Universe Today
Level 23 shuttle pilot LFG pst. If you play an online role-playing game, you understood that. If you don't, but you really like space exploration, you might soon enough. In a recent request for information, NASA announced that it's looking for help in the development of a NASA-inspired massively multiplayer role playing game.
The request for information from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was published to
NASA's Acquisition Internet Service
on January 16th, 2007.
Here's their goal:
In this request for information, NASA is hoping that various game companies can provide information on how they think a NASA-based educational game could be designed, how it would support education efforts, connect to missions, and help publicize space exploration careers.
Oh, and how it might actually be fun. It's that last part that's going to be the challenge.
If you've ever played a massively multiplayer online game, there's an awful lot of... killing. There's also a certain degree of independence that might be hard to place over top of NASA's governmental structure. And I'd be interested to see how they deal with the scientific reality of spaceflight. You can't just hop the next rocket to the Moon whenever you like; there are mission plans, years of training, government intervention, greedy contractors and all that paperwork.
If some team can come up with an idea that will make for a compelling game. To be both challenging and entertaining, and yet respect the engineering and scientific reality that currently exists in human spaceflight, I'll be impressed.
Better yet, I'll play. I'll put that level 67 orc warrior on hold, and switch to an astronaut - maybe a Canadian mission specialist.
The closing date is February 15, 2008.
Thanks to
NASA Watch
for catching this.
