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.'"

Great plan -- I should try that.

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!

But they could do that on their own.

To really lure them in, you have to CONSIDER allowing them that.

From TFRFP:

NASA will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities.

Emphasis added.

It's all in the wording

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.

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 :P

If it's anything like working with real NASA...

... 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!

Preview of the Game

I happen to have very rare output from the upcoming game that I've personally been working on for Nasa. Let's just say we found a way to keep this MMORPG low budget and, in fact, make money off of it without costing NASA or you, the consumer, anything!

Multi-User Dungeon - MUD1 Version 1E

* 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 [converse.com] space suit on the Launch Pad, before you is a towering shuttle with the huge Coca-Cola (tm) [coca-cola.com] logo on the side of it. A crowd watches in anticipation and enjoys the T-Mobile (tm) [t-mobile.com] 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) [brands2liveby.com] antacid in your Converse (tm) Brand [converse.com] space suit. You pop a few pills into your mouth ... ahh much better, Rolaids spells relief.
[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 [playboy.com] and begin your assent to the cabin. The slow motion walking thingy starts to happen as you cross the bridge ... Before you enter the cabin, you hug the Doritos (tm) [doritos.com] "Who Wants to Meet an Astronaut" Sweepstakes winner and step inside. You turn on your Sony Brand headset [sony.com] that sounds like a dream and prepare for blastoff ...

That's all we have so far. I think you can see just how exciting this game is goi

Re:Preview of the Game

You have forgotten a very important outcome:

> Go north
You have been eaten by a grue.

Re:Preview of the Game

Other fun possibilities:

> Go north

This is space you idiot. There is no 'north'. What, next you want to go 'up'?

> Go east

This is space you idiot. There is no 'north'. What, next you want to go 'up'?

> Go up

Ok, fine. You go up. And up. And up. And up... forever. This is space, remember? No gravity, no friction, floating forever. Next time, bring a rope.

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

You are in a maze of twisty little nothing, all alike.

Maybe an opening for F/OSS?

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.

Re:

Yes, but why would google want to compete with themselves? Don't they have a space program yet?

So are they offering naming rights?

Maybe we can expect a "Lucas Arts International Space Station" (commonly refered to as the Death Star)?

my terms

If I write a game for them, I wanna go to the moon dammit!

It's all about the tax breaks,

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.

Where's the budget go?

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

When next we tune in to an episode of...

....Orcs in Spaaaaaace....

Attention Ladies:

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.

Re:

I'm now offering the opportunity to fulfill my every sexual desire. This is a non-paying position with no benefits...

No benefits? You must be really bad in bed.

$3M was already not a lot

$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 [gamesindustry.biz].

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 [puzzlepirates.com].

I mean there's plenty of MMOs that were made for something closer to free than $3MM (Omerta [barafranca.com] 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.

NASA vs America's Army

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.

Re:

Yeah, just imagine what would happen to the world if we were no longer able to start fights with other countries.

No Awareness of Social Apathy

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.

Pay in geek points

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?

Unsurprising.

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:

Right, no one would ever make great software for no money.

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"

Re:So, adds in space. The game?

"Mr. President, Mr. President, the Russians painted the moon red"
"Where's the problem, just write Coca Cola on it"

Re:Note to NASA

They said the same thing about SimCity.