Classic Game Postmortem: Oregon Trail

[@porkyorcy1715]

Looking at actual diaries and writing up probabilities of events based around that, and looking at the real history of it rather than just being lazy and gamifying it is awesome.

[@Bakamoichigei]

18:55 There's a good quote for this: _"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained"_ - *Walt Disney*

[@KillYounglings]

We were obsessed with this game during recess. The beginning was probably the most fun when you're getting your supplies together. I remember one time I named my wagoners after Street Fighter characters, and they all died halfway through the trip. Chun Li lived the longest.

[@nolan412]

We had to take our library day in study hall. Then you had to be the first one of two to get on a Mac.

[@Forkinpikey]

Course she did, she got them killer thighs

[@pockypurse]

Our school didn't have Oregon Trail; we got Math Blasters and Zoombinis. But years later, watching people play Oregon Trail as full-grown adults and flipping over in the river is still hilarious.

[@float32]

Nah fam, hunting was the most fun!

[@k1ngk4gl3]

In 2004 I was attending a school that didn't have the biggest budget for Computer Class. They had a bunch of old Macs that were donated. This is where I discovered Oregon Trail.

[@Novous]

MECC? Anyone else remember Number Munchers and Word Munchers? I loved those games as a kid.

[@BologneyT]

I remember those!

[@habitable4116]

Watch out for Troggles!

[@DanielDroegeShow]

I had the record at my school in number munchers all year, until they reset it next year. :( I made a spiritual successor called Number Blasters on Roblox though.

[@seditt5146]

This game is the reason I program, We learned to hack into it by constantly breaking which allowed us past the copy write protection and game us access to the source code. We used it to alter all the text in the game and our teachers was not to happy with us because we were assholes lol. But it started a life long love of programming.

[@UFBMusic]

I feel that what you learned by hacking the game is far more important than you knowing how to manage a covered wagon.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Best speech ive seen on GDC. And I didnt even ever play Oregon Trail.

[@eartianwerewolf]

He was so sweet ;3;

[@reborninsanity]

This was a really good one, but the best I've seen come out of GDC to date is the LOOM Postmortem

[@Clay3613]

@@reborninsanity I feel like that dude is hiding a dark secret.

[@ocksee]

Hey GDC, here's a suggestion. For the few times in a presentation when there's audience participation (like raising of hands) or when people are asking questions, it'd be great if you guys had one camera recording the audience. Then when those sections come up in the video you can do a picture in picture of the audience or whoever is asking a question. Also thanks for such a top quality channel.

[@muzboz]

I think their presentation recording system is fairly auto-pilot (camera set up on a stand at the back of the auditorium), with the final video often being a fairly minimally edited rendering of that source footage. (Sometimes they'll zoom/crop on the slides). For them to film people asking questions would require hiring a lot of additional staff and equipment to do that. There's perhaps 20 talks going on at a time, probably more, so you'd need 20 or more people (+ cameras) employed for 5 days, just to capture question time, just to see the face of some random developer asking a question. The process of cataloging, syncing and editing that footage into the main presentation footage would also be made more complex, and each of those shots would need to be carefully synced with the existing audio so the lips weren't a bit off)... I can't see this being practical, even if it's a nice idea. :) I think it'd be pretty hard to justify the benefits of it, given the costs it would represent.

[@coachcro7722]

A more cost effective way to go about this would be to instruct the presenters that if they do this to vocalise what they see

[@DarkHorseSki]

I played this game in the 70's on teletype terminals connected to a mainframe. I was one of those gifted kids who got to play with computers long before others did, so as a young elementary school student, I was doing crude programming and playing games like this. TYPE BANG!

[@Ljosi]

Last name ending with -ynski ofcourse you were gifted with a high IQ. It's amazing how everything becomes so clear once I learned about racial differences in genetics/IQ

[@anglexe555]

@@Ljosi I wish they incorporated said racial differences into Oregon Trail. Can you imagine the hijinks a traveling band of merry-but-mostly-free Africanos would have amidst the warblin', burblin' Frontier Lands of digitized Pioneership? Woooweee! How about them white women?!

[@Rokabur]

I remember we had some computer classes in Elementary school. Part of the learning AND as a reward when we had extra time was this game.

[@towermoss]

This has been my favorite postmortem. Some of the other developers are pretty arrogant, but this guy seems really genuine and has OG chops. It's a shame about the Q&A technical difficulties.

[@Clay3613]

Doesn't seem to be hiding a dark secret like the Loom guy either.

