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The DH Interview With Phillip Bouchard, Creator of Oregon Trail 9/20/05 by Clay

On July 7, I wrote a column (click here) about my fifth grade experience traversing the computerized Oregon Trail. I expected this column would slowly recede into the depths of my column catalogue. Somehow, however, this column caught the eye of Philip Bouchard who was one of the impresarios in charge of the Oregon Trail design team way back in 1985. Exactly twenty years ago. If you remember the game and want to try your hand at playing it, click here for a free online version.

Shockingly, Mr. Bouchard contacted the site and expressed his appreciation to us for both the column and the fact that the game had remained so firmly entrenched in our memory. We exchanged a couple of emails and finally I resolved to conduct the first legitimate and entirely real interview in the history of deadlyhippos. In the past twenty years no one else has ever interviewed the creators of the 1985 Oregon Trail which as any reader of this site already knows was an absolute masterpiece. Without further ado, meet Philip Bouchard and have every question you could have ever wanted to know answered (or at least every question I wanted answered).

1. The game commences with the player asked to choose among three choices: Banker from Boston, Carpenter from Ohio. and Farmer from Illinois. Was there ever any discussion of including a Slave Owner from Mississippi?

I wanted to have 3 difficulty levels representing different amounts of initial resources. We tied this into the real world by connecting these levels to 3 different professions. This was also an opportunity to get kids to think about the fact that the emigrants came from different places and had different backgrounds.

Although we did not choose to address slavery issues with this product, a decade later I worked on another historical simulation game called Pony Express Rider, published by McGraw-Hill Home Interactive. In this product we addressed the slavery issue quite directly.

After The Oregon Trail, but before Pony Express Rider, I designed and programmed two other historical simulation games (both published by MECC) that also dealt squarely with ethnic relations – Lewis & Clark Stayed Home, and Dr. Livingstone, I Presume? In Lewis & Clark you explore the American West, interacting with dozens of different Native American communities. In Dr. Livingstone you explore Africa, interacting with dozens of different African ethnic groups.

To clarify: A slave owner from Mississippi was not considered as a potential fourth option.

2. Were you ever informed that some religious schools in the south insisted their students select Carpenter from Ohio because Jesus was a carpenter? Was it your intent to cloak the Carpenter from Ohio in religious symbolism?

I had never heard this before, and any religious symbolism in the product is purely accidental. But I was born and raised in the Deep South, so I witnessed on many occasions the deep attachment that many southerners have to their religious beliefs.

Clay's sunday school teacher Mrs. Crabtree would be pleased Jesus is so close to his heart...and column.

3. The general store proprietor’s name is Matt. This seems to be a rather modern name and my next door neighbor who was named Matt always bragged about this unfortunate conjunction. a. Was there a member of the design team named Matt who was being honored? b. Was it your intent to allow my next door neighbor to brag about sharing a name with the store proprietor?

I understand that Matt is short for Mathew, a name with a very long history. The son of the then-president of MECC was also named Matt, and our president was convinced that we named the store’s proprietor after his son. Please don’t let him know the real story – he would be so disappointed!

4. Matt's character has a pipe. If this game were designed today do you believe you would be required to remove the pipe from Matt's mouth? Did you feel any responsibility about the high rate of tobacco use among children of the 1980's?

If all those kids had taken up pipe smoking, then I would definitely feel guilty – but I think I’m in the clear! Honestly, if I were to design another Oregon Trail, I don’t think we would see Matt using any form of tobacco.

Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer’s idea – not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.

5. How did your team settle on five as the requisite number of individuals attempting the trek on the Oregon Trail and were there any names that were disallowed from selection as choices? For instance are names like stinky, cooties, and gayey allowed?

I chose 5 as the number of individuals on your team strictly from the standpoint of game play, and not for any actual historical reasons. That’s one of the rare exceptions, because I made of point of weaving real history or geography into almost all of my other design decisions.

We talked about building a filter to disallow certain terms as keyboard input. This was a concern not only for the name input, but even more so for the gravestone epitaph. However, as we were designing this product to fit on a 2-sided Apple II floppy disk, we didn’t have the space to incorporate such a filter. This was just one of many features on our wish list that did not make it into the finished product.

