Philip Bouchard - MECC, The Oregon Trail

Philip Bouchard spent over 30 years designing computer software, 18 of which were focused on educational software. He was the principal designer for the Apple II games The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers.

The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail.   "The Oregon Trail" is the world's longest-running video game franchise.

This interview took place August 26, 2017.

Links:

• Philip’s personal Web site - http://www.philipbouchard.com/
• The Philipendium, Insightful stories about science, nature, language, and education - https://medium.com/the-philipendium
• “How I Managed to Design the Most Successful Educational Computer Game of All Time” article by R. Philip Bouchard - https://medium.com/the-philipendium/how-i-managed-to-design-the-most-successful-educational-computer-game-of-all-time-4626ea09e184
• “You Have Died of Dysentery: The creation of The Oregon Trail – the iconic educational game of the 1980s” book by R. Philip Bouchard - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B8JMKMC
• Oregon Trail game at archive.org - https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990
• Oregon Trail series at WikiPedia