Archive for October 22nd, 2009

Blazing the Oregon Trail; the making of video games in the time of cholera

Last Friday we got the inside scoop on the making of the Oregon Trail video game from our guy John Krenz, who was the lead programmer for the Apple lle version back when he worked for the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), an organization that set out to teach kids life lessons like the value of strong oxen, a spare axle for your wagon, shooting wild game and steering clear of cholera. Show-and-tell also featured four of John’s former MECC colleagues: Rich Bergeron; Beth Daniels; Tom Zemlin; and Mark Paquette. Here’s a three-minute highlight reel from Friday’s BottleCap Talk, and also the unabridged video. On a personal note, I recently passed away. Cholera.

The Oregon Trail Bottlecap Talk: The Music Video from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

The Oregon Trail Bottlecap Talk from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

The care and feeding of nerds

Just so you don’t think all we do is tinker with video games and train for Pentathanerd, for the record, we’re as busy building websites as we’ve ever been. Our sales staff is coming off of record month, which means this month developers are keeping strange hours (it also means we’re hiring). I came into The Nerdery the other morning to see programmers crashed-out on couches. This is home, these days, for about 60 ridiculously talented developers who’ll need some shut-eye before our next Overnight Website Challenge.

So this morning, our sales and marketing staff cobbled together the most important meal of the day as a small token of our appreciation for those who best personify The Nerdery. Then we showed no mercy by going back to the selling and marketing of The Nerdery.