The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Mon, 17 Feb 2025
Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/Pop quiz: What’s the longest-running video game in history? It’s not Pac-Man or Donkey Kong or even Pong… it’s The Oregon Trail. A true pioneer (and we don’t just mean the ones in the covered wagons), the Oregon Trail has sold more than 65 million copies (that’s more than the Beatles’ White Album) and it spawned an “edu-tainment” industry now worth over $6B. But this wholesome game was created by three Minnesota student teachers, without a single thought towards making money… which is exactly why Oregon Trail made so much of it. Find out why this iconic game is a textbook MVP (Minimum Viable Product)… how an acquisition by Shark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful” almost led to a collab with Barbie… and why the Oregon Trail is the best idea yet.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet for the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with, and the bold risk takers who brought them to life. Episodes drop every Tuesday, subscribe here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/—-----------------------------------------------------GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the Best Idea Yet podcast about?
Yeti's Nick and Jack here from the studio. Since it's President's Day and markets are closed, we decided to serve up a sample of our weekly show, The Best Idea Yet. It's our second show, which just got nominated for an Ambie Award, by the way, for Best Business Podcast. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. And this episode, it's actually our most viral one yet.
It's about the Oregon Trail game, the first video game that you ever played. But Few know how the Oregon Trail actually began. Each week, we explore the most viral products of all time, and here is an entire episode for you to check out. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this sample of the best idea yet. It was my best birthday party, and I planned it myself.
This was a whole new concept, and the concept is called the reverse surprise party. So you invite all your friends to your party, but you don't tell them where it is. You don't tell them what it is. You just tell them to wear a tuxedo and look fantastic. So we showed up at the front of Nick's apartment, not knowing where we were going.
And we all piled into a limousine and Nick told the driver what the destination was. Jack, this was the first ever reverse surprise party. One of many more to come. It might've been the best birthday party ever. Yeah, it created this entire concept of the reverse surprise party purely out of the one goal of optimizing and maximizing enjoyment.
You won't hear it often on a business podcast, but sometimes the best motivation to create a product has nothing to do with making money at all. Sometimes, products start with that same goal, to optimize and maximize enjoyment. Exactly.
And if you want the perfect example of this, look no further than the subject of today's show, an iconic game created by three idealistic young teachers in the great state of Minnesota. This story features trappers and bankers, preachers and con artists, and oxen. Oh, the oxen. Also, Jack, many, many deaths from dysentery. That's right, Yetis. We're talking about the Oregon Trail.
Or as many of us end up calling it, Oregon Trail. Drop the the. It's cleaner. If you went to school in the 80s and 90s, you played this game on your classroom's beat-up Macintosh computer, alongside other classics like Carmen Sandiego and Mario Teaches Typing. Or you may have come across it later, playing a free version online or on your PS5, maybe even your Nintendo Switch.
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Chapter 2: What is the origin story of the Oregon Trail game?
But Yeti's Oregon Trail goes all the way back to the 1970s. In fact, it's the longest running video game in history, dating back to the PPCE. That's the pre-PC era of 1971. And we repeat, longest running video game in history. We're talking about four years before a guy named Bill Gates co-founds Microsoft. Jack, we're talking five years before another guy named Steve Jobs co-found Apple.
It is the pioneer of video games, literally. Speaking of Apple, Tim Cook should be leaving daily offerings at a trading post at Fort Laramie because the Oregon Trail had a huge role in making Apple what it is today. Generations of millennial kids might never have begged their parents for that first Macintosh if it weren't for this game.
And if that sounds like a big statement, don't worry, we got the receipts. Over its lifetime, Oregon Trail has sold over 65 million copies. That's more copies than the Beatles sold of the White Album. Pretty good for a game that basically started as homework, but it was addictive homework. And the way they pulled that off would come to influence generations of future video game franchises.
like Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed, and Red Dead Redemption. And it would help spawn an entirely new industry, edutainment. And what sets apart Oregon Trail from every other product, business, and entrepreneur we've covered on this show? Oregon Trail was not created to make money. And yet, it ended up making a lot of money. But not for the people who you'd expect to make money.
And ultimately, it became part of a $6 billion IPOS. So get ready because the Oregon Trail story features a visit from Pioneer Barbie and a buyout from a Shark Tank investor before Shark Tank was a thing. So Jack, let's load the wagon, pitch up the oxen, and increase our pace from steady to strenuous. Here's why the Oregon Trail is the best idea yet. From Wonder and T-Boy, I'm Nick Martel.
And I'm Jack Kravici-Kramer. And this is the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk takers who brought them to life.
