Representing history: the many faces of The Oregon Trail
7.22.2024
By Rick Lane, Contributor
Over fifty years later, The Oregon Trail is the most renowned educational game ever made, and also one of the most commercially successful. But like the treacherous trail it depicts, its journey from the Minnesotan public school system to international recognition was not straightforward. Over the decades, The Oregon Trail has evolved numerous times, with multiple developers taking advantage of new technologies and improving its underlying design to bring the game to fresh audiences.
Yet perhaps the most important changes the series has made is to how it depicts history itself. As an educational game, The Oregon Trail has always been in conversation with historical consensus, with each new game bringing an updated understanding of the events it depicts. Over the years, The Oregon Trail has challenged long-standing myths about dangers faced by travelers on the trail, strived to represent the United States' westward expansion from multiple perspectives, and—more recently—confronted its own failure to acknowledge the darker side of this era in history.
Humble beginnings
Although The Oregon Trail originated in 1971, the most recognizable version dates to 1985. R. Philip Bouchard directed the development of this edition; at the time, he was a software author employed at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium.
"MECC began in 1973 as a state agency dedicated to serving Minnesota educational institutions," Bouchard says. "Prior to the invention of the Apple II and other microcomputers, MECC's activities were based on mainframe computers." As Bouchard explains, the main purpose of MECC was to build and maintain "administrative software" for tasks like enrollment management and school bus routing. "In contrast, the instructional software [like The Oregon Trail] was all experimental, conceived and built by amateurs in their spare time."
By 1980, The Oregon Trail had already seen several iterations. Don Rawitsch, one of its three co-creators, had joined MECC in 1974, creating a new version of the game for the department's mainframe computer—known simply as "OREGON"—which local schools could connect to via terminals. This was followed by another version in 1979, developed for the Apple II after MECC began encouraging schools to adopt Apple's microcomputer, buying up the machines and selling them to schools at cost. "MECC soon became the world's largest reseller of Apple II computers," Bouchard notes.
Even at this early stage, The Oregon Trail was already something of a phenomenon. "It had a huge reputation in North American schools, primarily used by students for entertainment in their spare time," Bouchard observes. "By 1983, people were calling MECC 'The Oregon Trail Company.'" Yet according to Bouchard, this nickname wasn't wholly complimentary.
"The fact that [The Oregon Trail] was still MECC's best-known product in 1983 was rather embarrassing, because the graphics, programming, and overall design were crude and outdated." Indeed, the 1979 version of the game was essentially a port of the 1974 version, featuring some minor modifications and rudimentary graphics for its shooting activities.
It was a product that, in Bouchard's opinion, reflected the state of the institution. "I found my first 3 years at MECC to be extremely frustrating," he says. "During this time, I was not given the chance to design any noteworthy software, much less any of my original simulations. Meanwhile, competitors to MECC began to appear, and the quality of their software was often far superior."
The nadir of Bouchard's time at the institution came two years after he joined. "By 1983, I was strongly arguing that MECC needed to move into the modern world—discarding or replacing a majority of the titles currently in our catalog. I also argued that 'OREGON' needed to be replaced immediately."
In 1984, Bouchard finally got his wish. He was tasked with creating a new version of The Oregon Trail—one that would "preserve the magic" of the original, but bring the presentation up to speed.
Changing the game
Bouchard says that making a graphical adventure in 1984 was "table stakes—something that absolutely had to be done." But figuring out where to implement those graphics was a challenge. The Oregon Trail was a wide-ranging game, but each graphic required 8 kilobytes of disk space, and a floppy disk had a maximum space of 140kb per side. ("The upshot is we had a very limited amount of space for graphics," he explains.) Eventually, they settled on a mixture of still graphics for the landmarks players visited and animated graphics for depictions of travel and other activities like hunting.
But Bouchard didn't want to just pretty-up the original game. He wanted to update Rawitsch's 1971 design for the modern age. "For that era, it was a truly groundbreaking product, and the original designers were genuine visionaries," he says. "But in 1984 I was not so impressed with the product anymore. I felt the game gave too little control to the player and too few opportunities to make decisions."
