Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the best idea yet early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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. told the driver what the destination was. Jack, this was the first ever reverse surprise party. One of many more to come. It might have been the best birthday party. 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. 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 P-P-C-E. 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-found Microsoft. 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- But not for the people who...
you'd expect to make money. And ultimately, it became part of a $6 billion IPO. 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. 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 Cravici-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 Alice and Matt here from British Scandal Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there?
Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humour. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politics... Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to 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 coonskin 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
All right, historical reenactment. I'm into it. One sec, Jack. I'm just going to 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 Rawich 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 Ducks 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 Jeans 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. 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 fail 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 his lane. 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 Heineman 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 math 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. Cool game, bro. Wouldn't it be more fun, though, if you played it on a computer?
Don's totally in the idea. Loves it. But he doesn't know code. That's OK, 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. Jack, it's 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.
Now, when we say Don, Bill, and Paul are getting ready to build a computer game together, you're probably picturing a cute little desktop computer, right? Wrong. Because this is 1971. They're using a machine called a teletype. This isn't technically a computer. It's more like a fancy typewriter with a printer attached, but it communicates via phone line with a huge computer mainframe the size of a Manhattan studio.
So the computer itself is often some building somewhere, and the teletype is how you interact with the computer. It's kind of like a prehistoric internet. Yeah, if Mark Twain was Googling something, he would use this teletype machine, Jack. But as old-fashioned as all that sounds, in 1971... This is like using an Apple Vision Pro. This machine is expensive, it's cutting edge, and it's rare. In the school where Don teaches, there's only one teletype machine.
So the trio used the one at Bill and Paul's school instead, housed in the janitor's closet. Barely big enough for the teletype and a chair. But still, they're excited they have access to this huge cutting-edge computer. And what do they do, Jack? Bill handwrites the code, then gives the code to Paul to type into the computer. Don gives input on the history and the gameplay. And together, they start coming up with the rules of the Oregon Trail. And here they are.
This game will begin when you load up an imaginary covered wagon with imaginary supplies for your imaginarily scary journey west. We're talking food, oxen, extra clothes. And of course, you got to bring ammunition because partner, you are going to be hunting your own food. Oh, and if you're wondering how they hunt game on a teletype with no graphics, well, you type the word.
bang into the machine and the game tells you whether you'll be feasting on venison tonight or not. With the supplies squared away, it's your mission to make it from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon. You'll answer a series of prompts spit out by the teletypes printer. How fast do you want to travel? How much do you want to spend on oxen? Do you want to eat A, poorly, B, moderately, or C, well?
But yeah, this is a teaching game. So it gives tips on what effect each choice will have on your future. So eat too heartily and you're going to exhaust all your supplies, man. But if you ration too harshly, then your party might starve. And don't forget those chance cards. The surprise obstacles that you might encounter, from snowfall to a knife-wielding bandit.
It's going to make the game a lot more challenging and scary. Bill inflicts these surprise challenges using a randomizer code script, reflecting the unpredictability of life out on the Oregon Trail. I mean, Jack, you get a splinter on a Tuesday, you could be gone by Thursday.
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, will 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's... 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 for me. campaign. 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 Rawich 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 Rawich, 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. It's this investment in the stakes that keeps Don's students obsessively playing. Oregon Trail. Nick, the bell rings, but no one is leaving. Can you imagine that? Class is over. Don is thrilled.
He tells Bill and Paul that the game is a hit. The kids are having a blast. And naturally, they want to see it in action for themselves. So Paul and Bill introduce the game. to their students. And those kids, they love it even more than Don's do. No kidding! There are lines of kids, six or seven deep, leading into this tiny little janitor's closet where the helotype computer lives. The Oregon Trail is...
so popular among these students that the kids come to school early to get their chance to play. They're there at 7 a.m. And they stay until the teachers kick them out at the end of the night. If you are getting kids to state school voluntarily, you got some magic on your hands. The Oregon Trail game is basically the mudang of Minneapolis. It came out of nowhere and everyone is obsessed with it. That's despite the fact that...
this game is still very v1. What we are seeing is actually the perfect example of an MVP, a minimum viable product in action. An MVP is the earliest version of a product you can possibly release and still have it work. It's not meant to be polished. It's meant to be functional.
