Oregon Trail — How 3 Minnesotans Forged Its Path 53
antdude writes "City Pages has a story and a visual history about the creation and development of Oregon Trail, one of the most popular educational games of all time. Quoting: 'With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, "How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?" or, "Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?" Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. "Bad illness—medicine used," it might say. "Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?" Hunting required the greatest stretch of the user's imagination. Instead of a point-and-shoot game, the teletype wrote back, "Type BANG."'"
All thats wrong with the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Programmers worked to make educational software for Minnesotans as part of public agency. Some of their games were so good it contributed millions of dollars to the effort.
The government worried they were stifling the company and so sold it to a venture capitalist for $5,000,000
Three years later he sold it to a larger firm for hundreds of millions. The larger firm kept the intellectual property and fired all the expensive programmers ending Minnesotans educational experiment. The original programmers got zilch.
It all seems kind of tragic. Where are the public efforts to make technology help people now instead of just classes in how to use Microsoft office?