To expand upon these areas, Bouchard made several significant design changes. "I threw out fixed-duration turns, creating a new model based on travel between a fixed set of geographic points—carefully selecting landmarks that were significant to the actual travelers," he says. "Once I settled on this point-to-point travel model, I could begin inventing additional game activities, some of which would be available at landmarks (such as crossing rivers and talking to people) and some of which would be available between landmarks (such as the completely reinvented hunting system)."
Bouchard made additional adjustments that were influenced by the fact that this version was intended for home computers. "In most schools at the time, kids had to go down to the computer lab to use a MECC product, and therefore they had very limited time on it. But for homes, I had to design a product that could be played over and over." This led to the introduction of a scoring system, a high score list, and multiple difficulty levels.
"It also inspired me to allow the player to name the other four people in the wagon, who would individually get sick, injured, or die." Bouchard figured the ability to personalize your characters would encourage players to "want to try again and do better."
One of the most significant changes Bouchard made was a complete rework of the game's disease system, making it significantly more prominent in the game. This was important not only in terms of how this would come to seal the game's reputation, via the infamous phrase "you have died of dysentery," but also in Bouchard's reasoning for redesigning this system.
"At the time I was working on the design, a common myth in the U.S. was that most deaths on The Oregon Trail were due to attacks by Native Americans," he says. "In fact, attacks by Native Americans on overland travelers were extremely rare. Instead, most deaths on the trail were caused by disease and accidents. This was a core aspect of the overlander experience, and therefore I knew I had to make it a major feature of the game."
Bouchard describes the development of The Oregon Trail as "completely unlike anything MECC had created before." Yet despite being generally challenging and occasionally stressful, he says the development was a "very pleasant experience collaborating with a talented team." The biggest challenge the project faced was deciding which of Bouchard's many gameplay ideas would make it into the final product, resulting in numerous planned features being cut. The final leg of the game, for example, was supposed to have two different ways to play, giving players the choice of rafting down the Columbia River or taking a winding mountain path called the Barlow Toll Road.
"The Barlow Road game was supposed to be a puzzle activity in which you used ropes, levers and pulleys to get your wagon up and over the steepest parts of the Barlow Road—corresponding to what the actual travelers on the trail had to do," Bouchard explains. But this idea was abandoned due to a lack of disk space. Other discarded features included the option to take livestock on the journey and "good Samaritan" activities that would let players assist non-player characters on the trail.
The Oregon Trail released in July 1985. Bouchard was "relieved" that the project had been completed, and "excited" by the positive feedback it had received in testing. "We felt confident that the product would do at least as well as any MECC product released up to that date," he says. "As it turned out, the actual results far surpassed our expectations."
Bouchard says it became clear "within a couple of months" that The Oregon Trail was a hit. In fact, the new version was so good it caused some consternation within the school system. "At the annual national MECC conference in November, teachers rebelled because MECC was still sending the old version to schools, while selling the new version in the home market," he says, a problem that was swiftly resolved. "By the following spring, we learned that The Oregon Trail could now be found in the majority of North American schools."
Making an impact
The Apple II version of The Oregon Trail was a revolution in educational computing software, finding enormous success not just within American schools, but on the home computer market. It kickstarted a "10-year golden era" at MECC that only ended when the company was sold to Softkey for $370 million. And although the success of the game didn't make Bouchard rich (he received no stock nor any of the profits from its sales), it did cement his reputation in the industry. "My association with The Oregon Trail made it relatively easy for me to find jobs," he says.
Bouchard is proud of the legacy the game left in American schools, how it represented "the story of 300,000 ordinary people who were willing to suffer great hardship to make a better life for themselves." But he doesn't shy away from the "one notable downside" of The Oregon Trail's legacy. "Although the westward expansion is still an important chapter in American history, there is growing consensus that the story should not be told exclusively from the viewpoint of the people who participated in the expansion," he says.
In his original plans for The Oregon Trail, Bouchard had wanted to go further than simply dispelling the myths about Native American attacks on the trail. He'd hoped to represent Native Americans in the game itself.
"I wrestled with how to give the player more opportunities to interact with Native Americans along the route—in a manner that helped to build understanding while also serving the gameplay." Ideas included being able to "barter trade" with Native Americans, which "demonstrate[d] a peaceful and business-like interaction" as well as plans for "several tense interactions that could be resolved peacefully" during the first half of the journey.