This way, you can test user love and your early adopters can give the product feedback. Jack and I have worked in the tech industry, and this industry, it thrives off MVPs. And founders, they've raised millions of dollars off of some really rough-looking versions. ones. When Airbnb launched in 2008, it was a janky looking website called airbedandbreakfast.com. But even the ultra bare-bones version was enough to prove the concept and land Airbnb's first $20,000 investment.
Today, Airbnb is worth $80 billion. And for Don's Oregon Trail, this MVP of a game is being validated in the ultimate way. Sadly, there's no $20,000 checks floating around this junior high school. But as Don, Paul, and Bill watch their Oregon Trail game blow up, Bill wonders if they should find a way to monetize this thing. What if this game is their meal ticket?
Not just an aha moment, but a cha-ching moment. Now, that is a beautiful thought, but that thought passes. Don and his friends, they're planning to become teachers. not game designers. Besides, this is 1971. It was pre-Arcade Boom, pre-Space Invaders. So the idea of royalties from a computer game, it sounds absurd. That's why Bill shrugs the idea off. And in a blink, Oregon Trail Week at school.
is over. Geddes, this all happened in just one week. His next history lesson for next semester is the Roaring Twenties and he's already got his Gatsby costume picked out. Now here's the wildest part. The Minneapolis public school computer doesn't have enough memory to archive last semester's programs. There's no cloud computing at this point. That's not a good sign. So Don, Bill, and Paul print out a few paper copies of their game's 800 lines of code. And then...
They delete the game from the server. So, yeah, you're saying they created what feels like a masterpiece on this computer and all that is left of it is a few sheets of paper. It's like they painted the Sistine Chapel. and all they have left of it is a photograph. 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.
One number is about to change everything. a draft number. It's the last gasps of the U.S.'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 Rawich. Our guy Don. He's about to get dragged into a war that he's staunchly opposed to. Unless you 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. 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 non-profit 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. MEC. It's a blah name for a very exciting idea. MEC 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. So Dale hires young Don as Mech's... community college liaison, and Don's future has a brand new trail. It's not a sexy role by any means, but that's fine by Don. This is going to keep him out of the war. And honestly,
He's 100% on board with Mech's mission. This is a perfect match. Don has seen firsthand what great software can do for students. It's actually kind of the perfect role, Jack, for the co-creator of The Oregon Trail. Funny you should bring that up. Because for a while, he doesn't even mention this chapter of his past. Yeah, if we had created the Oregon Trail, it'd be the first six bullets of our resume. But in Don's mind, the Oregon Trail was just a fun little moment.
of his life in the past. But the longer that he works at MEC, the more he sees that they're searching for new educational games. So Don decides to ask if they might be interested in his game. That printout of 800 lines of code for the Oregon Trail that's still sitting in his drawer at home. Jack, I am so stressed about this entire game sitting in his drawer. If he can add this game to Mech's library...
then MEC 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 a mech be interested in adding this Oregon...
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. I 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 or... 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 main...
frame 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 fever. They were guessing. If Dylan wants Oregon Trail to make the scale jump from one junior high school to hundreds of high school...
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 Caro and dives into some research. He combs through archival diaries written by real pioneers who survived the Oregon Trail. He gets firsthand experiences. He reads their journals, their stories, even... the footnotes about pairing whiskey with elk meat.
which apparently was a fine cuisine on the trail. How often did they really encounter thunderstorms as their parties crossed the Great Plains? Or where were they most likely to get bitten by a rattler? Or did they always have to ford the river? Or could those oxen swim? like a four-legged Michael Phelps, Don uses the information from these primary sources to revise the game's back-end probabilities and to correct a mistake that Don hadn't even realized he'd made in version one.
