migration, including

primary sources. He also suggested students use pioneer diaries as a model for keeping their own

journals about their experiences on the trail. After the in-class playthrough, students could share

their stories with others as a way to develop strategies for playing the game as well as a way for

all students to experience the trail hardships they may have missed because of chance. For a

“synthesis” assignment, Rawitsch recommended talking with the students about “different

impressions one gets from [pioneer] diaries, the simulation, paintings from the late 1880’s, TV and

movies of what it was really like to make the journey.”31 In these recommendations, Rawitsch

hoped teachers would place the game in a larger pedagogical context – using not just the game,

not just a lecture, but a collection of exercises, mediums, and sources.

29 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 30 MECC collection, “Oregon User Manual.” 31 MECC collection, “Oregon User Manual.”

Whitaker 13

Despite (or perhaps, because of) Rawitsch’s use of printed primary and secondary sources,

Oregon carried forward many of the problems related to a white settler perspective that were

present in the original version of the game. Yet it is also undeniable that with the addition of this

research as well as the user manual’s suggested classroom activities, Oregon represented a useful

tool for instruction and a solid foundation for further iterations on the concept. Moreover, with the

inclusion of primary and secondary material in the creation of this new version, the game now

represented a history of the past in the same way as a textbook, a lecture, or any other traditional

medium for the transmission of historical knowledge. But if the game merely replicated the

abilities of a textbook or lecture, and simultaneously could not offer a more comprehensive view

of the past, what made the game worthwhile for teachers and students in the first place? Writing

in 1978, Rawitsch provided an answer:

Oregon does not attempt to replicate exactly a trip on a wagon train in the 1840’s. But it

does attempt to present students with some of the resources, decisions, and events that

faced the pioneers of that day. Although students can find out about the Oregon Trail by

reading books, visiting museums, watching movies, and similar activities, the simulation

allows them to learn from actively participating in the simulated experience of people from

another era.32

The game was worthwhile because it encouraged active participation, but, importantly, it was not

simply participation in the absorption of historical knowledge. Through their playthrough of the

game and their accompanying written trail diaries, students were both making history and serving

as the historians of that history. For all the celebration of The Oregon Trail’s mechanics – strategy,

resources management, roguelike, even first-person shooter – the game’s success also rests on its

historical content and its ability to make the player feel like a history maker. Much like the analog

wargames of the past, Oregon established, in the digital realm, that the player was not merely

learning about “great people.” The game gave players the ability to become them.

32 Don Rawitsch, “Oregon Trail,” Creative Computing, vol 4, no 3 (May-June 1978), 132.

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History fords Edutainment River

Oregon was a runaway success on MECC’s teletype mainframe during the late 1970s, but it is

clear that the organization did not yet give much thought to the commercial potential of the game.

Case in point: Don’s 1978 article about the game for Creative Computing shared the entire teletype

code for Oregon, complete with a typed-out example playthrough.33 In our age of fierce

competition over digital content and vindictive patent infringement lawsuits between Silicon

Valley companies, it is not every day that you see a multi-million dollar idea given away for free

in a magazine, but such was the nature of the early digital revolution. MECC’s perspective began

to change, however, near the end of the decade with the advent of the “microcomputer,” what we

now refer to as the personal computer (PC).34 Equipped with its own onboard memory system as

well as a monitor to visualize data, PCs represented the death knell to MECC’s cumbersome

teletype mainframe system. Thanks to the organization’s success up to that point, however, the

state of Minnesota decided to fund MECC’s conversion to the microcomputer era. Although the

state’s intention was to better the tools available to its teachers and students, this decision would

end up netting Minnesota an incredible financial windfall.