[@crab-dogjones4659]

I like most of them but this dude is really quite humble. He's saying things like "I feel like it's become part of the culture" when in reality it's totally ubiquitous. Everyone past a certain age has played Oregon Trail and everyone remembers it fondly.

[@lanatrzczka]

"The Native American Version." That is the BEST answer to a "how would you do it today" question ever.

[@HoppingFun]

YES! The Native American version, as a two-player game. That would be brilliant. (I am reminded of The Others, a Tom Snyder Productions game of the 1980s that used modems to set up a Cold War experience class-to-class, with limited communication.) I was an ed tech reporter on Teaching and Computers magazine at the time Oregon Trail debuted on Apple, played ALL the MECC games and more, and appreciate the nostaglic look back. It was truly a golden era.

[@HoppingFun]

MECC closed in 1999 but the software lives on here: mecc.co/

[@exileut]

Like most GDC talks, 1.5x or 2.0x speed is a lifesaver.

[@kadandreatta9190]

Oh my god, I hadn't thought about that. What a great idea, thank you!

[@oculicious]

Americans: "We need to make an educational game for school children" "okay, first things first, how do we fire guns via text?" :D

[@lonjohnson5161]

I played the teletype version back in the 5th grade. I thought I played it on the TIES system at 100 baud, but he never mentioned TIES, only MECC. So I guess I was racing through it at 300 baud. Also, the very first computer game I remember writing was a naval combat simulator which was essentially a stripped down and reskinned (if that can be applied in a text only game) version of Oregon Trail. I had no idea how to do random numbers, so my game was very repetitive. I have more computing power telling a single pixel what color to be on my phone (an increasingly inaccurate name) than I ever used in those days, but sometimes I still miss them.

[@f.r8580]

Best GDC I've watched.

[@DustinRodriguez1_0]

Heh, we played Oregon Trail a couple of times on the computers at elementary school (Franklin Apple clones!). My parents had bought a Vic-20 and I unearthed it and fell in love with BASIC around 9-10 years old. The Vic-20 came with 2 books on BASIC programming, an introductory one and an 'advanced' one. I carried those books with me everywhere I went, and back and forth from school every day, reading them any spare moment I got. One of the things I remember vividly from the introductory book was their strict admonition that you MUST create a flowchart before you start writing a program. They specifically said that only a fool or a genius would start writing a program without creating a comprehensive flowchart first. I'm 38 and have been programming ever since, and I've never once created a flowchart. Who were these flowchart evangelists running around in the 70s and 80s?

[@ryanyoder7573]

The Oregon Trail. The wagon train carrying students into the computer era.

[@halfling_barista]

Wonderful talk. What a genuine guy and interesting story.

[@cbsabhwhejejdjdvkxnzebnekx4767]

Brings me back to my Junior High School days in 7th grade.

[@STINGREDDOG]

Are the 31 dislikes from people who didn’t make it to Oregon?

[@Novous]

52:00. Dan Aykroyd made Ghostbusters AND Oregon Trail? What can't he accomplish?!

[@Clay3613]

and vodka!

[@Zoyx]

Prince was one of the kids that played Oregon Trail 1.0 on the teletype in Minneapolis.

[@trapez77]

The 3rd version was amazing. Never played the other ones but I wish I could.

[@StevenBloomfield]

How did I never play this? I remember seeing it when I was in 7th grade but for some reason never got to play it.

[@gamefoun]

Wow, this is a really great talk.

[@chuckm1961]

Great memories.

[@AdurianJ]

I believe mail went by ship around Kape Horn before the Pony Express.

[@TheJamieRamone]

Ah Oregon Trail, everyones favorite death bu dysentery simulator!

[@nngnnadas]

Which version of the oregon trail should I play?

[@leftear8010]

This was amazing

[@DotNetRussell]

Okay I'm calling it - Unreal Engine 5 reboot of Oregon Trail but super Dark af and geared toward adults. Hunting, fighting, brothels, and dysentery

[@MotiviqueStudio]

This makes me yearn for a Batman game where you have to punch enemies by yelling "Kapow!" as quickly as possible. Very cool about using the diaries to update the accuracy.

[@superscatboy]

Don seems like an awesome dude.

[@GeoNeilUK]

I never played the Oregon Trail, though I did play a game at school called Wagon's West on the BBC Micro.

[@Gilpow]

Every screenshot/gameplay video of the Oregon Trail that I found is from the 1985 Apple II version. Does anyone know where can we see how the original game was?

