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NASA Responds To MMO Concerns

Posted by Soulskill on Thu Apr 24, 2008 01:12 AM
from the that's-more-like-it dept.
NASA Space Entertainment Games
Sean Hollister writes "GameCyte contacted Daniel Laughlin, Project Manager of NASA Learning Technologies, to find out where that $3 million budget for their educational MMO actually went. As it turns out, NASA still has the money — they are just planning to use it differently than we thought. Meanwhile, the 'non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement' actually allows the game developer to profit where they might not have, otherwise. 'If it were a government contract, it would be illegal to be paid twice, once by the government and a second time by consumers.'"
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[+] NASA Wants its MMO Created for Free 217 comments
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.'"
Submission: The TRUE story of NASA's MMO Funding by Anonymous Coward
[+] NASA's Educational Game Proposal Deadline Extended 17 comments
NASA MMO Team writes "Due to the additional time required to respond to the number of questions that were raised during the NASA Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Game RFP Briefing held on April 21, 2008 in Baltimore, MD, we have decided to extend the RFP Proposal response date to Monday, July 21, 2008 at 12:00 midnight EDT. ... Please contact the NASA Learning Technologies Project Office at mmo@nasa.gov with any additional questions." (NASA has set up a site with additional information on the NASA MMO Education Game project, too.)
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  • Now that's a good deal... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fluffeh (1273756) on Thursday April 24 2008, @01:25AM (#23179716)
    Here is how I seem to understand all of this debarcle...

    Nasa wants to make a game.
    They have a paltry $3mill budget to make it.
    They decide to not pay the developers to make it, but let them profit from making the Nasa game.
    The game developer has to make what is likely going to be a dull drab game (compared to other space MMO standards) and as a reward is ALLOWED to make money off said game.

    Now is it just me, or is this utterly setting yourself up for a fall? Not only do you not get to have all the aliens and things running about in your game, you probably won't get to run about conquering and destroying, and due to budgets and the likely developers who would actually GO FOR THIS deal, you will likely end up with a B-Grade MMO that looks totally like a B-Grade MMO.

    Is this really a smart step for Nasa? If you can't do it properly or well enough, sometimes it is indeed better not to do it at all.

    • Re:Now that's a good deal... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cryacin (657549) on Thursday April 24 2008, @01:43AM (#23179806)

      The game developer has to make what is likely going to be a dull drab game
      Come on! Adjectives like dull and drab hardly describe working at NASA! Imagine a game where you have to beg for money from diplomats, fight off the disgruntled engineers after more budget cuts, all the while being bound up by several rolls of red duct tape! (It's not just used on apollo missions!)

      I for one can see millions of people paying $20/month for the privilige!


      Wake me up when the spin doctors are done.
          • 3 million dollars isn't a "big" amount of money for the government. Its close to 0.005$ per person in the US. Thats half-a-penny per person.

            The bigger problem is the fact that the military gets over 1/2 our tax money.
            • So it's OK with you for the government to take your tax money and waste it $3 million at a time.

              A bigger problem is that you think the military gets 1/2 your tax money. 1/5 of 2007 spending. [wikipedia.org] Or less than 1/3 of on-budget 2007 receipts.

          • You don't want the money spent by government? Too late, RFA. NASA is spending the money to advertise the project and to buy the time of its own employees for this project.

    • Re:Now that's a good deal... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iNaya (1049686) on Thursday April 24 2008, @01:46AM (#23179814)

      It's probably not as stupid as it sounds.

      There's probably already a game company out there that has thought about implementing some kind of game based on NASA. Now with NASA offering free advice, knowledge and who knows what else, it would be an ideal opportunity for a game developer who may already have something in the works.

      Not only that, but they will probably be able to get an official NASA endorsement + free advertising on the NASA website.

      Could actually work out well for both sides, and we may get a cool game from it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's a bit more complicated than that. When you browse seriously thru the RFP, you see patterns to emerge.

