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NASA Wants its MMO Created for Free
fyc writes "It seems that the educational MMORPG NASA's proposing will no longer have a budget of $3 million. Instead, any prospective development partner is being asked to create and maintain the MMORPG for free under a 'non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement'. It won't be a one-sided agreement, though. From NASA's RFP: 'In exchange for a collaborator's investment to create and manage a NASA-based MMO game for fun and to enhance STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], NASA will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities.'"
I should try getting some other company to write and maintain a game of my design for me at their expense, with the excuse that they can advertise themselves in it. I bet that'll work so well!
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
Multi-User Dungeon - MUD1 Version 1E
... ahh much better, Rolaids spells relief.
... Before you enter the cabin, you hug the Doritos (tm) "Who Wants to Meet an Astronaut" Sweepstakes winner and step inside. You turn on your Sony Brand headset that sounds like a dream and prepare for blastoff ...
* NASA's Super Happy MUD *
* It's Edutainment! *
Origin of version: Sat Sep 15 10:00:50 2007
Welcome! By what name shall I call you?
>> Buzz
Hello, Buzz!
Cape Canaveral Launch Pad.
You stand in your Converse (tm) Brand space suit on the Launch Pad, before you is a towering shuttle with the huge Coca-Cola (tm) logo on the side of it. A crowd watches in anticipation and enjoys the T-Mobile (tm) cameras broadcasting the cabin and crew live to their cell phones.
[Exits: shuttle, bathroom]
>> bathroom
Bathroom Adjacent to Launch Pad.
You rush into the bathroom and rip off your helmet to deposit your stomach contents in the toilet. Luckily you have Rolaids (tm) antacid in your Converse (tm) Brand space suit. You pop a few pills into your mouth
[Exits: door]
>> door
Cape Canaveral Launch Pad.
You stumble out of the restroom and back on to the launch pad. Oh no, a congressman spots you! "Hey, why if it isn't Buzz!" he says as he moves in for a photo op!
[A Congressman] is at [quite a few]
Your pierce *** MASSACRES *** A Congressman!
A Congressman's pound scratches you.
Your pierce *** MASSACRES *** A Congressman!
Your pierce DISEMBOWELS A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [big nasty]
You stop using A diamond-tipped dagger.
You wield a legendary greatsword.
A Congressman sees your attempt to trip him in time to avoid your foot.
[A Congressman] is at [big nasty]
Your fiery slash *** DEMOLISHES *** A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [pretty hurt]
A Congressman sees your attempt to trip him in time to avoid your foot.
Your flaming slash *** DEVASTATES *** A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [pretty hurt]
Your burning slash *** OBLITERATES *** A Congressman!
You trip A Congressman, sending him sprawling to the ground!
Your flaming slash *** OBLITERATES *** A Congressman!
A Congressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
[A Congressman] is at [dying]
You trip A Congressman, knocking him unconscious. A Congressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
[A Congressman] is at [dying]
You trip A Congressman, knocking him unconscious.
A Comgressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
Your burning slash *** DEMOLISHES *** A Congressman!
The Congressman's body becomes limp and the politician drops to the ground DEAD!!
You receive 212000 experience out of 280012 total. [neutral]
[Exits: shuttle, bathroom]
>> shuttle
You stagger into the elevator paid for by Playboy Magazine and begin your assent to the cabin. The slow motion walking thingy starts to happen as you cross the bridge
That's all we have so far. I think you can see just how exciting this game is goi
My work here is dung.
Yeah, that'll work.
Sorry guys, but that sort of thing only works when those creating the product are those directing the product.
Nobody likes working for free when they don't have control over what they're doing.
Given what it costs to maintain let alone develop a MMORPG ($3 million would not have covered running it) the shear amount of "brand placement" required will be overwhelming.
Unless they're talking about branding outside of the game... the Pepsi shuttle?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yes, I am so sure that the tens of thousands of game developers out there are going to go...
"Hey, lets make an MMO for NASA for free, while they profit in the millions of dollars off our hard work!"
Yes, I can just see the enthusiasm stemming from this.
Perhaps this is the sort of thing that RedHat or someone should get involved in. It'd make them look like the goodguys for helping out NASA and demonstrating their comittment to science and technology, as well as ensuring that we'll all be able to play the damned thing -- plus, the community could help out and make sure that it doesn't suck, either.