Originally, he and his roommates had depicted America's indigenous people pretty stereotypically. Native Americans in the game mainly showed up as hostiles who attacked the settlers. But as Don reads the journals, he discovers that most of the pioneers had...
found indigenous folks to be mostly kind, helping them ford by day and navigate by night. So Don writes new encounters with members of the Sioux and the Pawnee and the Shoshone tribes. And these characters show up to do things like teach you about which... and which ones are gonna make you vomit up your cornmeal. After lots of research and rewriting, Oregon Trail version two is so historically accurate,
that Lewis and Clark would have been impressed. And Mac, they released this thing to all the Minnesota schools in their free library of educational games. Teachers clock this new history game immediately, wasting no time introducing it to their classrooms. And just like before, students are hooked right away. Don brought the content. Mech brought the distribution.
the right and left biceps of a great media product. But as anyone who started a company knows, it's exciting when you launch it, but you kind of get curious about the numbers. So he slides into the airtight room where Mech's game logs are kept. He's curious, but he's also nervous because the numbers...
They won't lie. Now, Mech has a bunch of other educational games in their library at this point, like Lemonade Stand, which teaches kids about business. And on the day that Don peeps the numbers, those other games have been played around 200 or 300 times each. Okay, so Jack, how did the Oregon Trail do in its debut? It's been played around 10,000 times on that one single day. 10? thousand plays. Literally 50 times more than that lemonade stand thingy. The Oregon Trail is a runaway hit.
Mech's most popular game by far. And that's when the Oregon Trail's future is forever changed by a company called Apple. It's been a long day at the MEC offices in St. Paul, Minnesota. In fact, it's been a long week because MEC needs to purchase about 500 computers. to distribute to Minnesota's computer labs. And Dale LaFrance has been fielding pitches from computer companies all week. He's exhausted.
But the day is almost over, and he's looking forward to knocking off work and catching some hockey on TV. It's 1978, and by now, teletypes, they're old news. It's the beginning. of the PC era. An entire computer that sits on a table, not in an apartment. The personal computer, the PC. Dale LaFrance thinks that they're the future and he wants them in the hands of Minnesota school kids ASAP.
And now a quick reminder, besties. Mac's mission is to equip the state's classrooms with educational software and the hardware to go with it. And that's why Dale has been fielding vendor bids all week long. One of these computer manufacturers is going to be the right partner to bring the PC to the school system. The one question is who? Dale is leaning towards Radio Shack.
Radio Shack is the big dog in the market, and they're well-equipped to meet the large orders that MEC will be making. But then a wild twist happens. With just minutes to go before the bidding window closes, an out-of-breath messenger scurries into the MEC office. He sprints to the receptionist's desks, and holding a hand-scrawled bid in his hand, he slaps it on the table. The messenger is from a little upstart company called Apple.
It's run by two shaggy 20-somethings that somehow are both named Steve. Wozniak and Jobs, what are the odds? The Steves believe that their new Apple II computer is the answer to mech's prayers. It's got color capabilities, which the kids will love. It's compact and easy to use. It doesn't have its own monitor, but you can plug this thing into any TV. Now, this Apple computer, this thing is tiny, and it is unproven. idea if this will even be able to meet their minimum order.
But in the end, he agrees to give them a shot. If this startup named Apple gives them a great price on the machines. Apple is young and hungry, so they jump at the opportunity. And soon, 500 Apple T's are on their way to Minnesota. to classrooms. The machines have a little floppy disk drive, so they'll be able to run MEC's vast library of software. including the company's crown jewel, the Oregon Trail. Mech updates the game to reflect Apple II's new graphical dimension. Finally!
Oregon Trail gets some simple graphics, not just letters and five exclamation points. And this only makes the game and the machine it's played on even more popular. Yetis, we've said it before, software sells hardware. Brilliance of Oregon Trail definitely helps sell kids, their teachers, and eventually their parents on Apple.
Kids that might otherwise have never seen or touched these machines are logging hours of gameplay, stocking up on supplies at Fort Kearney or floating their wagons across the Snake River. all on an Apple keyboard. So that's the interesting thing, Jack. The secondary benefit of the game is that it acts as an onboarding tool for kids to get comfortable with tech and embrace the digital age with confidence. The Oregon Trail...
It's basically a gateway goodie. And other state school systems start to take notice. They too want to get their hands on these Apple computers and the Oregon Trail software license so that their kids can become familiar with computers.
