Comments on: Learning

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:01:34 +0000

Sometimes even the less educational and more fun games break down into weird minigames as well. I recall playing Halo with you and/or John and seeing how far off a cliff we could blast each other with plasma grenades. Then there was the Warthog game that you, and I think your dad, created. The rules escape me, but the general concept is probably easily surmised from the name.

By: William

William — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:30:38 +0000

I actually did learn one very important thing from Oregon Trail 2. Namely: Medicine. All the medicines cost, like $0.02 each. Even if you only had two extra dollars, why wouldn’t you buy ten doses of every available medicine? It’s not like they weighed anything.

That was the first instance I can remember of me going, “Wait a second, everybody else doesn’t do this, but I’m going to sit down and figure out for myself if it’s a good idea.”. Pretty damn valuable lesson, I’d say.

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:41:11 +0000

I love these stories of other ways kids adapt games to make them more fun. As I said in the post, I think that appropriating a system for your own ends is just as valuable as following the rules, or creating a world from whole cloth. Thanks for all the feedback!

brog and Brad: I’m glad that The Oregon Trail did gain some traction outside of the US. Irrespective of any historical content, it’s just a cool game. There’s a reason people are still nostalgic for it now! (See, e.g., Busted Tees’ You Have Died of Dysentery shirt.)

By: Max Battcher

Max Battcher — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:18:31 +0000

Denis mentioned: «I seem to recall a sadistic game of seeing who could have the most elaborate eaths for his or her families among my peers.»

The game would record gravestones where people recently died, and passing a gravestone would prompt a “You passed the gravestone of so-and-so…” mention as you played. Weirdly enough LAN builds of the game had a central store leading to an almost MMO-type thing where you would pass the gravestones of your classmates across the room, sometimes only shortly after they died…

It was probably intended something as a score/competition marker, with a mix of learning the morbid nature of the actual Oregon Trial (where something like a third of the people that attempted the trail died on the trail, IIRC from the game’s text however many years ago that was)…

However, given the fact that players could name their own characters it always seemed like the most immature died the earliest on the trail just so you’d pass markers like “You passed the gravestone of YOUR MOMMA”, to use one of the least offensive ones that I can recall…

The Oregon Trail shall forever live in the bastion of children’s computer games both for all the things it did right and the few things it did wrong, like let elementary school kids type in their own names for family members…

By: David Carlton

David Carlton — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:32:05 +0000

My mom would buy me games that were educational. One way to satisfy that was to get any game that had been translated into French; Le Prisionnier was great. (But my French wasn’t up to the task; I really should try that in English.) I also really liked Robot Odyssey; I don’t particularly care about circuit design in real life, but the game was a lot of fun.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:46:26 +0000

My family had a supposedly puzzle-oriented board game called “Quest of the Philosopher’s Stone” (oh, look: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1636). Officially, you win by reaching the center of the board and answering logic questions in the included “Book of Knowledge.” But there was also a gambling minigame.

The idea was to force players to choose between riches or wisdom, but since it was so easy to win money and so tedious to gain wisdom, we ALWAYS started the game with a mad dash to the “money market,” then stayed there accumulating wealth. Occasionally one of us would actually leave the money market and try to win the game according to its rules. Then it usually went something like this:

“Hey, I win! I have attained ultimate wisdom in the philosopher’s stone!”
“Pssh, whatever. My turn. C’mon, seven seven seven — gimme a seven — ARGH”
“No, the game’s over! I won.”
“Right, so maybe you should go away and let us keep playing.”

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Oh we did have Oregon Trail but it was on the school’s one Apple ][ which lived on a rolling cart and could never be reliably tracked down (by me). But we had Northwest Fur Trader in every classroom, so you know, do you want any pelts.

By: korkie

korkie — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:58:05 +0000

Are you telling me all those hours spent on the Oregon Trail was not an educational experience??

I thought it was so cool you ‘wanted’ to play the game.

….. educational and fun, my ass!

By: Denis

Denis — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:52:54 +0000

I think the question may be how many across the nation actually played the game for the merit it was supposed to have? I seem to recall a sadistic game of seeing who could have the most elaborate deaths for his or her families among my peers.

By: brog

brog — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:33:04 +0000

For some reason we did play Oregon Trail in school, in New Zealand. Probably it came preinstalled on the computers. I don’t believe I learnt anything about US history from it.