Maybe we can expect a "Lucas Arts International Space Station" (commonly refered to as the Death Star)?
If Google doesn't do this, for free, than they are Truly Evil©(tm).
From TFRFP:Emphasis added.
Right, no one would ever make great software for no money.
Getting what you pay for in terms of software is an odd thing to hear from Slashdot.
If I write a game for them, I wanna go to the moon dammit!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
And I want a flying car! Where's my flying car?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If I was EA I'd do it, work in some tax breaks with the government, do some endorsement deals with say pepsi, and probably still make enough profit to keep it running for years. I bet EA could find some devoper to make it for the 3 mil, and then the press that they would get from it would almost be worth the 3 mil alone. If they only ran add's for their own games they could make it back in a years time. Yes I know that everyone would expect this to be almost similar to WOW in scale, but I bet you could make it in flash, if you limit say 50 people to a perticular area. I think it's completely doable.
no wonder the budget was cut. an MMO to enhance STEM, what were they thinking? give me an MMO where you can explore extra-sloar systems, travel to other planets and setup civilizations instead. that ould create the space awareness that NASA wants and get some buyers lining up.
My sig has been answered.
It's pretty simple. NASA used to have the money for the MMO, but last week a tank in Baghdad needed a reload.
It's encouraging to see NASA's PR budget cut. NASA does way too much PR, and too much non-space stuff. All of NASA's non-space research should be moved to the National Science Foundation.
....Orcs in Spaaaaaace....
I'm now offering the opportunity to fulfill my every sexual desire. This is a non-paying position with no benefits, but I'm willing to negotiate on allowing you to take charity from friends and/or family of mine who feel bad for you.
TANG
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Not even pigs in space, since there isn't much pork on this pork-barrel.
In other words ... "When pigs fly!"
Kevin Smith on Prince
What sort of analogy could this turn into?
Hi, I really want to jerk off, but I don't have the energy or willpower to jerk myself off. So, I'll let YOU jerk me off, and in return I'll let you tattoo your name on my dick for everyone else to see.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
My logo plastered all over the Space Shuttle! yeah!
www.opensimulator.org
Seriously, I think that this is really something that Google could go for and succeed with.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I predict they are going to get what they pay for.
$3MM was already a relatively low number. Consider the recent statement by David Jones of RealTime Worlds (they of Crackdown) where he says he'd struggle to make a game under $50MM.
Now, that's for a console AAA title with whiz-bang graphics, voice acting, etc. I'm sure the NASA MMO doesn't need to be on that level but I'm not sure the term "MMO" can properly be applied to anything with a $3MM budget, short of stuff like Puzzle Pirates.
I mean there's plenty of MMOs that were made for something closer to free than $3MM (Omerta comes to mind) but I don't think when you hear "NASA" and "MMO" you envision a text adventure.
They should just develop things on SecondLife since the client exists already. I believe they've done that already, but I'm not sure what the extent of it is.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
That might be worth $3 million.
I'd like someone to give me a free pony. It has to be brown with white spots and answer to the name, "Bart." If you do, I'll consider letting you put a brand on it somewhere unnoticeable. Thanks.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
All they have to do is agree to give me my advertising now. Delivery date on the MMO will be the day they land a man on Mars.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
NASA,
I'm looking for a job where i don't have to do anything but get paid for it. With all the money you have saved on your game, perhaps you could employ me .
So we can't spend $3 million on a game that might help foster scientific interest and education but we do spend tax dollars on a U.S. military recruiting and propaganda game?
I guess that makes sense given the administration.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Someone needs to get the morons at NASA a dose of reality. America's Army FPS game works because many people like to shoot imaginary people. During the game play, enticing players to "do this for real." is not rocket science.
Now lets count the problems with applying this methodology to actual rocket science the way NASA proposes:
You want to raise funds for this? You would have a better time if you allowed SciFi and Video Game companies rent advertising space on your booster and fuel tanks like NASCAR.
I couldn't help but notice that Bush can spend $million of our money every 13 minutes or less in Iraq, but expects NASA, our program that is most universally respected and admired around the world, to get free help in teaching our young people how to do it when they get their chance.