After taking bids from several companies, MECC decided to order their first set of PCs in

1978 from a new business based in Los Altos, California: Apple Computer Company. In a deal

brokered by Dale LaFrenz and Steve Jobs, Apple sent 500 Apple IIs designed and built by Steve

Wozniak to Minnesota. The deal represented one of Apple Computer Company’s biggest sales up

to that point, and it helped to establish the Apple II as the de facto PC for the American classroom.35

33 Rawitsch, “Oregon Trail,” 137. 34 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 35 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.”

Whitaker 15

The relationship between Apple and MECC remained close for the next decade. Apple

representatives made regular appearances at MECC’s annual conferences during the 1980s, with

Steve Jobs himself delivering the conference keynote address (entitled “Thoughts on Personal

Computing”) in 1982.36 These conferences also featured representatives from other computer

manufacturers, including Atari, Commodore, and IBM, as well as employees of major distributors,

such as RadioShack.

Why would these emerging titans of the digital revolution attend the annual conference for

a state-owned consortium run by former elementary school teachers? The answer, as Steve Jobs

might say, lay in MECC’s collection of “killer apps.” As MECC transitioned from the teletype

system to the personal computer, they also ported their library of software from the mainframe to

portable (and sellable) floppy disks. For Apple and other computer manufacturers desperate for

applications to help sell their platforms, MECC’s software collection, built up over the course of

the 1970s, represented an essential ingredient. This was especially true because, despite the advent

of the relatively small and cheap personal computer, American schools remained one of the few

guaranteed customers for new machines. And this customer demanded educational titles like

Oregon.

Because MECC still relied on state support, it offered all of its floppy disk-based software

for free to Minnesota schools and students. However, because their software was no longer tied to

mainframes and phonelines in Minnesota, MECC could now sell their software to schools and

other customers out of state for use on their personal computers. At first MECC offered non-state

customers single titles for 10 to 20 dollars apiece.37 Unsatisfied with this piecemeal approach,

customers began to request a rate for unlimited license to all MECC software. The organization

36 MECC collection, Box 1, Folder 1, “1982 Conference.” 37 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.”

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made these license agreements with individual departments of education from other states, with

the idea being that those departments could then disseminate MECC software in every school

district in their territory.

By the end of the 1980s, almost a third of all school districts in the United States were part

of the MECC licensing program.38 Each license was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in

annual revenue, quickly turning MECC into a multi-million-dollar organization. Having accidently

created one of the most successful game development companies in the world, the state of

Minnesota quickly began to reduce its annual contributions to MECC’s budget. In 1982, less than

four years after their deal with Apple Computer Company, 90% of MECC’s budget was covered

by out-of-state sales.39 This tide increased in 1983, when MECC began to port their software to

competitor PCs, including the Commodore 64 and the IBM PC. In 1984, the Minnesota legislature

converted MECC into a state-owned self-funded tax paying public corporation and dropped

“Consortium” for “Corporation” at the end of the group’s name.40

Oregon represented a key part of MECC’s transition from consortium to corporation.

MECC published the first Apple II version of Oregon in 1979 as part of a collection of software

called Elementary Volume 6.41 The game became the most requested floppy disk in the state of

Minnesota as well as the most purchased floppy disk by out-of-state customers. When MECC

became independent in 1984, one of their first moves was to begin development of a new version

of Oregon for use with the updated Apple II, which featured color graphics. By this point, however,

Don Rawitsch had moved into upper management at MECC and was responsible for running the

38 Lussenhop, “Oregon Trail.” 39 R. Philip Bouchard, You Have Died of Dysentery: The creation of The Oregon Trail – the iconic educational game

of the 1980s (R. Philip Bouchard, Kindle Edition, 2016), location 862 out of 5847. 40 Bouchard, location 878. 41 “Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail.” YouTube video.

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organization’s annual conference.42 Needing a new lead developer, MECC turned to a young

programmer named R. Philip Bouchard, a masters graduate from the University of Texas at Austin

with a background in computer science and education. Bouchard and a small team began work on

The Oregon Trail in October 1984.

