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.

[Rei]

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!

Maybe an opening for F/OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's all about the tax breaks,

[Higaran]

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.

Re:$3M was already not a lot

[Mr. Beatdown]

I know it's also not huge, but I gotta represent the hometown (Salem, OR) and link to Dink.

Dink Smallwood [rtsoft.com]

Also the same guy who wrote Legend of the Red Dragon, if you guys recall BBSing back in the early 90's. So the key to affordable game design is to make games to the standard of the early 90's and have the cool nickname of "Wiz."