--
make install -not war
So you need a Space Based MMO? What a coincidence! I think I can tackle this problem! I just found source code to something just like it on Pirate Bay! I'll just call it EVE-online..Err, I mean NASA-Online. It'll be awesome, now all I need to do is get google-ads running ingame and I can finally get my infinium phantom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Entertainment
I love you so much right now.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Have they thougth about paying geeks in 'geek points'. How many programmers will work 4h a day of their free time for, say, ten years, to fly to the Moon?
DON'T PANIC
I guess it's a good thing that NASA exists in their own little bubble with a mission to focus on ways to achieve both the fantastic and the wildly improbable.
Speaking as a journeyman in the video game industry - both at the MMO and console level - I have some understanding of what kind of resources and development time it takes to both complete and ship a game of any quality. This does not instill a whole lot of confidence in me as far as NASA's ability to do much of anything else goes.
Dan.
As scary as this sounds I am not at all surprised. The recent line of NASA administrators have been appointees with a decidedly low-cost high-private-sector mindset. In the abstract "just get someone to do it for free in exchange for ads" this sounds like a good(ish) idea. Certainly one that would sell well at a boardroom full of political appointees lobbyists congresscritters, etc. In short anyone but scientists and educators. To some extent NASA's original announcement of an MMO sounded similar, the kind of thing that makes for a nifty slogan/donut fueled idea but not necessarily something that will play out well, especially for no money.
Given NASA's history with overspecified budgets, often carved up by Congress as a home for pork I fully expect this MMO to never see the light of day unless google or someone else does it. Not because it is entirely wrong or because NASA "can't get it right" but because they will not be allowed to.
As an indication of what I am talking about consider the space shuttle. NASA has been trying to replace the space shuttle for years, since well before the Challenger disaster. The project has been restarted multiple times with each time congress allocating some but not all of the money and then subsequent congresses shutting it down before it can be completed to "reallocate" the money.
Many of the same congresscritters who angrily grilled NASA over the Columbia disaster probably cut funding for the shuttle replacement at least once in their careers. But I doubt they even remember doing it.
Yea that's all I can see now... I get to level 60, and I'm supposed to get my flying "mount" but they push it to level 70 when they release afterburner to get through the atmosphere.
Nah, World of Warcraft is good enough for me. I'll just wear a space helmet while playing and it should amount to about the same thing.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Count me out.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> Go north
You have been eaten by a grue. > hello astronaut
Nothing happens here.
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
After all, it's how the government wants providers to provide health care, welfare, jobs, etc... Why not NASA information systems too? Simply sucker/guilt/coerce/manipulate folks into doing it for nothing.
The only bigger idiots will be the people that actually decide to do it.
And now, it's once again time for my favorite cliche catch phrase: "Ayn Rand, call your office."
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
What is NASA bringing to the party here? It sounds like thay want to claim credit for something they'll contribute nothing to. Furthermore, this has been done before and countless companies and individuals, why is it NASA's business to go copying commercial technology years after it's already been accomplished well?
Nowhere in the RFP does it indicate that NASA would retain rights to the MMORPG. This provides a developer the opportunity to produce a NASA branded product, for profit, without having to pay the US Gov't licensing fees, just a long as that developer makes some effort to make the game educational.
"Learning" games suck. No one will "play it". What they fail to realize is that MMO's are all about spawn camping, ganging up on the weaker noobs and stealing their stuff or at least destroying it, for the epic lulz.
America's Army works because you get to shoot other players. Period.
NASA wants to somehow create a multiplayer "game" that will teach you science??? Unless I can breed mutants on a space station by genetically altering their DNA using cosmic radiation and then unleash them on an unsuspecting Earth, I just don't want to play!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Someone needs to get the morons at NASA a dose of reality. America's Army FPS game works because many people like to shoot imaginary people."
Grand Theft Shuttle?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
... it should be a super-awesome game!!!
You'll start off with exciting missions like applying for visitor badges and credentials, and escorting your foreign colleagues to the bathroom every time.
If completed successfully, you'll gain entry to exciting office buildings and drab, windowless conference rooms where you can see powerpoint presentations and plot secret strategies to gain research funding and evade red tape.
Woohoo! I can't wait to play this one!
My bicyles
Read all about it on NASA's new web site: yahoo.com/freeweb/~mynasa
Mind you, I think this is about the dumbest thing NASA could do, and I'm right to balk at it. Everyone else is right to balk at it -- NASA is expecting someone to devote at least $3 million in time and effort (and frankly, abuse) to their project for nothing. If NASA put a gun to your head and demanded $3 million, they'd be labelled a thief. If they can get $3 million out of you using a 'non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement', they're con men. If you fall for it, you're an idiot.
