Talk:The Oregon Trail (1985 video game)

Some proposed changes to the intro of the article

Information to be added or removed: Rewriting of the intro to more clearly explain the role of the 1985 product within the broader history of The Oregon Trail game.

Explanation of issue: I propose to refocus the intro on what are probably the two main reasons for the article: 1) To clearly identify how this second-generation version is different from the first generation. 2) To provide a brief history of how and why this new generation was created.

References supporting change: There are two very helpful references (although please note that I wrote both of them). One of these is already listed in the References -- my Medium article from June 29, 2017 (“How I Managed to Design...”). The other reference is “A Brief History of the Oregon Trail Game” (http://www.died-of-dysentery.com/stories/brief-history.html).

Suggested text: Perhaps something like the following two paragraphs --

The Oregon Trail is a computer game for the Apple II developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and first released in 1985. It was designed to teach students about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. In the game, the player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley via a covered wagon in 1848. The software was designed and created by an internal team at MECC, led by R. Philip Bouchard, who also served as the principal designer of the product. Although the 1985 product was originally created for the Apple II computer only, an essentially identical version was later released for DOS. Augmented versions for Windows and Mac (using a mouse-based interface) were released in the early 1990s.

The 1985 product is the second major incarnation of the game known as The Oregon Trail, loosely based on the 1971 text-only game and its direct descendants. The 1985 version was the first in the Oregon Trail series to include such features as crossing rivers, stopping at landmarks, naming your party members, contracting dysentery and other diseases, carrying meat back to the wagon, choosing a profession, carrying spare parts, seeing daily weather updates, talking to people along the way, having members of your party die, erecting tombstones, and earning points based on your performance. This was also the version that introduced the iconic animation of an ox pulling a wagon across the landscape, as well as the first version to be sold as a stand-alone product under the title The Oregon Trail.

Further explanation: Notice that the first three sentences above are taken from the existing intro (with only tiny changes). After that the text is new. The three existing sentences include tags that could be retained.

Final comments: I am pleased to see that this article exists, and that it contains some very good content. Because of my history with The Oregon Trail, I am in a position to shed a great deal of light on the subject. However, because of my obvious conflict-of-interest, I want to tread lightly in making my suggestions. I hope to make additional suggestions quite soon, but first I want to see how this first one is received.

Filbo (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)