        Despite naming (with typos) MMORPGs like EVE Online or World of Warcraft, they are not looking to a MMORPG. A number of elements that have to feature in your game, like "measuring the learning", having specific educator access, and it's explicit target audience (kids from 13 - the legal minimum for an on-line service - to college) indicate that they're not looking to a RPG or anything but a straight

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by mcvos (645701)

        Could actually work out well for both sides, and we may get a cool game from it.

        I agree. Despite the doubts many slashdotters have about the fun of an educational NASA game, I can definitely see some great opportunities.

        Firstly, don't make it an RPG. That market has been cornered, and it makes no sense whatsoever in a NASA context. Get away from the real-time first/third-person view. You want to be able to get to orbit or Mars before dinner.

        I'd make it a design/build/resource management game. Maybe you've got a budget. There are a couple of easy standard missions, like get a rocket of

        • On the other hand, I expect a lot of astronauts to die in this game.

          That's the most un-PC and insensitive thing I've heard here in a while! Bravo :P

          I'd like to see the option to build nukes and/or giant laser satellites to take out Iraq so that the government doesn't need to waste billions of dollars with their little wars, which would also mean increases in your budget!

          Personally I don't think it would take 3million to build a game like that, I could probably do that in like a year or two myself (if it were my only job) even with my limited OpenGL and physics simulation e

          • it wouldn't be MMO, but what you're describing doesn't leave much scope for massively multiplayer if it's all government funded, since not many countries in the world can afford that level of funding, which means only like up to 10 players per game! :P

            No, I think MMO could be great in this game. You can see other players' astronauts burn up on re-entry, see space debris or even operational satelites smash into other players' space stations, etc. It could be excellent!

            • Yeah, they could just pretend that every country in the world has a good enough economy to support a space program I s'pose

              You can see other players' astronauts burn up on re-entry, see space debris or even operational satelites smash into other players' space stations, etc. It could be excellent!
              'Debris' eh? Oops, I accidentally decompressed my garbage out at 900mph into the side of your space station, sorry! The return of the BFG! (Big Fuckin Garbage launcher)

              • Yeah, they could just pretend that every country in the world has a good enough economy to support a space program I s'pose

                I suspect it's not really intended to become a simulation of national economies, but instead a simulation of the engineering involved to achieve space flight. At least that's what I'm hoping.

                Economic simulations can be fun too, but I don't think it's really NASA. I think they want to educate people in engineering and space flight, not economics and administration.

                'Debris' eh? Oops, I accidentally decompressed my garbage out at 900mph into the side of your space station, sorry! The return of the BFG! (Big Fuckin Garbage launcher)

                900mph is nothing. There's tons of decommissioned satelites, last stages of rockets, loose screws and bolts, and other man-made hazards floating

            • I didn't claim to be being any more sensitive :P Plus, astronauts *have* died on launch before, but Iraq has never been nuked..
      • "NASA Simulator"--learn first-hand how, unlike in the movies, space in the real-world is boring as fuck!

    • You can't make a B grade MMO for 3 million (Score:5, Insightful)

      by patio11 (857072) on Thursday April 24 2008, @01:49AM (#23179826)
      I don't know if the government bureacrats quite understand how fast asset production eats through money. Its insane, and it continues getting more insane because increasing hardware capability leads to increased asset production cost AND the winner-take-most leaders in the MMORPG space are running away from the field qualitatively. You can make an MMORPG for $3 million, sure, but it will be like comparing Pine to GMail. Hint: people who enjoy MMORPGs do not typically choose Pine over GMail. (Pipe down, you. You're atypical. Ask the other folks in your WoW guild.)

      Maybe someone could clue the NASA folks in. "Hiya guys, MMORPG has costs approaching that of programming control code for the shuttle." "Gadzooks! Why, $3 million wouldn't cover the header file on the system clock function!" "Yeah, its sort of like that. Except minus the defense contractor slush fund. But mostly like that."