So MEC begins to sell their software library to out-of-state buyers for around $10 to $20 per program. All right, Jack, let's hit the whiteboard on this thing. $10 to $20 per license is not exactly that much. But when we're talking about... hundreds of licenses for thousands of classrooms I mean these numbers are starting to add up man
So in 1980, the Iowa Department of Education calls MEC and asks to pay a flat rate for unlimited access to their software library throughout the state. MEC doesn't have a price for something like that. So one of their regional coordinators throws out... a number that they think is crazy. They think it's a joke kind of a price tag. What's the number? $100,000. That is a lot of money for a nonprofit in the education space, Jack. It's more than $10 to $20 per license, that's for sure.
Okay, but Iowa's Department of Education, I guess they're like, what the heck? This game's kind of fun. I don't want to die of dysentery. Let's do it. MEX sets up a software membership program, like a Netflix subscription, but for computer games. And 5,000 school districts sign up. That's about a third of all the school districts in the United States. Not too shabby. What an achievement for a non-profit.
But that achievement comes with some strings attached. Yeah, we got an interesting twist here. Becoming financially self-sustaining means that MEX stops getting funding from the state government. What we're saying is that MEC goes from a state-financed non-profit to a for-profit corporation that's got to pull its own weight. And that is going to have huge consequences for how they do business. This game, it's been played millions of times by...
And yet, it has brought in zero dollars of direct revenue. But now, MEC needs to survive like any other corporation. So their new priority for the Oregon Trail? monetize. And Jack, what do software companies do to monetize? Launch new versions. Oh yeah. And this next one is going to be a barber. Besties, imagine yourself back in the classroom, not as a teacher, but as a student.
You're in the fifth grade, and Miss Caldwell has finally given you some computer time. You boot up your favorite adventure game, Oregon Trail, naturally. But right away, you notice something's different. The colors. So many colors. It's the full Skittles rainbow. Oh, and look, you can enter your own name. And you can even enter the names of your friends in your party.
Once the game starts, the little ox actually starts an animated walk cycle. That's new. When it's time to hunt, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to actually point and shoot. This version of the game is so much more immersive. You don't even care when your supplies wash away in a rainstorm. But then your health starts to go and your food runs out. And finally, you read a message on the screen that we all still get nightmares about. You have died of disinterest.
and you won't be the last. Now, we got to float in some context here. MEC, the nonprofit consortium that grew so successful it became a for-profit corporation, has been flourishing as the longtime owner and publisher of the Oregon Trail. Their partnership with Apple has let them deliver educational software to classrooms across the U.S. and around the world.
All of this has given them the capital to invest some serious R&D in a blockbuster new version of Oregon Trail for Apple II. And it takes Mac 10 months to develop and launch that brand new upgrade with some major re- designs from the ground up. This new version is awesome. And it launches in 1985 as the official second generation of Oregon Trail. We should point out they're not counting the original MVP, but that's okay. Jack and I do.
And this 1985 version has all the elements that Oregon Trail is known for today, like customizing player names so you can get personalized updates. This version, it also uses the first complex simulation models for weather, health.
river conditions. You're crossing deep blue rivers, you're visiting Matt's General Store, and you're playing the 8-bit hunting game that lets you bag wild rabbit, deer, and bear like it's nobody's business. And there's also a rafting portion that's added as the final check. After 14 years and countless hours of research and development, Oregon Trail is finally in its full glory. And generations of schoolchildren.
including Nick and me, learn the proper spelling of cholera. But Yetis, here's where things get fascinating. Because the Oregon Trail hits a sales milestone none of us knew about until we researched this story. It became the number one education. on the continent.
All of this is great news for Mac and for our buddy Dale LaFriends, who by now has become the company's president. But Dale's reign as the king of this wild mountain, it's not going to last as long as he thinks. As anyone who's played the organ... trail has learned when you're at your strongest is exactly when you lose a limb. This is the part of the story where the Oregon Trail makes a detour to Wall Street. Now, yetis, Jack and I should point out that Oregon Trail...
It is a profit puppy. At this point, it represents one-third of Mech's $30 million in annual revenue. So, Oregon Trail? This game? It's driving 10 million bucks in revenue a year. It is the jewel in their crown. Oh, and that crown? It is looking pretty shiny. Since taking over as company president...
