Why was Oregon Trail popular?

Question

I am too old to have experienced Oregon Trail as a student, but my children played it in class in the 2010s. Offhand it seems like it wouldn&rsquo;t be nearly entertaining enough to interest kids, but I&rsquo;m thinking that maybe it was simply a break from routine history class. My adult children still remember what characters they played so apparently there is also something compelling about the story that I can&rsquo;t quite understand. Do you have any thoughts as to why it was ubiquitous in American schools, at least for a decade or so? Bonus points for observations on whether you thought it actually further to your knowledge of history.

breck · Accepted Answer

Human intelligence has not budged in thousands of years.
Old game designers were just as intelligent as game designers today.
Their games lacked multi-media assets compared to today, but the designs are just as intelligent.
Oregon Trail was simple and very fun, and had various levels of mastery, and enough diversity (budgeting then hunting and vice versa) that it made it entertaining.

muzani · Answer

Excellent write up on it: https://if50.substack.com/p/1971-the-oregon-trail
The short: It was around since 1971. It was basically an AAA game on a teleprinter. It was random enough that you couldn't "game" it by getting calculations right. It calculated the accuracy of your shot by your speed of typing. It rang the bell when you got a hit.
Basically, it had a lot of 'juice' for games of that era and was an easy hit (pun intended). Some teachers would have played it by the time they became teachers. There's probably some nostalgia and they'd have brought the sequel to schools.

foobarbaz33 · Answer

A fun little adventure and a break from the normal school stuff. And you could shoot buffalo. Pretty much all of America grew up playing this a few times during "library time" at school.
It was a time before anyone had a 3D online multiplayer video game system at home. Before home internet. People were not raised on tablets so seeing the screen react to your input was still a magical moment.
I don't feel it helped much with history. Other than solidifying the "Oregan trail" happened into everyone's head.

caprock · Answer

Looking back, I'd say it was a couple of things. One, as you note, is that it involved leaving class and getting computer time in the library (double win for both computer time and a change of environment). Second, there just weren't many preapproved and available choices at that time. Later I learned about how to acquire other games via mail-order shareware and typing in programs from magazines.Oregon Trail in particular seems to have been widely available. Maybe they did some bundling when the schools bought the computers?

tstack · Answer

The video from The Gaming Historian covers this a bit -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QbjlHeoLdc

pvg · Answer

HN search can find you lots of threads, one is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27871196