Bouchard cites an example based on real history. "I had a concept in which Native Americans erected a simple log bridge across a stream along the trail, charging overlanders a small toll to use it," he says. "In actual history, the travelers would sometimes demand to use the bridge for free, and in one case they massacred the Native American owners of the bridge."
Ultimately, Bouchard decided such an interaction was "too problematic" to include, feeling it was "too prone to misinterpretation and/or misuse." Indeed, the overlander perspective of the game proved too strict a limitation for Bouchard to work around. "Every activity in the game had to correspond to something experienced by people traveling westward on the trail." Hardware limitations also played a role in the decision. Like so many other ideas Bouchard had for the game, these more nuanced interactions with Native American people were scrapped, though he would return to them in his follow-up educational game, 1991's Lewis & Clark Stayed Home.
Yet while it remains the most well-known version of The Oregon Trail, Bouchard's 1985 remake was far from the last journey video games made from Independence to Oregon City. Between 1995 and 2001, multiple sequels were produced by MECC's new owner, Softkey/The Learning Company. In the late 2000s, The Oregon Trail license was acquired by HarperCollins, who produced a new version of the game for mobile in collaboration with GameLoft. Yet none of these games would seriously interrogate the problem of representation that Bouchard had struggled with.
Recently, however, GameLoft developed a dedicated remake of The Oregon Trail which released on Apple Arcade in 2021, and is coming to Epic Games this month. Much like the 1985 game, the priority of this remake is to update the game for modern audiences while preserving the spirit of the original.
There are several layers to this: one of which is, naturally, a visual update. GameLoft's remake combines 2D pixel art with 3D environments and effects. "You'll see weather systems, water reflections, lens flares, god rays, and specular lighting on our sprites," says Liz Ballantyne, Art Director for The Oregon Trail. "It's a really striking style that feels nostalgic and contemporary at the same time."
Likewise, GameLoft has made several adjustments to the game's underlying design. "The 1985 game release could be mastered with basically four or five things you need to do," Ballantyne says. "That difficulty level was fine in 1985, but it wouldn't hold up today." For its remake, GameLoft has introduced "procedurally selected random events where players' choices affect their party and future game events." Meanwhile, each of the four characters has "their own combination of [personality] traits, both good and bad. Based on these, you may discover unique outcomes for your party."
The most significant change GameLoft has made, however, is in its approach to historical representation. "For the first time in the series' history, Indigenous and Black characters are represented in both your playable party and the people you meet during your journey," Ballantyne says.
GameLoft's approach to representation in The Oregon Trail is multilayered and grounded in historical research. Ballantyne explains the studio "consulted with three Native American historians to help design the virtual figures' appearance, storylines, speech, music, roles, and more." The studio combined this with its own textual research envisioning the practicalities of traveling along the Oregon Trail. "For example, one of our Indigenous women [characters] wore exquisite long earrings, but given the windy trails, they would have been impractical."
As for how this research translates into play, The Oregon Trail lets you play as or encounter many characters based on real-life figures, such as the 19th century author and Indigenous rights activist Sarah Winnemucca. "[Sarah] was the first Native American female writer to be published in English," Ballantyne says. Moreover, the game includes journeys and stories that go beyond the titular trail, some of which follow Indigenous characters. "One is of Stee-lah, a Pawnee mother, and son Little Chief who are heading toward a winter hunt," Ballantyne says. "Another follows the journey of the Lenape Halfmoon family as they search for a lost relative."
The broad aim is to depict the lives of Indigenous peoples living in the American West at the time. But GameLoft's remake also does not ignore the negative effects of the western expansion on Native American life and culture, nor the series' inability to represent it up to this point. "This new game opens with a message acknowledging that earlier versions of The Oregon Trail failed to depict Native American perspectives and cultures," Ballantyne says.
The Oregon Trail's representation of history may not be perfect, and may never be perfect. But perhaps the most important thing any educational game can teach is that there is no end to learning, that there are always new facts to discover, new perspectives to see, and new voices to hear. Across its various remakes and reimaginings, The Oregon Trail has demonstrated that capacity to continue learning even as it teaches. It started out as a way to teach students about the perils faced by the people who participated in the westward expansion. Now, the opening message of GameLoft's remake reads as follows:
“For Indigenous peoples, westward expansion was not an adventure but an invasion.”