I got that feeling again. Something familiar but new. We got it coming to you. I got that feeling again. They changed the game in one move. Here's how they go.
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Chapter 3: Why is Oregon Trail considered a pioneer in video games?
I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. Listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky wherever you get your podcasts.
It's mid-November in Minneapolis, and already the trees are bare. The wind whips bony branches across the windows of your cozy classroom. Standing at the blackboard, you're sweating under a coon skin cap and a stiff secondhand leather vest. You're playing the role of Meriwether Lewis, one half of the famed exploring team, Lewis and Clark.
And you're trying really hard to teach a room full of eighth graders about the Louisiana Purchase. All right, historical reenactment. I'm into it. One sec, Jack. I just gotta get my David Crockett costume. But the 13-year-old faces staring back at you are not vibing with your performance. One kid yawns. Another sniggers as he elbows his buddy. Look at this guy!
That's when you start to realize your immersive history lesson isn't landing quite the way you'd imagined. I mean, Jack, the kids, they know when something's cool and they know when something's cringe. That's the situation that Don Rawitsch finds himself in 1971. Don's just 21, barely older than the kids he's trying to teach. He's not even a full-fledged teacher yet.
He's in the last year of his teaching degree at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, about an hour south of Minneapolis. But the junior high Don's been assigned to isn't in Northfield. He's working in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Minneapolis. In Mighty Duck's terms, I believe this is geographically District 5.
Don's trying to spice up his dull American history textbook using props and costumes to make history come alive. But so far, the history, it just feels like it's flatlining. Don's next unit is the Oregon Trail, the historic 2,000-mile route settlers took to emigrate west. It extends from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon.
And in case you fell asleep in history class or you missed our Levi's 501 Genes episode, here's what you need to know. All right, Jack, let me set the scene for you. Late 1840s, thousands of gold rush prospectors poured into California. But another group of folks was also heading west. And these guys, they were the merchants, the fur traders, the missionaries, and the families.
Anyone who felt their circumstances would improve with a six-month grueling journey westward through purple mountains and fruited plains. For a few hundred miles, the prospectors and the pioneers were basically on the same trajectory. But somewhere around Idaho, the two paths split.
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Chapter 4: How did Oregon Trail influence educational gaming?
The prospectors swung south along the California Trail, and the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, they split and went north. The travelers who went north to Oregon, they hunted their own food, repaired their own wagons, they faced diseases, supply shortages, flooded rivers, and if they failed to brave these obstacles, they die. This is some high-stakes drama.
And Don, our teacher back in Minnesota, he really wants to convey all of that to the students. If only he can make it exciting without coming off as lame. One day, as he drives home to his shared apartment, Don gets an idea. What if he were to ditch the whole dress-up game and try something more interactive? So once Don gets home, he grabs a long roll of white butcher paper.
He spreads the paper out across the living room floor, and he gets to work. With a fat black marker, Don draws a squiggly line from one end to the other, representing the trail route from Independence, Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley.
And now Don starts to think he's on to something, so he sticks that pen cap in his mouth and he adds a series of squares across the map, each one representing historic forts and landmarks that players might land on via dice rolls. But this, this is a game, not just a map, and it needs another dimension.
So Don starts thinking up period-accurate obstacles, and he jots them down on index cards, like broken wagon wheel, or your oxen died, or you just got bit by a snake, go back three spots, you need to find a doctor. Jack, these are like the chance cards that you get in Monopoly, right? Only instead of a luxury tax bill, you might get mauled by wild animals. Exactly.
And Don, he's getting super creative going back in time in his head for these. As Don is scribbling out these cards, two of his roommates come home. Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger. They're fourth-year teaching candidates, too. Bill and Paul teach math at a different public school. So Bill sees what's going on with this map on the table, and he tosses a frozen burrito in the microwave.
And he takes one look at Don's work in progress, and something just clicks. Bill has been taking some programming classes in an early computer language called BASIC. That's Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. And Bill also happens to be a fan of simulation games. So as he stares at Don's map that's laid out on the table, he offers a thought. Uh, cool game, bro.
Uh, wouldn't it be more fun, though, if you played it on a computer? Don's totally into the idea. Loves it. But he doesn't know code. That's okay, Bill says. I'll build the code for you. Don calls Paul over next, and Paul is on board, too. He volunteers to get in on this project as their debugger.
Jackets giving my uncle's got a barn, my aunt can sew the costumes, let's put on a show kind of vibes. Just one problem. Don's Oregon Trail unit is coming up really soon in the classroom. If they're going to build this game, they'll have to do it in 10 days.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did the creators face while developing Oregon Trail?