Dale of Friends has mostly run MEC with a steady hand. In 1994, he oversees a successful IPO and watches MEC stock price double from $12 to $25 a share. That's right. Oregon Trail is publicly traded. Now, eventually, Mac and all its games, including Oregon Trail, gets gobbled up by a massive entity called the Learning Company. And guess who happens to run the Learning Company? Kevin O'Leary.
pre-Shark Tank. That's right. Mr. Wonderful acquired the Oregon Trail. But the craziest move is yet to come. It's wild. Because in 1999, Mattel, yes, that Mattel. acquires The Learning Company for $3.5 billion. That is more than Google spent acquiring YouTube. We're talking about The Learning Company selling for $3.5 billion. In today's money, that's $6 billion.
$6.6 billion. Mattel, their CEO, they even float the possibility of Mattel creating a line of educational software around Barbie. Perhaps even incorporating Barbie into games like Oregon. I feel like Ken would have struggled to fix a wagon wheel. The deal ends up being a terrible match for all. Estimates suggest that Mattel loses $1 million per day after the acquisition.
And as a result, Mattel's CEO gets ousted. She literally fails to survive the Oregon Trail. But Yetis, you know we're not going to leave you on a down note. We're going to make it to Oregon City, all right? And when we're there, we're going to hear that little... So, Mac may not have survived to see the 2000s, but the Oregon Trail's legacy is still surprisingly intact. Despite falling out of circulation after the whole Barbie debacle, the Oregon Trail is back. As an iPhone app...
as a game for PS5, on Nintendo Switch, and on many, many free players around the internet. The Oregon Trail, it's not just about pioneers. It literally is a pioneer. It is a giant in the edutainment space, and so much of that credit goes to the game's original creators, Don Rawich, Bill Heineman, and Paul Dillenberger. None of these guys got rich off the Oregon Trail, or really got paid at all. But they were eventually celebrated by MEC as the game's originators.
They even had a ceremony back in the 90s when the company presented the three guys with some custom embroidered jean jackets. Hey, I created the number one educational software in North America, and all I got was this lousy jean jacket. But... Don has since said he hasn't lost a single night's sleep.
over pushing the enter button that day on Meg'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. 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. No 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... 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 Rawwich 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 we couldn't fit into the story, but we also couldn't. Couldn't wait to tell you. Jack, here we go. In the late 1970s, Don Rawich 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 unaff...
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. It is even a musical. film adaptation of The Oregon Trail that is supposedly in the works, Jack, from the songwriters of La La Land. It's been pitched as a dark comedy, which makes sense when half your cast has yellow fever. Although, Jack, I can picture Gosling right now.
taping a bandage and all for it. You can tape my leg anytime. And finally, if you ever feel the need to experience the real deal for yourself, the National Park Service created the Oregon National Historic Trail. You can stop along the same route as the settlers across six states on foot or, if you're a real one, by Covered Wagon.
Jack, which river was the final river that the settlers would cross on the Oregon Trail? Was it the Independence River, the Rushmore River, or the Yellowstone River? Shoot, I was going to say the Missouri River. Well, Jack, you're incorrect. There's actually none. None of the above. Which one is it? Oh, it's none of the above. That's the correct answer. Jack, we got to end the pod. And that yet is why the Oregon Trail is truly the best idea yet.
Coming up on the next episode of The Best Idea Yet, something probably all the actual settlers on the real Oregon Trail wish that they had. The next episode of The Best Idea Yet is the delicious story of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.
The Best Idea Yet is a production of Wondery, hosted by me, Nick Martel, and me, Jack Kravici Kramer. Hey, if you have a product you're obsessed with, but you wish you knew the backstory, drop us a comment. We'll look into it for you. Oh, and don't forget to rate and review the podcast. Our senior producers are Matt Beagle and Chris Gauthier.
Peter Arcuni is our producer. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan and Taylor Sniffen is our managing producer. Our associate producer and researcher is H. Conley. This episode was written by Katie Clark Gray and Alex Burns and produced by Katie Clark Gray. Sound design and mixing by Kelly Kramarik.
Fact-checking by Erica Janik. Music supervision by Scott Velazquez and Jolena Garcia for Freesan Sync. Our theme song is Got That Feeling Again by Blackalack. Executive producers for Nick and Jack Studios are me, Nick Martel, and me, Jack Ravich. Executive producers for Wondery are Dave Easton, Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Aaron O'Flaherty, and Marshall Louis.
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