I'm expecting few arguments to the above. But consider the opposite -- there's hundreds if not thousands of "open source" and/or "free software" developers that basically have fallen for that same scenario, and day after day plug away on their own software on a daily basis -- for much lower-profile clientele, however: The thousands about thousands of users who demand feature after feature and then flame you if you don't deliver it two seconds later, or think you're a jerk for sticking to your own timeline and vision for your work, rather than theirs!
Granted, they choose to do so of their own free will, and that's fine. Stupid, but fine. At the heart of each, however is the expectation that you're providing something that ultimately you don't own or control (despite what the GPL says, lets face it, once you open source something and make that code freely distributable and modifiable (is that a word?), you no longer control it) in most if not all cases FOR NOTHING. Why is the situation evil and stupid if an entity comes right out and demands you to do some amount of work for them for no benefit for those doing the actual work, but if you choose to do it on your own, it's wise, revolutionary and noble?!Contradictions don't exist. One of the above must be the based on the wrong premise. From my perspective, it's the latter, and altruism is wrong whether you're forced to do it, or you choose to do it.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Jerk.
Only thing is, the creators wouldn't be able to make any money from it. However, it would probably be possible to construct a peer to peer MMO without requiring a huge investment, or a particularly fully featured initial release. What it would need though, is a good initial design so that it can be extended and improved to handle better processors and improvements to the physics simulation.
I thought the MMORPG was already up and running here.
Wait, wrong link...here it is.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
attempting research......failed!
attempting research......failed!
attempting research......failed!
attempting research......succeeded!
your skill in rocket science has increased 1!
attempting research......failed!
attempting research......failed!
Sure it will take over 5 years to finish, have no innovation but it will be so finely polished NASA can use it in the James Webb Space Telescope.
In exchange they could get NASA to advertise Starcraft II for them. At the rate at which Blizzard produeces games I'm sure it will take till at least 2013 to finish SCII.
Maybe while producing the NASA game they can figure out a way to explain a winged creature flying through the vacume of space.
"We'll pay you $3M, but only if you buy $3M worth of sponsorships."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hell, I'd settle for a ride on the shuttle. Taking an 8th person on board, in addition to usual crew of 7, cannot really add that much incremental expense. I would even bring along my own food, drinks, and a supply of barf bags. All I'd need is seat to ride in for the takeoff and landing, access to the toilet and a quick space shower at least every couple days and a corner of the cabin big enough to velcro a sleeping bag to the wall, ceiling or floor.
Once I almost got started on a MMORPG project with a few friends. The ostensible leader of the project offered me:
When I seemed less than grateful at the terms, I was out of there so fast I left a contrail. Haven't talked to those friends in a very long time either.
Is NASA screwing themselves royally in the deal as they fish for cheap labor? Almost certainly. But it could happen that they find an excited cadre of people who are willing to work on an open-sourced MMO system of some type. For instance, I really don't think the MUSH codebase has achieved its full potential. Of course, that "limited exclusivity" line item kind of defecates in that plan's bed.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
1. Set up a plot of land on Second Life with some NASA graphics, and call it "NASA's MMO."
2. ????
3. Profit!
Apparently rocket scientists aren't so bright, after all.
what is the sound of one forehead slapping?
That which does not kill us makes us... st
1) I do not believe this will work: a) because of the complex physics simulator it requires to be truly educative; b) because no one will build and maintain something so complex... for free.
2) Yet, the project is so enticing it may end up realized. A scientific game...
make the game centered around measuring instruments. The players should be able to play and predict ballistics, then could move on in environments with more noise. This is the simplest case. But other than mechanics, I don't see what task the kids could accomplish.
3) The above idea of having Prestige isn't a bad one: kids who successfully participated in a hard 'mission' or 'experiment' would get more. Kids with astounding amounts of Prestige would certainly attract attention.
"Dress and dreck!" you curse as you face 10 congressmen (10') and 1 cameraman (20').
Does your stalwart party:
A) Fight
B) Run
So Russia is worried about the prestige of their space agency selling private space travel, but NASA has no problem trading its name in MMOs? Go figure.
