In June, screenwriter John Ridley wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that called on Warner Media to remove the film Gone with the Wind from their new streaming service, HBO Max. Ridley argued that the film – widely regarded as an American classic – “glorifies the antebellum south…[and perpetuates] some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.” His op-ed led to an online protest that culminated in Warner Media removing Gone with the Wind from HBO Max and reposting the film with a new introductory disclaimer featuring film scholar Jacqueline Stewart.
The success of Ridley’s op-ed points to an idea almost all of us accept: portrayals of history by movies, novels, and television shows have a dramatic effect—rightly or wrongly—on how we remember the past. But can’t the same thing be said about historical video games? Is there a video game equivalent to Gone with the Wind? The answer is: almost. In 1992, the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation or MECC, makers of The Oregon Trail, released a game called Freedom!. Using many of the underlying mechanics of Oregon Trail, Freedom! followed the journey of a runaway slave in the antebellum south attempting to escape bondage.
Unlike Gone with the Wind, Freedom! was made for laudable reasons: to educate grade school students on the history of slavery in the United States, to emphasize that African Americans resisted slavery, and to show how difficult the escape from slavery actually was. Freedom! was also made by conscientious people: MECC’s development team boasted decades of experience creating educational software, and they relied on subject experts and scholarly sources to ensure the game’s historical accuracy. Moreover, Freedom! was made in a compelling way: from a first person perspective, players had to rely on environmental clues and careful resource management in order to traverse a dangerous landscape filled with slave patrollers, dogs, and natural obstacles.
Ultimately, however, Freedom! was a disaster. Shortly after its release in fall 1992, Freedom! encountered heavy criticism and protests for perpetuating racial stereotypes. In early 1993, MECC pulled Freedom! from store shelves and revoked the game’s license for schools across the country.
The story of how Freedom! went from being a worthwhile idea to becoming the object of protest starts in 1983. That year saw the state of Minnesota convert MECC from a state owned nonprofit consortium into a profit-seeking corporation. Originally, MECC was created to provide computer access and software for students within the state of Minnesota. By the early 1980s, however, MECC began to sell licenses for their software to other states, who were eager to introduce computers to their students but lacked proven educational software to run on those machines. Seizing on the opportunity, the state of Minnesota cut MECC loose, and allowed it to pursue the burgeoning educational software market unfettered, so long as the company shared a portion of its profits with the state.