The Origin of the Oregon Trail Computer Game
Many of the ideas I’ll share regarding The Oregon Trail computer game have developed over the past 18 months and after a series of conversations with Don Rawitsch, the game’s creator and Wayne Studer, the project manager overseeing the development of Oregon Trail II. I will continue to build upon these ideas within my blog, and hope to have portions published in the future.
In 1971, Don Rawitsch was student teaching as a senior education major at Carleton College. There he observed several peers bringing home teletype machines on the weekends to connect to a computer mainframe. Based upon the interest of his peers, Don concluded that he should use these computers in the classroom, and he quickly began working on a computer simulation called Oregon with two other Carleton students, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann (Rawitsch). The game was purely text-based, but this meager beginning proved the viability of computer simulations within the classroom. In Oregon, students would cooperate with users networked together all around the state of Minnesota to simulate the westward journey of pioneers on the Oregon Trail. While hunting, users would have to type “bang” to shoot their gun without actually ever seeing what they were shooting (Studer 5). It offered a glimpse of the future of educational gaming.
Don would bring the game with him to MECC in 1973, the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium. Minnesota was the “clear leader” in the field of educational computing, budgeting more than $5 million annually to MECC (Zucker 400). They proved to be instrumental in the educational movement to implement computers into school districts in the early 1980’s, and software produced by MECC would be used in classrooms across the nation. Beyond word processing, innovation in technology made it possible for computers to run games, and as a result, educators sought new ways to embrace technology and games into the classroom. What emerged was a new genre of software development, called edutainment software (a hybrid of education and entertainment software). The advent of the personal computer made this technology available and affordable, notably the Apple II which early on became the de facto educational standard (Pillar 3). In 1985 MECC released the original Oregon Trail version, that now included sound and was visualized to a far-greater degree. The software released by MECC including The Oregon Trail was more popular than all other educational software companies combined (Studer XI).
Works Cited
Pillar, Charles. “Apple Will Surely Reap What it Sows on the Education Front.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Sept. 1997: 3.
Rawitsch, Don. “Oregon Trail Research.” Email to Dave Lester. 30 March. 2006.
Studer, Wayne. Oregon Trail II: The Official Strategy Guide. N.P.: Prima Publishing, 1995.
Zucker, Andrew. “Computers in Education: National Policy in the USA.” European Journal of Education 17.4 (1982): 395-410.
Posted in Don Rawitsch, History, MECC, Oregon Trail, Teletype Machine
I'm a digital humanist and graduate of American Studies, currently working as a web developer and