[@kadandreatta9190]

I had the same question. It's not the OT but here is a video of the teletype in action: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5bThpKdidCAfLs

[@lonjohnson5161]

Get a roll of low quality brown paper that makes for a terrible hand towel. Find an old typewriter (if you can) and type a few lines like: Type POW POW You will eat well tonight. It wasn't much to look at. It was more impressive hearing the teletype as it CHUH-CHUH-CHUH every line.

[@Gaiacarra]

Poor guy at 55:20 never got to ask his question

[@2Cerealbox]

Organ Trail doesn't just travel in any old car, it's a station *wagon*.

[@mahj]

(dysentery joke)

[@Herintruththelies]

Was this the first Rogue-Like game?

[@VorpalSilence]

Rogue was the first Rogue-like game......

[@egoalter1276]

This is a survival management game, not an action rpg. It probably also wasnt the first randomly generated permadeath game. Stuff like Zork! And other text based dungeoncrawlers/ MUDs probably predate it. And those are even arpgs.

[@jmp01a24]

Who programmed the C64 version for MECC?

[@godlaydying]

16:05 Surely they had version 0.0? :)

[@GeoNeilUK]

This makes me wonder about the Europeans who never experienced the Great Crash, probably because we in Europe conentrated our gaming interest around microcomputers rather than consoles like the Atari 2600 or the NES. If the games turned out shit then it was a case of... "Mate we got BASIC, yeah? We can write our own games, bruv!!!" Also, I don't know what to say about Minnesota being the only state in the Union to do what the UK did en masse and what several European countries did. Minnesota had MECC - a state owned software house and the UK developed the BBC Micro - a state funded microcomputer that made it into ever school in the country. Has Elite made it into the Gaming Hall of Fame? Because it really should have done.

[@egoalter1276]

Hell, even the eastern block had the Commodore 64. we had a metric shotton of them smuggled over from West Germany.

[@narnbrez]

Wasn't expecting a hanging chads reference lol

[@singingelephants5597]

I have still never played W.O.W.

[@singingelephants5597]

O.T. , Tetris , Pac-Man I played them all ...

[@admin_verified]

Awesome speech.

[@KentHambrock]

Oh my gosh. Oregon Trail VR...

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Damn. I want to use a Telex now.

[@c.jarmstrong3111]

The tech never works right in these GDC talks, they could really use a better sound engineer and tech expert

[@lonjohnson5161]

Irony

[@truckingwithatablet4489]

I played 3 different versions in school 1 POW 2 A green one where you had to shoot a deer's as it ran slowly across the of the screen. 3 one as a little ma n running around with animals running around me to shoot at.

[@gabrote42]

18:30 PFFFFFFFFF 18:50 So much win

[@uncletuftin]

Awesome.

[@Funkopedia]

omg I would play the shit out of Oregon Trail MMO

[@Weangered]

Who remember number munchers?

[@nolan412]

Viking Raider Trail

[@Nezarus0]

How is there a dislike?

[@nigelseven8935]

48:20 ... DEMOCRACY! (... "look at the clock!")

[@eartianwerewolf]

Awww what a cutie !!!!

[@Unitazy]

1 Disliker didn't get to Oregon

[@koalabrownie]

You mean 1 Disliker got Dysentery

[@NeoVoodooTech]

It was all about hunting. I'd kill everything and waste so much lol ah the good old days.

[@Rokabur]

The hunting was the funnest part.

[@ryanquinn1257]

Man oregon trail is such a great childhood memory. I don't know if you can still get away with it. "are there any vegan options for my character on the oregon trail?" *characters die because user refuses to use gun / is not allowed to by school* I don't know about others, but basically we went two ways. Kill every living thing in hunt mode. Get nowhere, but have a metric sh1ton of meat. Orrr book it to oregon and see who has most ppl survive. slow down for no dysentery, forge every river.

[@DeconvertedMan]

Hardest game. EVER.

[@crixxxxxxxxx]

Patton Oswalt’s smarter older brother.

[@joeykeilholz925]

noice

[@tarpdurr6662]

good first my dude

[@refoliation]

yeah you've been killin it.

[@nanthilrodriguez]

2x speed ftw 3x, youtube?

[@EuropeanQoheleth]

All that stuff about life was pretty cliched stuff I've heard al ot of times before but very good talk otherwise.

[@polymakegames]

I couldn't like this anymore.

[@beageler]

I don't want to rain on anyones parade, but am I the only one who is aghast that a history teacher with his background doesn't know "Papers, please?" "Though the Darkest of Times" came out later.

[@Doormat00]

i really like post mortems but this one bored me extensively

[@binaryalgorithm]

Make an NFT of the "sacred scroll" and donate the proceeds to education. People are paying millions for "junk NFT", I think they'd pay a lot more for that.