Philip Bouchard
Appearances
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
Okay, I think I have an answer. On the Apple, our graphics were pretty crude. But when you're going... Because we only had a resolution of, I think it's 280 pixels across and 192 high. You can't do a whole lot with that much. And only six colors. And limitations on which colors can go side by side. So...
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
But within that limitation, we did Cheryl Caplinger, our lead graphic artist, produce some very nice graphics. And when you go into Matt's store at the beginning and make your purchases, I think there are barrels on the sides in the picture. Later versions of the product might have been more explicit about these barrels.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
And I presume that, oh, I don't remember this for sure, but we might have actually counted the quantity of some things in terms of barrels. Like, I don't know if we said pounds of flour or barrels of flour. That's all I'm thinking was pounds, but I don't know. In other words, I don't have a big association of barrels with the product, but it's not a zero association either.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
No, no. And it's interesting, as young people, we do sometimes really remember certain details that stick out to us more than others. So it's quite reasonable.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
I was quite lucky to be assigned to a product that had inherent qualities. The idea of trying to survive a 2,000-mile journey from Missouri to Oregon is a classic quest kind of thing.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
And the fact that most history is the history of big, famous people. This is about the everyday people, the 300,000 who did this. And we can put you in the shoes of this. And we're not actually changing history. We're allowing you to live part of history.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
Dysentery was one of several diseases. I had five diseases that I chose that were... based on terminology people actually were using on the Oregon Trail. Although in the case of mountain fever, the resolution on the apple didn't allow me to put that whole phrase in. So I had to drop the word mountain and just call it fever. But so dysentery is one of five.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
And that's the one that caught the popular imagination. And the meme elides the actual events. Because what happens on the screen, it'll say Zeke has dysentery. And then A little bit later, it'll say, Zeke has died. Or if you're the last person, it'll say, you have dysentery, and then maybe say, then you have died. And the meme says, you have died of dysentery, which combines the two notices.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
No, not me, not any of my teammates, nor any of the three guys who did the original one. There was no compensation per se, but in my case, I was a staff member, so I got my normal, very small salary during those nine months. Some people got rich. The state sold the company at a steep discount to some investors who then turned around and sold it for millions of dollars. And they got rich.
Flightless Bird
Live in Portland: Bigfoot, Beavers, and the Oregon Trail
And a few of the top officers of the company had stock, and we gave them stock, and they got rich. But no, not me. But I didn't do it to get rich. So, you know, when I was working on that product, getting rich was not a part of the whole thinking.