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.'"

Comments

Where's the budget go?

[CommandoCody]

It's pretty simple. NASA used to have the money for the MMO, but last week a tank in Baghdad needed a reload.

No Awareness of Social Apathy

[Irish_Samurai]

Jesus.

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:

1. Shooting is much more fun for a larger demographic than watching monitors in mission control during a "virtual mission."
2. The demographic that would probably be most interested in participating in such activities (watching a virtual monitor during a virtual mission) generally doesn't like overt advertising.
3. Alienating your target demographic so you don't have to pay for development is a plan on par with selling items at loss and making up for it in volume
4. Any dev team that could do this probably already makes games, basically meaning that advertisements would largely be for the MMO's mindshare competition.
5. Government Endorsed Product Advertising through NASA would be a PR nightmare even if everything else magically went off with best case scenario results.
6. Ultimate failure because everybody would be pissed they couldn't all fly the space shuttle to Pluto for the best loot. Someone has to man Mission Control!
7. Any Game sufficiently entertaining to capture and maintain an audience despite its built in advertising distractions would be so removed from the spirit of the goals that the whole project would be an exercise in mootness.

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.

Unsurprising.

[Irvu]

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.

Re:Note to NASA

[Kingrames]

They said the same thing about SimCity.