Check out the new wheel!
there's hundreds if not thousands of "open source" and/or "free software" developers that basically have fallen for that same scenario
My open source software is software I needed to write, anyway, and in exchange for open sourcing it I've received free improvements from other open source developers, and they got to avoid having to do some basic grunt work.
The opposite of "open source" isn't "software for money", it's "reinventing the wheel".
And reinventing the wheel is stupid.
It's triangular!
Why is the situation evil and stupid if an entity comes right out and demands you to do some amount of work for them for no benefit for those doing the actual work
Well, among other things, NASA already has a pretty substantial presence in Second Life, so doing a NASA MMO is reinventing the wheel.
How's that an improvement over the square wheel?
Let's see. On the one hand we get to avoid reinventing the wheel. On the other hand we get to reinvent NASA's wheel. Seems pretty clear to me.
One fewer bump! -- Johnny Hart (1932-2008)
18+ for the main grid...
13-17 for the teen grid which from what I here is a total wasteland of kids with no money running around griefing each other... atleast that's what my kids tell me about it.
I tried to encourage them to build and their response was "why bother, nobody has money to buy anything."
Anyways, I would think NASA would wants teenagers playing in this MMO.
Oh, I don't know. Trying to become a virtual astronaut might be a lot of fun.
Competing with other players online in a simulation of the sorts of intellectual and reflex / endurance challenges required to actually become an astronaut would definitely give the game some content. Learning about NASA's current and future technology and being in the know to share with your classmates and parents would be pretty cool.(I know I loved the stuff when growing up).
Being part of a community with like minded.. dare I say, science geeks, sharing common experience, sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
When you consider games like Starflight and Flight Simulator were some of the best selling games of all time, it starts to seem like not such a bad idea. And, I'm not at all opposed to sponsors like IBM, Lockheed Martin, Tang, or the Discovery Channel which I would not deem out of place.
There's a lot of possibilities. Despite the project being flushed, I think the potential is there for something really cool. In fact, the market just maybe is ripe for a bloody game where you don't shoot other people all the time. It's been done many, many times before with surprising results.
My 5 year old nephew wants to be an astronaut and loves dinosaurs. Who freaking doesn't?It certainly going to be a challenging project to pull but that's no reason to shy away from it. While NASA Learning Technologies is not funding development, the expectation is that the developer will be able to generate a revenue stream from the game. A non-reimbursable space act agreement will give the developer a lot more flexibility that any procurement vehicle would. LT is planning to fund educaiton and subject matter experts to work with the developer to enhance the game and it's education impact. But fundamentally the development partner will need to build a game that is compelling and profitable or no education value can come from it. Daniel Laughlin NASA Learning Technologies http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmo
NASA Wants its MMO Created Free - It's free, people. Not FOR free!
...
Yeah.
Seriously, I contributed to MegaMek for a few years. Great if you like classic Battletech, and the most popular game project on Sourceforge as I recall. Most OSS games are terrible -- design and, in particular, asset production don't really work all that well without some central direction and, um, budget for finding talent. (I'd say the same of programming, which is why the programmers on your favorite OSS products are almost all being paid to do it.)
Not to mention that typical team sizes for MMORPGs are in the several dozens just for artists, and that is solid, continuous work for a period of years. You can't replace that with "No problem, we'll just get one texture each from every graphics student with pirated Photosh^H^H^H Gimp who wants to help out."
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Then you are a fool to think the way you do.
NASA is the core of exploring the unknown outside this planet. They are the key in developing new technology not just in space for flight. Without NASA US would just be a second league country without anything inspiring in it. The day NASA is closed down is the day US stops being a nation that is of any importance to the future of this planet.
Remain where you are, like the Italians did in late 1500s, and other nations will step up and take and expand. The Moon, Mars, and other places are right there. But I guess some people would rather nurture their claustrophobic vision of the future. A future without hope or aspirations. Without a place to expand to, like the current situation of people on Earth, we are doomed to decay into a petty wars that will waste the remaining resources and move us back to stone age. Space is the only hope we have to continue this civilization. Bu I guess some are too blind to see simple truths.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
Assuming NASA would pay all the expenses of actually running and promoting the game plus associated overheads, I guess a simple game could be done based on an existing free engine. The budget would pay for 10 man in three years. Database guy, engine programmer (to adapt the engine), game architect / script writer, puzzle programmer, sound effects, music composer, and four graphic artists.