MECC management gave Bouchard the freedom to redesign Oregon, under the provision

that he did not ruin what made the game popular to begin with.43 According to Bouchard, this

mandate proved “overwhelming at first”:

For 13 years, from 1971 to 1984, the Oregon game had remained essentially

unchanged…never had the product been completely re-imagined and redesigned. Never

had the underlying models been changed – the core of the product that makes it all work.

For the very first time, we were going to throw out all of the underlying models, along with

all of the existing software programming…and start completely from scratch. Every detail

was up for reconsideration.44

Bouchard knew that the core element of the game – a repeatable journey featuring various

randomized misfortunes – needed to remain intact. Yet he immediately saw areas for improvement

in terms of both mechanics and content.45 In terms of mechanics, The Oregon Trail included an

updated, arcade-style version of hunting, an arcade-style scoring system to judge a player’s success

on the trail, river crossings, river rafting sequences, a more detailed resource management system,

and the ability to adopt different strategies for winning the game. The last change was a particular

point of emphasis because MECC research revealed that Oregon tended to be much more popular

with boys than with girls in the classroom. In order to address this gender imbalance, Bouchard

attempted to include features that would allow for different playstyles. For example, the new

42 MECC collection, Box 1, Folder 2, “MECC Conference Booklets.” 43 Bouchard, location 964. 44 Bouchard, location 975 – 981. 45 Bouchard, location 5041.

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version of the game allowed players to purchase more food from vendors rather than having to

rely on the game’s hunting mechanic, which tended to be much less popular with female players.

In terms of content, the new version of the game included updated place names using

genuine geographic details, period specific music, illustrations for landmarks (e.g. Fort Kearney,

Chimney Rock, Fort Boise), specific disease names (dysentery would never be the same again),

and an expanded roster of player controlled pioneers that came along with occupations and named

family members. While these content changes took advantage of the improved memory capacity

of the new Apple II as well as the device’s new color palette, the primary reason the development

team added so much more specific historical detail was because it simply made the game more

interesting.46 These new historical details, however, could lead the players to have an emotional

response when things went wrong. While playtesting the game with children, Bouchard recalled

that he “was amazed to see just how effective the ‘family’ concept turned out to be. Some kids,

especially those playing [the game] for the first time, were emotionally affected when their family

members died along the way…This effect was augmented by the fact that many of the kids used

the names of real family members in the game.”47

The most important and substantial content change, however, came with the game’s

depiction of Native Americans.48 The original game only mentioned them in the random event

“Helpful Indians show you where to find more food.” Yet, as Bouchard rightly judged, “the game

included frequent attacks by ‘hostile riders,’ which was a veiled reference to Native Americans.”49

Seeing both of these references as “dubious stereotypes,” Bouchard and his team set out to remake

the indigenous presence in the game. As part of their interaction rules between the player and

46 Bouchard, location 1301. 47 Bouchard, location 1857. 48 Bouchard, location 1050. 49 Bouchard, location 1053.

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Native Americans, the developers made sure that most of the in-game interactions with Native

Americans were non-violent and that the player never met a generic “Indian,” but instead Native

Americans identified by ethnicity or tribe.50 The interactions present in the final game included

talking with Native Americans at a landmark to learn more about the region, and having the

opportunity to “Hire an Indian guide” for difficult river crossings.51 Though these interactions were

an obvious improvement over Oregon, they were far from perfect or complete. Yet, if we consider

this game alongside other contemporary histories of the American West in other media, the

depiction of Native Americans in The Oregon Trail becomes more explicable, if no less

controversial.

History arrives at Willamette Valley

Released in July 1985, The Oregon Trail became the best-selling educational title of all

time, selling upwards of 65 million copies. As Bouchard notes in his book about the project, the

response to the game was immediate and sustained, and like many of the most beloved works of

that era, it has become the basis for an endless stream of internet memes. In 2016, the Strong

National Museum of Play inducted The Oregon Trail into the Video Game Hall of Fame, the only

educational title to have received the honor. Given the success and acclaim for The Oregon Trail,

it came as no surprise that MECC attempted to replicate the success of the game with other titles.

