The Joy of The Oregon Trail

It's a shame, and a little bit surprising, that more educational games didn't follow in the footsteps of the historical simulation The Oregon Trail (MECC, 1985). Perhaps there aren't a lot of non-wartime historical periods that could really grip a grade-schooler the way that frontier settlement did, but I'm not willing to concede that point without someone at least putting some significant brain power into the question. Viking exploration? The life of a native American tribe? The space race? I think a game about running a newspaper--digging up and researching stories, being the first to break a scandal, managing your readership--all throughout the whole sweep of American history would be fascinating and educational.

Hm. On second thought, maybe that last idea is flawed, and maybe Oregon Trail tells us why. A newspaper editor finds stories, selects stories, and shapes stories, but those stories are made by others. Oregon Trail is the opposite. The Joy of The Oregon Trail is...

Storybuilding

Simulations are underappreciated for their storytelling capabilities. What do I enjoy more in Civilization? Strategically managing my military units to recapture a valuable city from the computer AI? Or the story of when Ramses liberated the captured Thebes from that weasel Napoleon using Egypt's advanced chariot technology? Even simulating Gettysburg has the narrative thrill of rewriting--or simply replaying--history.

We shouldn't let the scope, the openness, the mathiness, or the spreadsheety qualities of simulations convince us that their stories are secondary or non-existent. I think it's Civ V designer Jon Shaffer who says that a game is always really happening in the player's mind. Isn't this true of story as well? Obviously so-called story-driven games like Grim Fandango or Mass Effect or The Walking Dead have stories that work their way into player's minds, but they're delivered there, not built there; they're built in the designer's mind. A simulation, in contrast, is a strategic scaffolding on which the player's imagination hangs its story, and this is a powerful difference.

Oregon Trail builds more powerful stories than most for the simple reason that it takes place on a more personal level. Each story is the story of a family. You know where they come from, you know what they hope for, and you know how little they have to get them there. And you not only know their names, you chose them. The leader is probably named after you, and in the second slot is your brother, and then your two best friends and your dog. And one of these brave travelers is going to get typhoid, force you to rest until winter hits the Rockies, and then die anyway. Probably your brother, because that's the kind of jerk he is. Oregon Trail also leaves a customizeable tombstone behind where failed expeditions meet thier end--possibly the most brilliant and appropriate hi-score system ever devised, and clearly an effective device precisely because we want to know the end to every great (or even not-so-great) story.


X-COM:UFO Defense is another simulation game that takes place at this personal level, and that's part of its magic as well. But Oregon Trail surpasses X-COM for narrative power because the tribulations of the frontier family--not enough food, influenza, technology failures--are so much more imaginable by your average person.

While not many games have adopted Oregon Trail's systems, it has inspired many parodies, a testament, I think, to the fact that it captures players' story sense as much as their "game brain." (It's also a testament to childhood nostalgia, of course.) There's the recent Organ Trail, where you're driving a station wagon west through a zombie apocalypse. There's the stupendously silly and shooty Super Amazing Wagon Adventure (Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo--and unicorns). And there's So Long, Oregon. Let's go Find El Dorado (or its more charming original title: "Fuck Oregon, Let's Go Find El Dorado!") which plays like Trials or Excitebike, but with Indians and cholera.


Footnote
No Son of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That.