Once again someone is trying to get advertising on NASA property. I consider this a bad idea because it'll cut into one of the early revenue sources for any private space development efforts. Further, it's clearly poorly thought out. Rather than selling advertising for money, it'd be sold to make a MMO of unknown quality and service requirements. While I find the game idea interesting, this isn't the way to fund it.
Well, it's all in the wording and who's interested in what, I guess. I mean, if you think it's bad that they don't give you money to use their brand, think this: for some other brands you have to _pay_ the owner to use their brand.
:P
E.g., AFAIK, racing games get to pay use actual RL cars in their games. You may think, "wtf, I'm actually advertising their cars, they should pay me", but it's usually seen the other way around: you get to use their cars and the mind-share that their marketing department built, to sell your game.
And might get other restrictions placed on them too. E.g., the persistent rumour is that some games don't have car damage, simply because some car company or another said, basically, "thou shalt not show our cars all banged up and crumpled."
So, well, NASA could put it as "we'll allow one developer to use our brand for free, exclusively, and make money out of it." You know, it's the same zero dollars budget, but "we're not charging" you sounds generous, while "we're not paying you" sounds petty.
Now if any devs and publisher want to take that deal, well, that's a whole other question.
Most MMOs cost a lot more to make then they used to. The behemoth called WoW raised the bar in a lot of aspects, simply by being there. It's not just that it _is_ more polished in virtually all aspects than any other publisher could be arsed to fund before they shove it out the door. It's that at this size it (A) is the place where all your friends are, so you have to be given a good reason to play something else, and (B) it's become a brand name by itself. Everyone has at least heard of World Of Warcraft by now.
So there's a lot of effort and a lot of cost to go against that. And you have to wonder if you'll get those money back.
Would that many people join your game because of the NASA brand name?
Worse yet, can you figure the setting and gameplay to keep them, once the first brave pioneers try it? I mean, The Sims was a bigger brand name and had more devout followers than all Blizzard games put together, but it flopped anyway. If the gameplay isn't what people expect, they leave, and tell all their friends to not bother.
Honestly, I can't even imagine how could you turn NASA's missions into a good MMO. You could make a 30'th century SF MMO with a fictional future NASA, no doubt. But the existing missions and a cramped space station, well, just aren't much of a MMO world.
Make it Edutainment too? Oooer. That adds a new layer of challenge by itself. People play games to be entertained, not to be lectured. So every piece of educational info you want to cram in, is a challenge by itself to either (A) try to make it entertaining too, against all odds, or (B) compensate for it with enough other entertaining stuff.
So they do have quite the challenge ahead to convince a publisher that the NASA brand is worth all that headache.
But, still, just saying, you'd be surprised how PR can spin it into an act of generosity anyway
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Go back and review NASA budgets across the last couple of Administrations.
Tell me what you see.
Here is what I see, a government agency which appeals to geeks who make up a small portion of the overall voter pie. Meaning that Congress has no real reason to fun NASA beyond minimums because it does nothing FOR THEM.
Only Presidents give NASA meaning anymore. No one in Congress champions them unless it benefits their local voters.
To actually believe that Iraq is the reason for NASA consistently getting the short end of the budget stick is to buy into the lies perpetuated by one political party or another.
Simply put, entitlement programs get votes, NASA does not.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Mmmmm, you mention the America's Army game. If those guys at NASA really were rocket scientists, they'd strike a deal with MS to rebrand Halo as their new MMO. It's a FPS, it is set in space AND it could be cheap/free- what better way to prepare the next generation of astronauts for a life in space?
All they need to do is setup a site asking for donations to send George Bush into space. They'll have the money before they finish their morning coffee.
They could use open sim. Its a free opensource second life simulator. Its 100% perfect yet... but pretty damn good so far, and works with the second life client.
I probably misunderstood, but I read the post to mean that the NASA brand could be used exclusively by the developer. This would actually would be a pretty valuable marketing tool, so I don't think it's so crazy that some dev house would be into this deal. I know that I would at least grab a crack such a game out of curiosity.
The really bad part about this is that a large amount of knowledge from universities is now not going to be incorporated because we can't work for free, hoping for some advertising deal, with no information about potential profitability within this business model.
Want to know what's really going on?
http://www.gamecyte.com/2008/04/23/nasa-asking-for-free-mmo-hardly/906
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Sean Hollister
Assistant Editor, GameCyte