The lack of a profanity filter came back to bite us. Some teachers began to complain that we had shipped a product with filthy language in it. When we asked where the filthy language had been encountered, the answer was always “the epitaph on the gravestone”. Some teachers were flabbergasted when I told them that the product ships with a blank gravestone – and that their own students had written the epitaph. However, we did have the foresight to include a teacher option to erase the epitaph – which these teachers found quite useful.

Pizza has never tasted the same again to poor Andy.

6. When you play the game which player do you select and which month do you start?

I like to start as the farmer – for the maximum challenge and the greatest opportunity to earn points. I start the journey in either March or April.

7. Since this game was set in 1848 and slavery was still legal was there ever any mention of slavery or slaves in the game design? In your opinion would making the journey with slaves have made the trip more or less difficult?

In all my research while I designed the game, I did not – to my current recollection – encounter any stories about emigrants traveling with slaves. So I imagine that it must have been a rare circumstance at best. We never considered including slavery in this product.

I later proposed doing a product based on the Underground Railroad, in which the player takes the role of an escaped slave fighting the odds to escape to Canada. I wanted to use the same underlying engine that I had built for Lewis & Clark. I never got the chance to design and build such a product, but MECC later created one using a different team. Interestingly, the product became highly controversial soon after its release, with parents actually staging protests against the product. MECC responded by pulling the product from the market.

Harriet Tubman was hated upon.

8. Even today food at .20 a pound is pretty complicated to figure out. Sometimes in my fifth grade class other kids would use calculators to figure out their purchases. I always believed this constituted cheating and refused to use a calculator. Can you confirm that these other kids were, in fact, cheating?

I applaud your determination to use pencil and paper and/or mental math to compute your purchases. You are certainly entitled to feel a little bit superior to your classmates that used calculators. But I have no problem with those who use calculators as a tool to aid their decision making. I believe that the important aspect is the decision making process, not how the computations are made.

9. In retrospect were bullets too cheap in this game and did children gain a false sense of security as to how easy it was to kill a buffalo?

Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill. That was one of the reasons for allowing the player to carry back no more than 200 pounds of meat. I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game – to say “We should not shoot more meat than we can carry”. Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective.

On the other hand, I wanted to force the player to master certain skills in order to be successful at hunting. Some other versions of The Oregon Trail made hunting too simple and too easy – in my opinion. In my version, you could move the hunter around the screen in 4 directions and fire the gun in 8 directions – using various keys on the keyboard. Furthermore, I put obstacles on the screen that the animals could run behind. So it requires some practice to master the hunting skills and be successful. Consequently, some new players – and most adults – complained that I had made hunting too difficult. But a visit to any school provided ample evidence that legions of kids – mostly boys – had completely mastered the hunting interface.

Finally, the false sense of security was a double-edged sword. After you get into the mountains, game animals become scare, and there aren’t any more buffalo to shoot. It’s easy to starve in the mountains, and each time you go fruitlessly looking for game, you waste of day of travel time.

10. If the game were designed today would children be allowed to shoot anything?

Yes, definitely. I say this despite the fact that I have always had a personal distaste for hunting. But from a historical perspective – and a game play perspective – I think that hunting is essential to this game.

11. What do you think of the Washington Bullets changing their name to the Washington Wizards?

That won’t get them anywhere on the Oregon Trail!

The likely success of Micheal Jordan and Mariah Carey on the Oregon Trail was not impacted by the change of team names.

12. Would the "Indians" in the game now be referred to as "Native Americans"?

Probably. That’s a tough question, because I’m torn between using the actual terminology of that era, and the accepted terminology of today.

No matter which way you scalp it, an indian by any other name is still an indian.

13. Can you confirm or deny the old wive's tail that if you killed 800 or more pounds worth of meat that the Indians would come and help you carry it back to your wagon?

I don’t know which old wives you have been talking to, but this information is false. Sorry to break the news to you like this! Perhaps you need to find some different old wives to hang out with.

One can never be sure about these things, but KWo seems quite certain that the old wive's tail about the indians and the buffalo actually descended from the old wife picture above.

14. There are many ways to die on the Oregon Trail. Were there any diseases or illnesses that you wanted to use but were not allowed to?

Interesting question! Actually, I think that all of our top choices – which were based on actual history – made it into the product.

