For my first gameplay report, I would like to report on a familiar educational game. Actually, I believe it would be considered one of the first ‘edutainment’ titles out there. It’s the first digital computer game that I ever played in a classroom. It’s called The Oregon Trail.
I remember playing The Oregon Trail in my third grade Language Arts classroom. It was the 1980s and there was only one computer in the classroom. It did not have an Internet connection or even a hard drive. The game was loaded from floppy disks and was displayed on a 2-color monitor.
The teacher had different groups of students completing different tasks related to our reading curriculum. We were reading a short novel (I believe it was O’ Pioneers). Some students were reading and discussing in small groups, some were doing vocabulary tasks, and two students at a time got to spend a few minutes playing The Oregon Trail together.
I still remember this today, even though it was four decades ago because my partner and I had to make choices together. We had to discuss and agree upon a course of action. The game itself follows a group of pioneers crossing 19th-century America in a wagon train. You have to purchase food and supplies, decide how to cross rivers, trade with people you encounter, and occasionally hunt for food. The gameplay itself involved a lot of reading. High-tech graphics were not available at that time, but it allowed us to use our imaginations a bit more.
Today, in 2024, the games from this simpler time are not lost to history. Archive.org is a non-profit organization that hosts millions of digital files that may otherwise have disappeared. This includes software and games from now obsolete platforms (including over 2000 coin-operated arcade games). A few different versions of The Oregon Trail appear on this platform and are playable through an emulator hosted in a web browser.
The entry for the Mac version (originally released in 1990) of The Oregon Trail at archive.org also has some interesting background information about the game, explaining that it first appeared in 1971 and in 2016 was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.
https://archive.org/details/OregonTrailMacintosh
As you may guess, you can play the game by clicking the large power button.
Here is the video of my gameplay:
I can see how several different learning outcomes can be achieved through using this game that I will list below:
- First of all, this game introduces players to what life was like for pioneers in the late 1800s in America. The historical content of the game has some degree of accuracy. — However, it doesn’t delve too deeply into social issues at the time.
- Second, the game involves a lot of reading. Some of the phrases are vocabulary from the 19th century (oxen, yokes, etc.) but this may be in line with novels and other readings that learners are engaging with at this age.
- This came involves decision making. As I mentioned before, in my experience, I had to play the game with a partner, so we had to negotiate meaning and come to a consensus about all of the decisions we made.
- The game is relatively simple and can be played in a web browser. This game or games like it should be accessible even on older computers. In some cases, they can also be downloaded so you could play them on a computer with no Internet connection.
All in all, clearly this game made for educational purposes can be used to enhance learning. There is also potential for other games hosted on archive.org, especially if presented in a way where learners need to read, discuss, and negotiate meaning.
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