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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.
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)?
From TFRFP:Emphasis added.
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'
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.
It's pretty simple. NASA used to have the money for the MMO, but last week a tank in Baghdad needed a reload.
There's a big difference between "make(ing) great software for no money" and "making great software for no money that someone else will control."
NASA - "Need A Space Agency"
Kevin Smith on Prince
....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.
"Mr. President, Mr. President, the Russians painted the moon red"
"Where's the problem, just write Coca Cola on it"
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
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!
$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.
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.
NASA's budget shouldn't be cut, it should be increased. Some call it a waste of money, I say it is a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and military spending.
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
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.
Yes, but why would google want to compete with themselves? Don't they have a space program yet?
"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.
... 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
"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.
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.
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.