Of Snakebites, Squirrels, and Snow: Significant Properties of the Oregon Trail
June 2013
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If you have been in an American public school between 1980 and today, it is highly probable that
you have played or watched someone playing The Oregon Trail.1 Originally released by the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium (MECC) for teletypes in the state’s public schools, the game has progressed from being played on a mainframe computer, to magazine type-in game, to mobile devices and Facebook.2 More accurately called a simulation, The Oregon Trail puts the player in the shoes of an American migrant traveling to Oregon City through obstacles of weather, violence, starvation, and disease. The franchise is almost certainly the most successful educational game series, which, combined with its powerful iconic value, almost certainly guaranteed its inclusion in the case set for the second phase of Preserving Virtual Worlds (PVW2).3
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When PVW2 began, we attempted to identify the significant properties of games in our case set with the hope of creating a generalizable methodology for game preservationists in the future. Examining which features changed or remained the same throughout a franchise’s history was one way we went about identifying those properties, and The Oregon Trail, with its four-decade history, was the perfect candidate.4 The comic below illustrates some of our adventures, with otters representing the researchers. Why otters? All I will say is there might be an Easter egg in the PVW1 final report.
Katelyn Burgett, “Fording the River That Was 1.5 Feet Deep, My Wagon Tipping over, and Somehow My Whole Family Drowns in Water That’s Shallow Enough to Stand up In…” Microblog, Rachel Donahue’s Facebook, September 20, 2012.
Brad Houston, “@sheepeeh When I Was 8 I Was Absolutely Convinced I Was Going to Die of Exhaustion. Had Nightmares of the Gravestone-littered Trail,” Microblog, @herodotusjr, September 20, 2012, https://twitter.com/herodotusjr/status/248782614876549121.
Rachel Donahue
Doctoral student, iSchool; Research Assistant, Maryland Institute for Technology in the
Humanities (MITH) – University of Maryland
Of Snakebites, Squirrels, and Snow: Significant Properties of the Oregon Trail
June 2013
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 If you have been in an American public school between 1980 and today, it is highly probable that
you have played or watched someone playing The Oregon Trail.1 Originally released by the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium (MECC) for teletypes in the state’s public schools, the game has progressed from being played on a mainframe computer, to magazine type-in game, to mobile devices and Facebook.2 More accurately called a simulation, The Oregon Trail puts the player in the shoes of an American migrant traveling to Oregon City through obstacles of weather, violence, starvation, and disease. The franchise is almost certainly the most successful educational game series, which, combined with its powerful iconic value, almost certainly guaranteed its inclusion in the case set for the second phase of Preserving Virtual Worlds (PVW2).3
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 When PVW2 began, we attempted to identify the significant properties of games in our case set with the hope of creating a generalizable methodology for game preservationists in the future. Examining which features changed or remained the same throughout a franchise’s history was one way we went about identifying those properties, and The Oregon Trail, with its four-decade history, was the perfect candidate.4 The comic below illustrates some of our adventures, with otters representing the researchers. Why otters? All I will say is there might be an Easter egg in the PVW1 final report.
Comic
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Panel 1 comments quoted from:
Rachel Donahue
Doctoral student, iSchool; Research Assistant, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) – University of Maryland
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