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
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.