The next screen opens up to a series of toolbar choices. “A player’s objective, according to the game guidebook, is to safely reach the Oregon Territory with one’s family, thereby ‘increasing one’s options for economic success’” [2]. Let’s look at how the individual player begins to work toward that goal. The journey begins in 1848. The month of departure is left open to the player and the consequences are accordingly appropriate—should one choose to set out in January, for example, the snow and ice would create insurmountable hardships such as danger in fording rivers, stuck wagon wheels, little game to hunt, pneumonia, and freezing to death. Similarly, setting out in July or August might lead to heat exhaustion and dust storms that would render the survival and health of those on the journey nearly impossible [1]. Thus, the student quickly learns that setting off in a more moderate month, such as April or May would more likely ensure success, and this conclusion seems logical and straight-forward enough. Other choices that the player must make, however, while they may appear simple enough to a young student, are not so clear-cut to the critical observer. For example, the game acknowledges the role of class by providing a choice in occupation, such as a banker, a doctor, a farmer, a carpenter, a teacher, etc. Corresondingly, one starts off with the amount of money appropriate to his (yes, only his) occupation. Thus, while choosing to be a banker will provide the player with a significant amount of money in the outset, choosing to be a doctor might provide fellow voyagers with crucial medical assistance later on. Attention to class, then, is the player’s first encounter with the role of larger social issues in historical experience [2].
Copyright Gamespot.
Self-Identification
The player also gets to choose the names and ages of his five fellow travelers. Where his own self-identification is concerned, however, the specifics are largely one-sided. Because each player is the leader and the only member on the journey whose occupation is actually determined, he automatically gets cast as a white male, without any opportunity to have done otherwise. The option to journey as either a woman or a member of another race is non-existent. As Bill Bigelow notes in his critical essay “On the Road to Cultural Bias: A Critique of the Oregon Trail CD-ROM (1997), “without acknowledging it, The Oregon Trail maneuvers students into thinking and acting as if they were all males [2]. The game highlights a male lifestyle and poses problems that historically fell within the male domain, such as whether and where to hunt, what route to take, whether and what to trade, and whether to caulk a wagon or ford a river” [2] . A woman’s role in the Oregon Trail is ignored and left altogether out. This role included such difficulties as maintaining a sense of community despite hardships and stress, cooking and caring for children in the wilderness, and resolving tension and conflict. Such challenges are not part of the Oregon Trail. Instead, the measure of the journey’s success only plays out through basic survival tactics, thereby reinforcing a male-dominated understanding of what problems the trail presented to its actual travelers [2]. Similarly, while African Americans are present in the game, their personal narratives are not. Throughout the game, for instance, a young black girl occasionally pops up to advise “I think it’s time we be moving on now” [2], as if her presence were no more contested than her white counterpart, when in fact many provisions of societies that sponsored wagon trains directly excluded African Americans from making the journey. If African Americans did, in fact, succeed in completing their journey, they were met by black exclusion laws passed in the Oregon Territory in the 1840s barring black residency [2]. Thus, by providing neither a gender nor race option at the outset of the game, The Oregon Trail markedly misrepresents many volatile and sensitive issues surrounding the journey west in the mid-19 th century.
From a Student's Perspective
The impressionable, young student, therefore, either fails to notice that these options were never presented in the first place or quickly forgets them in a flurry of decisions such as whether to purchase oxen or mule to draw the wagon, how many sets of clothing to buy, or how many jars of dried fruit his fellow journeymen might need along the way. If he does not buy enough provisions in the outset, his wagon will quickly suffer the consequences, but if he does not save some of his money for a rainy day, he will not have the opportunity to stock up later on at trading posts along the route. Once a careful consideration of all necessary provisions has been made, the journey eagerly awaits.
[1] The Oregon Trail II. Minneapolis, Minnesota: MECC, 1994.
[2] Bigelow, Bill. "On the Road to Cultural Bias: A Critique of The Oregon Trail CD - Rom. Lanugage Arts, Vol 74, Feb 1997.