Although, fun fact, one of the most iconic ways to perish in this game doesn't exist in this version one. Good point, Jack. The phrase, you have died of dysentery, won't make an appearance for several years, when it will then infect the brains of an entire generation of millennials. So yeah, it's super easy to die in this game. A little too easy.
But if you do manage to stay on your feet, the teletype makes a celebratory ding. And the message appears, you finally arrived at Oregon City after 2,040 long miles. Hooray. When Nick says, hooray, he should have said it with more enthusiasm because in the type of this teletype machine, it said, hooray, five exclamation points. That's the reward you get for winning the game.
An anticlimactic little ding and complete lack of visual animation. I mean, Jack, if I traveled 2,000 miles in a covered wagon and survived 13 different snake bites, I don't want a ding. I want a Gatsby party. I want the champagne. Pour me champagne. But hold the vote, Jack, because in this Minnesota teacher's side hustle of a game, we're not getting any of that.
After 10 days of programming in the janitor's closet, Bill Heinemann, Paul Dillenberger, and Don Rawitsch declare their new educational game ready. It's time to turn it over to the mercy of Don's students. Which leads to the big questions. Will their sleepless nights pay off? Or will the Oregon Trail succumb to cholera before it even gets started?
And most of all, Jack, is there a test at the end of this podcast episode? It's early December in those hectic weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break. Kids are already dreaming about vacation and teachers are racing to finish their grading. But for Don Rawitch, it's showtime. Never forget this date, December 3rd, 1971.
Don rolls the school's only teletype machine into his classroom, and he dials up the school district's mainframe computer where Oregon Trail's 800 lines of code reside. Trying not to hold his breath, he introduces the game to his eighth graders, who, as we've established, can be a pretty tough crowd. Don divides the room into groups of five. so everyone can get a turn playing the game.
The teletype only prints out about 60 words per minute or one second per word. What we're saying is that it takes five Mississippis just to learn that your oxen had died. So since each trail attempt takes half an hour, Don hands out paper maps to the rest of the kids so they can follow along with who's playing. And group one starts navigating their way across the virtual Oregon Trail.
All right, Jack, ready to roll. What do we got? Right away, it feels like something special is happening. The kids start working together and leaning into their strengths. The kid who's good at math keeps track of spending. The one who likes maps, she decides whether to stop and explore or pick up the pace. And for most of these kids, it's probably their first time ever playing on a computer.
This is a wild and exciting experience, so getting comfortable with technology is part of the lesson. But Jack, it's not just the tech that grabs them. It's the storytelling, the cutthroat bandits, the old doctor who comes calling when you get sick, and the sky-high stakes, because your whole party could perish at any given moment.
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Chapter 6: How was the Oregon Trail received by students?
The Oregon Trail, it's gone cold. And it will stay cold for the next three years. It just lives on as a memory in those children's heads and on three sheets of paper until the Vietnam War, of all things, brings it back to life.
Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be a big flop? From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi. It's kind of like when you give yourself your own nickname and you try to get other people to do it.
and the 2019 movie adaptation of Cats. Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie. Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+.
Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.
one number is about to change everything, a draft number. It's the last gasps of the US's involvement in Vietnam, but the country is still sending young men overseas to fight. And one terrible day in 1972, the draft comes for Don Rawitsch. Our guy Don, he's about to get dragged into a war that he's staunchly opposed to, unless he can figure out a way out that doesn't involve fleeing to Canada.
To Don's relief, there is one option. He can get an exemption as a conscientious objector, but he has to perform two years of alternative service, like the Peace Corps or something else that benefits the country. Now, sadly at the time, the government doesn't count teaching in public school as alternative service.
So Don looks around for a gig that will qualify and get him this exemption from going into combat. Then one of Don's old professors introduces him to someone who's about to change his life forever. He's a high school math teacher turned nonprofit director by the name of Dale LaFrenz. Dale is a bit older than Don, but he's just as passionate about classroom learning.
Since the mid-1960s, Dale's been working to get computers into every classroom in America, and he starts with his home state of Minnesota. Now here comes the interesting twist, because at this time, Dale is the assistant director of a new state-run non-profit called the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, or MECC, M-E-C-C for short. MECC. It's a blonde name for a very exciting idea.
Mech wants to equip all Minnesota students from elementary age to college with computer labs, with support staff, and with educational software. If Dale saw the janitor's closet where their only computer was back at that other school... Yeah, I can't believe he was next to the mops. He'd be furious. Well, working for Mech, it does count as alternative service.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can we learn from the Oregon Trail's success?
If he can add this game to Mech's library, then Mech has the power to distribute it to classrooms, not just in one middle school, but every school across Minnesota. So here's what Don does. He grabs some valuable time on his boss's calendar, and he works up the nerve to walk into their office and tell them about this humble game that he created with two of his best college buddies.