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by osu-neko (2604)
        I think they do understand. That's why they're doing in this way. Knowing that $3 mil isn't going to cover the costs, they're instead letting the developer charge real money for a real game, something the developer couldn't do if NASA paid them the paltry $3 mil.
      • Because if there is one constant I get from /. is how all these people here can do "X" better than someone else and how "Open Source" can do it even better and for free.

        When push comes to shove suddenly its "unreasonable" or will result in a crappy product unless lots of money are spent.

        Which is it?

        I guess some NASA upper crusts bought into all that forum bragging as if it were meaningful.

        * Oh, for reference go look up any story here on World of Warcraft or Diablo... I am still waiting for all these "bette

        • Because if there is one constant I get from /. is how all these people here can do "X" better than someone else and how "Open Source" can do it even better and for free.

          When push comes to shove suddenly its "unreasonable" or will result in a crappy product unless lots of money are spent.

          Which is it?

          I guess some NASA upper crusts bought into all that forum bragging as if it were meaningful.

          It's about "scratching an itch." Nobody in the Open Source world has that particular itch, to "develop an educa

      • I think it's even worse (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Moraelin (679338) on Thursday April 24 2008, @08:38AM (#23181818) Journal
        Actually, I think it's even worse. You can't really make even the Pine of MMOs for 3 million any more. Actually, I'll guess you never could.

        You could make the Pine of single player RPGs, maybe.

        Now take the costs for designing quests, landscapes, dungeons, etc, for that and multiply them by at least 10.

        No, seriously. SP RPGs are aiming for anywhere between 10 and 100 hours of gameplay, with the curve actually peaking near the lower end of that. A MMO, I don't know the latest WoW figures, but back in the day of Everquest Sony had figured that the average player stays subscribed for 6 months. (Of course, like with any averages, not everyone is the same. Some quit after the free month, some stay for 4 years, but the average was half a year.)

        You actually have to provide some content for them for 6 months. They have to actually keep finding stuff to do for that that long. Way past the point where a SP RPG player popped the DVD out and moved on to something else.

        Six months is about 180 days. Let's say only 150 until he finished everything and got stuck in the endgame raid grind. (You don't want that to happen _too_ early, because a lot of people give up.) Let's also say we're not even aiming for 150 days of an unemployed obsessive gamer who puts in 16 hours daily. We're aiming for it to last 150 days for a borderline casual guy averaging 4 hours a day. (Which can also mean less than that on weekdays and a bit longer on Saturday and Sunday, so it's not as obsessive as it looks.) The 16 hours-a-day maniacs will, of course, then finish the game in a little over a month, but, oh well. So, anyway, we're up to 600 hours of gameplay already.

        Even if you do go heavier on the time sinks than in a SP RPG, there's only so much time sink percentage you can have before most people find it non-fun. Taking a wild guess based on WoW's design, at the lower levels you want almost no time sinks, while later it gradually increases. But even that boiling-the-frog model lets you rise the bar only so far. So let's be generous and assume you managed to make a whole 50% of your game be time-sinks, and somehow you din't lose 99% of the players because of that.

        That's still enough content for a 300 hour SP RPG you need to have there. It's more work than it sounds.

    • Second Life, Croquet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nguy (1207026) on Thursday April 24 2008, @02:32AM (#23179972)
      I think they should just build something on top of Second Life. With $3m, they can actually do something in SL that's a lot better than other SL effort and they already have a user base. SL pretty much ensures it will be a B-rate experience, but at least it will be that, and it will be a B-rate experience that's better than all the other stuff in SL. And, maybe, NASA could actually get SL to fix some of the awful limitations of that platform.

      Another NASA-ish thing to do might be to build something on top of Croquet (www.opencroquet.org)... they'd be supporting a neat platform, and for $3m, they could probably get the Croquet people quite interested and get something better out of it than paying a game company to develop a new MMO from scratch.
      • They already have NASA Colab and the rest of their islands in SL.