These attempts included The Yukon Trail, set in the late nineteenth century during the Klondike

Gold Rush, The Amazon Trail, a time travel game set along the Amazon River and its tributaries,

and Wagon Train 1848, essentially a LAN multiplayer version of The Oregon Trail. The

underlying rationale behind these titles made a lot of educational and financial sense: take the

50 Bouchard, location 1899. 51 Bouchard, location 1917.

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compelling game mechanics behind The Oregon Trail and use them to illustrate other historical

periods and themes. This rationale was backed up by market research reports conducted by MECC

during the 1990s.52

These reports also reveal, however, some of the ways that MECC went astray attempting

to replicate the success of Oregon Trail. The key example here is MECC’s 1992 game Freedom!,

a historical simulation game that had players take on the role of a runaway slave traveling along

the Underground Railroad in the Antebellum period. The game, which borrowed heavily from the

design principles of The Oregon Trail, was pulled from shelves by MECC in 1993 after players,

parents, and teachers complained about Freedom!’s insensitive depiction of black Americans. In

particular, critics cited the game’s use of era-specific dialect for black characters, which led to

ridicule and racist remarks in the classroom. Furthermore, the game’s teacher manual included a

suggested roleplay activity in which students would “re-enact the institution of slavery” in the

classroom. Some students would be slaveowners, others would be slaves, but MECC advised that

teachers should make sure to not let “all the white children be ‘owners’ and all black children or

children of color be ‘slaves.’”53

The negative reaction to this game casted a pall over MECC’s subsequent development

projects, including a game called Africa Trek, which would have been based on a 12,000 mile bike

journey from north to south Africa.54 The focus group research related to Africa Trek explicitly

referenced the “adverse public and [school] administrative reaction” to Freedom!, and

recommended that Africa Trek should not be marketed “as a way to ‘discover your [African]

roots.’” Moreover, the focus group panel strongly advised that “development management should

52 MECC collection, Box 3, Folder 23, “Market research on Oregon Trail 3rd edition.” 53 MECC collection, Box 4, Folder 2, “Freedom! disk and manual, 1992.” 54 MECC collection, Box 3, Folder 22. “Various market research materials, 1994-1998 [1 of 2].”

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obtain consumer and teacher feedback…as a disaster check” before publishing. As one focus group

member summarized, “whenever you try to recreate history, there’s a lot of hostility that comes

out.”

The story of Freedom! and MECC’s focus groups points to a problem inherent with the

organization’s transition from an educational consortium to a profit focused corporation. MECC’s

quest to profit from the Oregon Trail model led them to pursue new subjects for the model that

did not result from pedagogy practiced by the designers. As explored above, the Oregon Trail

model had the potential to actively engage players in the past and produce an emotional response

in the process. However, if the history involved in that model was of dubious quality or

controversial, no amount of engaging gameplay would be enough to overcome the player’s

negative reaction. In a purely educational context, MECC may have pressed on with projects like

Freedom! in order to build a more acceptable way of tackling a worthwhile subject matter. Yet in

the context of profit margins, such a process promised to be too time consuming and costly.

As MECC struggled to replicate the success of The Oregon Trail – and struggled with its

identity in the process – a host of other commercial developers emerged to pursue games with

historical settings. These developers, including Electronic Arts, MicroProse, and SSI, were

generally more adept at predicting the potential pitfalls with simulating the past. Their titles,

including Seven Cities of Gold, Civilization, and Bismarck, generally adapted history that

specifically appealed to rather than challenged the historical memories of players. Yet even with

their commercial objectives, the developers of these games often found themselves pursuing

historical research, if not to educate the player then, in the words of R. Philip Bouchard, to make

their games more interesting. [Transition to Chapter 2]