Would Mech be interested in adding this Oregon Trail game to their catalog? Don shuts his eyes, and he waits for an answer. And Mech is all about it. Don feels like he just won the lottery. It's like he's one of those eighth graders who just asked somebody out on a date to the school dance. And they said yes. So Don, he goes home. He grabs that little paper. Oh, wait, where'd the paper go?
Where'd the, oh, I found it. He found it. He finds the paper. It's still in his sock drawer. And the game that survived on a piece of paper will live again. But hang on, yetis, because the way Don hands organ trail over to Mac will have huge repercussions that last for decades.
It's Thanksgiving weekend, three full years since Don, Bill, and Paul first wrote the Oregon Trail software while jammed in a janitor's closet. But Don is no longer an earnest student teacher. He's a grown man trying to recreate the signature achievement of his life, letter by letter. Instead of stuffing his face with turkey and cranberry sauce...
Don is spending his holiday painstakingly retyping 800 lines of Oregon Trail code back into a new teletype machine. To sprinkle on some context, 800 lines? That's actually not that bad. The original Donkey Kong debuted with 20,000 lines of code. And Assassin's Creed? Over 15 million lines. I mean, try typing that into a teletype, Jack. You'd have carpal tunnel, I don't know, forever.
Finally, Don finishes. He's entered every code line into the teletype, which is connected to Mech's giant mainframe computer. But here's the catch, besties. The moment Don entered that code into Mech's server, it became their property. Yeah, record scratch here. This one action, Don has made a crucial mistake. he's handed over all his IP to somebody else.
And he's done it for no additional compensation whatsoever. But to be honest, besties, he's actually more concerned about the game's overall historical factual accuracy. Yeah, because when Don, Bill, and Paul were eating those burritos with that butcher paper on the table, they were sprinting to put out their MVP.
All of the gameplay was based on their own historical knowledge, like the number of wagon wheels on the wagon, the mortality rate of yellow fish. Fever? They were guessing.
If Don wants Oregon Trail to make the scale jump from one junior high school to hundreds of high schools, he's going to have to give it a factual tune-up because there are going to be a whole lot more eyeballs on this thing now. The more the product is scaled, the smaller the margin for error. So Don goes full Robert Carrow and dives into some research.
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Chapter 8: How did the Oregon Trail come back to life years later?
But Don has since said he hasn't lost a single night's sleep over pushing the enter button that day on Mech's computer when he gave up ownership of the Oregon Trail. Don has honestly said that it was just nice to be acknowledged.
This single project that they spent 10 days on in college ended up selling more than 65 million units worldwide and reaching countless school kids, which is why it's been so successful, why it's been so memeable, and why it has been so iconic. So Nick, now that we've survived the story of the Oregon Trail, what's your takeaway, man? Here's my takeaway, Jack.
The MVP is your MVP, your minimum viable product. It is your most valuable player because an MVP's job is to demonstrate a product market fit to your investors and to show your product designers how they can improve. And on both counts, the very first down and dirty version of the Oregon Trail, it did exactly that. We had our very own MVP, our own daily podcast.
It actually started 12 years prior as a WordPress blog. Enough people read that first blog that we knew that we had something. And so we created a version two and a version three and a version four and then a podcast. And now this, our second podcast. And it all started with a $9.99 per month unpolished, logo-less WordPress blog. That was our MVP. And that MVP was our MVP.
It was our MVP.
But Jack, what about you? What's your takeaway on the Oregon Trail? Mo' money, mo' problems. Nick, the Oregon Trail was never invented to make money, which is exactly why it ended up making so much money. That's why. By eliminating the question of how will this generate revenue, its creators were liberated from the distraction of monetization.
Instead, they focused on simply creating something that kids would love. And if something is powerfully loved by a user, they'll eventually turn into a paying customer. Yeah, Jack, that's how Google got started. They made the best search engine in the market, and they gave it all away for free before they had any idea how it would make money. Eventually, of course, they figured that part out.
As Biggie Spall said, and Don Rawitch proved, mo' money, mo' problems. Okay, before we go, it's time for our absolute favorite part of the show, the best facts yet. The best little tidbits from our research that couldn't fit into the story, but we also couldn't wait to tell you. Jack, here we go. In the late 1970s, Don Rawitch published the complete program code for a version of Oregon Trail.
Basically, he open sourced the project. And that led to a whole lot of fun unofficial variants of the Oregon Trail. There's a zombie version called the Oregon Trail. There's an alien version called Overland. And the Banner Saga, which is a Viking version. Now with 50% more marauding.
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