        Croquet? It's got a user interface from 1976. Sure Smalltalk was one of the first window based user interfaces (not "the first", if nothing else Xerox had Interlisp-D and their office automation software as well as Smalltalk) and Squeak and Croquet still use the same oddball design.
        • They already have NASA Colab and the rest of their islands in SL.

          Yes, and whatever they are trying to achieve with these $3m, they can build on top of that and make it better.

          Croquet? It's got a user interface from 1976.

          You don't know what you're talking about. Squeak uses a user interface and toolkit designed in the 90's that has little to do with the original Smalltalk UI or toolkit. The Squeak UI provides standard scroll bars, titles, and menus. In addition, it provides some new user interface element
          • Squeak uses a user interface and toolkit designed in the 90's that has little to do with the original Smalltalk UI or toolkit.

            OK, they added optional scrollbars and titles but they still have the context menu on the middle button, and the right button (which everyone else in the world uses for contextual menus) pop up a bunch of floating icons around the window. This has clearly taken root in Croquet, except that the floating icons are always there.

            But you can't use Squeak "just like your Mac or PC (or X11
            • But you can't use Squeak "just like your Mac or PC (or X11 or NeWS or just about anything else)" without changing the context menu onto the right button.

              Well, I think $3m ought to cover that turning the "swapMouseButton" option on by default, with $2.9999m left for all the other stuff.

              I'll take your word for that, I quit playing video games on a regular basis... oh, probably about the time my kids started school.

              Your loss.

              But based on my previous experience that's an awful low bar to beat.

              Well, it's the bar
              • But, in the end, it's trivial to customize and it's a kick-ass gaming, 3D, and development environment compared to just about any other gaming or 3D platform.

                Have you looked at the API? It's a kickass API for building low performance simulations that distribute amazingly well, but think about writing a physics engine that supports a few thousand objects that has to run every interaction through that event loop... even if it wasn't written in an interpreted language.
      • I don't think enough people actively play SL to make it worthwhile. And the people who do play don't seem like the types that are all that interested in science. Generalization, I know, but if you are really honest...
        • I don't think enough people actively play SL to make it worthwhile.

          Sadly, that's probably a lot more than those who would bother downloading a NASA MMO...
    • Who says it has to be drab or dull. Perhaps you can train to be an astronaut, have a nervous breakdown and go chase down another astronaut across the country in a diper and carrying tubing and gaffer tape. We'll leave it open to the developer what you're permitted to do from there, but someone else mentioned Thrill Kill for Playstation the other day.
    • I used to have this game a long time ago that let you use the space shuttle to ferry parts up to build Space Station Freedom and it was actually kind of fun. Just because you don't have guns and aliens doesn't mean it doesn't have any risks or rewards. Who knows what the objectives could be? Constructing a Mars base using current technology? Building a generational space ship that leaves the solar system? There are lots of ideas.
    • My take on this is that they know that there are a few mmo codebases that serve this function and are hesistant to spend millions of tax dollars on reinventing the wheel on an initiative that isnt such a great idea to begin with. (Who really needs an mmo about space?)

      I can see organizations like Second Life stepping up to this challenge by investing some man-hours into setting up a server for NASA. Heck, they could even use the same client and just change the branding. This would be a huge advertising oppor
    • It's the deal of the century! Not only do you get to foot the development bill and take all the risk on a game that will almost certainly be a total snooze-fest, but you also get the added fun of a bunch of NASA bureaucrats looking over your shoulder saying "No, do it like THIS!" at every turn. Who WOULDN'T jump on such a great opportunity?
    • The way this has worked with othyer industries, is the technology developed for NASA is then used in a different manner.

      So the game might be dull, but the physics engine might be top notch and the developer could license that to other people making games.
  • I am one of those horrible 'The universe is half full' guys and I see that the integration of science and MMO can in fact be exciting and visually entertaining where 'Mario' gets mushroom points for each correct solution. I was doing it myself and I don't see where NASA has an exclusive on the physics of the universe. --tag-- Please give me more mod points, I needs the 'precious'. Absolute stupidity, disrupts absolutely.

