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The updated iteration of “The Oregon Trail” is not the first video game to address Native Americans’ experiences with westward expansion. "The Oregon Trail" was used as an educational tool in classrooms across America for decades.
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In historically accurate clothing, fully playable and realized Indigenous characters respond to settlers as equals, have full dialogue, and even their own game play scenarios.” Tallie for Hyperallergic, “Indigenous North Americans are no longer background characters in what was, upon reflection, a wildly solipsistic game. In the new version, writes University of San Diego historian T.J. and then being like, ‘Oh, we’re Indians, you know,’” she explains. “I remember being like, ‘Oh, like the Indians killed off somebody in your wagon train’. But Halfmoon, who’s now 38, says she viewed the game differently than users playing outside of the reservation might have. (The game was frequently incorporated in history lessons in American schools between the 1970s and 1990s.) Despite the limited graphics, students were excited to receive time playing on the computer as a reward for good work. “We were just coming to it sort of as a naive ‘bows and arrows are cool’ angle.”Īs Jazz Halfmoon says to NW News, she played “The Oregon Trail” at her school on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, in northeast Oregon, years ago. “That wasn’t our intention at all, obviously,” Gameloft Brisbane’s creative director, Jarrad Trudgen, tells NW News. Huettl says Native American trappers at the time the game is set were more likely to have carried rifles, making bows an outdated stereotype. While the team had originally seen bows and arrows as a fun game mechanic, developers soon learned that these weapons weren’t realistic for the historical moment depicted. Game designers also removed stereotypical flute and drum music. “And I think we suggested, maybe they don’t all have to have braids.”
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“Initially, all of the Native people had braids,” Margaret Huettl, a historian at the University of Nebraska who helped advise the team, tells Anna King of NW News Network. Developers hired three Native American historians to help design the virtual figures’ appearance, speech and roles. The game now features playable Native American characters. “For Indigenous Peoples, westward expansion was not an adventure but an invasion,” they write. The new game opens with a message from developers acknowledging that earlier versions of “The Oregon Trail” failed to depict Native American perspectives and cultures. Players struggle to keep people and oxen alive in the face of starvation, dysentery and other dangers.
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First launched in 1971 as a computer game, “The Oregon Trail” lets users step into the role of wagon leader. This game is part of The Strong's MECC Collection and was donated by Susan Schilling, Vice President for MECC Product Development from 1987 to 1996, as well as the Executive Manager of the 1995 edition of Oregon Trail.The iconic video game “ The Oregon Trail” is back with a new version-and a more nuanced approach to the story of white settlers traveling across the American West in 1848.Īs Kimber Collins reports for WKRG, the updated iteration, created by Gameloft, is now available through the Apple Arcade subscription service. The Oregon Trail is perhaps the oldest continuously available video game ever made, but more importantly, it pioneered a blend of learning and play that showcases the valuable contribution games can make to education. The more than 65 million copies of the game that have been sold testify to the game's appealing story and fun play. In the 1970s and 1980s, when computing access was rare, The Oregon Trail not only instructed players in American history but also introduced them to computers. The game has been widely available ever since, appearing on every major computing platform, from mainframes to smartphones.
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When Rawitsch joined the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium (MECC) in 1974, he brought along the code for the game and MECC developed a version for distribution to schools�first in Minnesota and then around the United States. Players had to choose which items to bring, how fast to travel, and what to do when food ran low or disease struck. First programmed on a primitive teletype printer, the game challenged students to assume the role of Western settlers crossing the continent on the way to the Pacific coast. Three student teachers, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger, created The Oregon Trail in 1971 to help Minnesota schoolchildren learn American History.
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As the longest-published, most successful educational game of all time, The Oregon Trail has blazed a path for the use of video games in learning.