Give Your Friends Dysentery With Oregon Trail Facebook - Wired News

The Learning Company launched a Facebook version of its beloved edutainment game The Oregon Trail Wednesday, introducing social features and microtransactions into the classic story of American can-do and bloody diarrhea.

Most everyone alive today between the ages of 25 and 35 probably played Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe computer that their middle school got after redeeming hundreds of soup can labels. We learned several valuable life lessons from this journey of early American pioneers who struck out into the untamed Northwest. For instance, trying to caulk your wagon and float it across a river usually results in the loss of several sets of clothing, half your bullets and a baby.

The Facebook version of The Oregon Trail game introduces different categories of pioneer wisdom. For example, if you get low on vigor and can’t find the strength to continue on the trail anymore, you can get more energy by using a major credit card. This educational software teaches that the early American settlers were morons, buying stupid oxen and whatever when they should have just packed their Visa cards.

What’s next for the Learning Company? On Feb. 9, the publisher will launch its Facebook version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, in which the infamous criminal mastermind will turn herself in to the police for $5.

View the original article here

Classic Games like Oregon Trail Migrate to Facebook - Associated Content

Facebook seems to be taking over the internet at the moment, and now it has begun incorporating pre-internet computer games. Today, for example, the classic "Oregon Trail" will premiere on the social network  giant, along with "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Blue Fang Games LLC (which you have probably never heard of, but which owns "Oregon Trail") and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are introducing these classic games to Facebook. The idea is to revitalized old but still loved gaming properties by incorporating them into the most cutting edge of gaming platforms, Facebook. [Source: Bray, Hiawatha. "2 vintage games go to Facebook; Firms aim to tap social networking," Boston Globe, 2/2/11, page B7].

Social networks are a great place to promote nostalgia-based commercial offerings (because you get all types of people there), so Facebook seems like an ideal platform to reintroduce "Oregon Trail" and other classic computer games. Will Facebook users take a few minutes to play Oregon Trail on-line? Probably, yes. If the public reaction to Farmville is any indication, there is plenty of room on Facebook for games that require users to earn tools and develop strategies.

Facebook is probably not the right platform to launch a huge, expensive game. For lingering properties that were created decades ago, though, Facebook could be just right. Think about it: All the owners of "Oregon Trail" want to do is increase their residual royalties from the game a bit. It does not have to become the top game on Facebook to make them happy - it just needs to generate a little extra income, which it is almost certain to do.

View the original article here