  • No one would want to? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CannonballHead (842625) on Thursday April 24 2008, @02:58AM (#23180060)
    Why not? Think of it... NASA endorsement and advertising. Sure, maybe a major game studio isn't going to, but if people are willing to work on, say, open source projects where you pretty much won't make any money and never will, why wouldn't a relatively new game company try to work on it and get their name out there in a big way? It would be like an unknown composer (like me) getting to work gratis on a video produced by a major video studio. You don't get money, but you get your name out there in a big way, and if you do WELL, it would do wonders for future job contracts.
    • First of all, they don't get to design whatever cool game they want and just get NASA endorsement and advertising. NASA has very specific requirements for the bids, which basically requires it to be "edutainment", targeted at a middle-school and high-school-aged audience. This drastically limits the chance it'll ever be profitable.

      Second, making a high-quality MMO just takes a lot of money. A small startup game developer would have to be extremely well funded by venture capital to do so.

      Third, I think you m
    • The same reason no one would ever make an operating system for nothing.... hmm

  • SimMars (Score:5, Informative)

    by SimHacker (180785) on Thursday April 24 2008, @03:02AM (#23180088) Homepage Journal

    Maxis was working with NASA on SimMars [wikipedia.org], while I was there working on The Sims.

    It was eventually canceled after The Sims shipped and sucked up all the resources into the franchise.

    But some of the ideas from SimMars ended up in one of The Sims expansion packs and Spore.

    From wikipedia:

    In The Sims: Vacation, there was an arcade game titled SimMars and it had a detailed description about the game. This may or may not have been the real premise of the game:

    "Direct mankindâ(TM)s first mission to the red planet! Launch rockets and deploy robot probes! Deploy teams to search for alien resources! Establish and run a network of specialized colonies to create a self-sufficient civilization! Provide your colony with food, shelter, and power! Fast, furious, adrenaline-pumping action!"

    As of May 12, 2000, Maxis has stated that "SimMars is on hold and we do not have staff at Maxis currently working on the game. With the phenomenal success of The Sims, we've decided to move resources to support that franchise as well as other titles that we haven't even announced yet."

    Some elements of SimMars are used in the upcoming Maxis game Spore.

    -Don

  • 'If it were a government contract, it would be illegal to be paid twice, once by the government and a second time by consumers.' Except, with the game sure to cost far more than $3 million, they're really only being paid once.

    • 'If it were a government contract, it would be illegal to be paid twice, once by the government and a second time by consumers.'
      NASA often pays for research where the government only gets to use the results, and the researcher keeps the data, copyrights, and patent rights for private use. What part of NASA was speaking?
  • And NASA is in a great position to convince US citizens that they are responsible for the sun to rise every morning.
  • Don't you read the news & the job descriptions these days? No-one wants software. They want standards documents for software. Bring on the SNMP, J2EE, J2SE, JavaBeans, JavaMail, JCP, JDBC, JTA, ICE, MIDlet, Portlet, RTSJ....
  • More than likely the reverse will happen: a company with a popular MMO game will reuse their engine for the needs of NASA. This would be the smartest move financially.
  • Three million might not be enough to develop a whole new game, but why not build on existing games. Second Life for example. Now, wouldn't a new space colony and exploration "module" for Second Life be pretty damned cool? Complete with shuttle trips, "space shuttle" rentals for zooming around the galaxy, and martian souvenirs stores be pretty kick ass? And probably doable for 3m.
    • hmmm, how many SL shills are there on this site? Why would you spend 3 million in SL. You have no chance of ever making that money back.
      • I don't even have a SL account. As far as making the money back, NASA rarely makes the money back. Instead of this wacky model they have going, they could just pay developers the 3m.
  • "You're welcome to let us use your commercial game for free."

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