15. Is it fair to say that on the spectrum of western representation in modern media, the Oregon Trail and the HBO series Deadwood are on opposite ends?

Well, they are certainly on the opposite ends of the language spectrum.

For example Matt the general store proprieter was never quoted as saying, "Fuck off you fucking fucker fucky," when asked the price of oxen yokes.

16. Has there ever been another computer game that has used the space bar more brilliantly?

I’m tempted to say “Of course not!” But in reality, the product of that era that I most admire for its interface design is The Factory, published by Sunburst. You can play the entire game using only 3 keys – left arrow, right arrow, and Return (or space bar).

17. Was the phrase "inadequate grass" that appears as the wagon rumbles west an inside joke?

I needed a single short phrase that could convey the idea that grass was hard to find, and when found it was skimpy in quantity and poor in quality. “Inadequate grass” seemed the ideal phrase at the time. But now that you point it out, I see that the phrase would have a different meaning in Haight-Ashbury.

18. Isn't the photo of the bathing beauty at Soda Springs a bit risque?

Hey, after traveling and surviving all this distance, you need a little reward!

19. Were there any words forbidden to be printed on the gravestone? If not, were you pained to read about my epitaph, "Too bad nerd?"

We didn’t have space on the disk for a profanity filter – so I’m delighted that “nerd” was the worst word that you encountered!

Philip Bouchard's lack of felt pain notwithstanding, fifth grade mockery has led a melancholy Clay to often take pause and weep. And take ridiculous photos of himself.

20. Did you ever receive any complaints from parents who were angry about any element of your game?

I mainly heard from teachers, not parents. Most teachers were delighted with the game. Other than the occasional complaint about profanity on the tombstone, the most common complaint was that some students needed more than one class period to complete the game, and our original release did not include a save-game option.

However, teachers did send up a howl when MECC at first refused to sell the new version in a school edition. There’s a story behind this. When I was given the mandate in 1984 to design a big new version of The Oregon Trail for release in 1985 – targeted to the home market – I told my supervisor, “I’m going to design this product so that it works equally well in the home and school markets.” He replied, “Don’t bother – we’re not going to sell this version to schools.” I answered, “Well, I’m going to do it anyway, because I find it hard to believe that this product will not be sold to schools.” So I did indeed design a product that I felt was equally suited to either market. But when teachers found out that the new version was not being sold to schools, they raised such a ruckus that MECC quickly changed its mind and released the new version to the school market. And of course it became a massive hit in the school market, even more so than in the home market.

Another complaint – although rare – was that the game was not sufficiently educational. I was once in the audience at an educational technology conference when another audience member stood up to say that you don’t learn anything from The Oregon Trail. Some members of the audience were offended by the comment. I was rather amused by it. In a very limited sense, he was right. In this game I don’t attempt to stuff a lot of factual memorization down the throats of the players. But I do encourage a lot of learning through experience. And I encourage additional learning by piquing the kids’ curiosity to seek information on their own about the history and geography covered in the product. In a well-organized school setting, the teacher will make effective use of the curiosity stirred up by the game. In my later historical simulations – when I had more disk space to work with – I attempted to provide richer learning environments where kids could seek answers to their questions without leaving the computer. But I never had another hit like The Oregon Trail! (My second biggest hit was Number Munchers, which is a very different kind of game.)

Number Munchers

21. Was there ever any consideration of a Trail of Tears game or was that considered too much of a downer?

The Trail of Tears fascinated me as a concept because I grew up in north Georgia within the former Cherokee territory. I was fascinated by the knowledge that the Cherokees were progressive and economically successful – blending the best of Western culture and their traditional culture. They had newspapers, factories, plantations, and other amenities. When Georgia tried to evict them, instead of going to war, they sued. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Cherokee nation won the suit. But then President Andrew Jackson gave Georgia carte blanche to ignore the Supreme Court ruling and evict the Cherokees anyway.

However, I never came up with a satisfying concept for a game – and yes, it was too much of a downer.

22. Do you believe that kids today are bigger wusses than kids twenty years ago?

Statistics show that kids today are definitely bigger than 20 years ago, and the child obesity problem is clearly getting out of hand. And yeah, the level of wussiness has probably gone up too.

Wusses...every last one of them.

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