As different generations of children mature and make their way through school, educators are hard pressed to find different ways to keep them engaged and support their learning. Enter: video games. They tend to be perceived as just a pass time or a hobby pursued by youths of today, but they can be utilized to purposefully or subversively impart important lessons.
In the online game, The Oregon Trail, students play as a colonial settler making their way from Independence, MO to the Willamette Valley, OR to pursue a better life. The game originated in the early 1970s as a BASIC code game, but has since gotten some updates to make it slightly more user-friendly. Students get to name their colonial settler and the colonial settler’s wife and three kids. As the colonial settler, students make decisions that impact their entire family by initially choosing what time of year they’re going to leave, how much of each set of supplies to purchase (food, extra clothing, wagon parts, ammunition, and more), as well as how much food they consume, when they rest, how fast they move, if they want to trade or interact with people along the way, and more. While students are playing, it’s quite typical for family members to die, oxen to fall injured, and to run out of everything–thus emulating what life was like traveling the Oregon Trail. The Native characters within this game are few and far between, and they serve mostly to provide anecdotes or to be images on screen for the students to “understand” what it was like traveling from forts to towns to more forts along the way.
In contrast, Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) may not be about the Oregon Trail but it does cover a strenuous journey that deeply impacts the main character and her fun little Arctic Fox companion. Nuna, a young girl, and her companion fox journey across the frozen tundra to save her village from the eternal blizzard threatening everything she’s ever known, with narrations from a master storyteller spoken in the Iñupiaq language. With this game, students are exposed to so much more than the Oregon Trail; they can play collaboratively (working on their communication skills), or they can play solo and learn about Indigenous traditions from the Alaska Native people. This is so much more impactful because it exposes students (and anyone who desires to play) to a world unknown by most people outside of Alaska Natives themselves. It’s also the first game developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, a refreshing change of pace from non-Indigenous people taking Indigenous traditions, perspectives, etc and marketing them for their own gain. It obviously has spectacular representation of Indigenous people in it because it utilizes their voices and stories to give life to the game, as well as character designs that stay true to the culture of the Iñupiat people.
In essence, I find Never Alone much more fascinating and world-expanding than The Oregon Trail because it contains so much more information and character design that goes beyond the hum-drum of colonization and what people know of the world and exposes us to a completely new culture and identity that is as fascinating as it is strong and intricate.
Annemarie– I completely agree that Never Alone is so much more intellectually engaging and personally enriching that The Oregon Trail. I think what is most shocking about The Oregon Trail is the way that MECC argued that incorporating “too much real history” would dissuade consumers from buying the game. Although some of The Oregon Trail’s creators pressed for changes regarding the representation of Native characters, they were wholly unsuccessful against MECC’s pursuit of profits.
Never Alone, conversely, proves that you can have a successful, profitable, and educational video game that centers Indigenous voices and cultures. Aside from the intricate graphics and creative gameplay design, the player experiences important lessons and insights along their journey. And who doesn’t love an adorable arctic fox?!
Overall, your post makes me think more deeply about whether video games have a place in the classroom, and I think that they do. Even a game like the Oregon Trail allows us to ask critical questions about both the potential and severe limitations of history in video games.