A Startup Project Worthy Of Your Support

This isn't a startup. This game was fully funded and has been in development for a LONG time now, and was originally supposed to release 3 years ago.

http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/02/19/feature-first-look-at-nasas-unreal-engine-3-based-mmo/

The game on Steam, MoonBase Alpha, was originally supposed to be a tech demo for it. But all news of this game evaporated when it came out.

People don't need to be excited about this game, they need to ask NASA what happened to the money they already spent on it, and why they should pay for it again.

The article you linked said the first installment was due in 2010 ("next year" in 2009).

A year or two delay is normal. A game like this ought to take 3 years or so. It should also cost a lot more than $25,000 (some of the large "triple-A" games are in the 50 to 200 million USD zone).

I assume either they have another source of funding and also that it's dragged out for the same reason that drags many big projects; underfunding.

Though I'm suspicious of the whole idea to begin with, especially if NASA funded them (I'm not aware of them doing so?) This goes a bit outside many game designers' comfort zones and requires some novel work and it's very hard to judge if someone is competent to do that. Few got a good impression from Moonbase Alpha; it had a bit of "do a bunch of chores" feel to it that suggested they didn't really know how to develop a gameplay dynamic.

If one can't do that, nobody will play it for more than half an hour.

America's Army benefit from being a shooter because shooter games are already well developed and understood, so a merely competent person can design one.

I'm on my first game project with a budget. It's 20k in the local currency (7k USD but that doesn't matter), and it's a tiny, tiny mobile game. I wouldn't speak of making a game like they're picturing there without at least a few hundred thousand USD.

Maybe they just have a really tiny gap or hole or something, in which case I'm reminded of the old aphorism (in software circles); "how does a project get to be five years late? one day at a time."

Needing to fill in a budget shortfall is understandable, NASA has no idea what goes into an MMO, but they're passing this project off as new which it's not. They didn't even change the name of it.

And like I said the game Moonbase Alpha which has been on Steam for a while now (probably over a year) was supposed to be the tech demo for it but in typical NASA fashion they just dropped off any communication whatsoever about the project and now it pops up over a year later acting like a new thing and needing money.

This is deceptive, and there was obviously bad management on this project for this to happen. It's this same extremely apparent lack of accountability and foresight in NASA management that is responsible for the ongoing James Webb Space Telescope fiasco and makes people resistant to giving NASA money in the first place.

I want to untangle the two game mentioned by the first responder. Moonbase Alpha is indeed a funded NASA game project that was planned as a proof of concept for the MMO (www.nasa.gov/moonbasealpha). The NASA-themed massively multiplayer online STEM learning game Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond (working title) is being developed through a non-reimbursable space act agreement with no NASA funds going to the developers. Kickstarter is one of the tools the development team is using to raise the substantial funds needed for a game project of this scale.

OK so a big correction on this and an apology from me.

According to someone who works on the team, this was never funded by NASA, the MoonBase Alpha game was and it did use the same engine and a had a member of the current team on it but it was in fact a wholly separate deal.

I apologize for getting this wrong, but a word to the wise, when you announce something like it is brand new when not only it isn't, but you said it would be completed at a much earlier date, prepare for misunderstandings.

Also, it's good to include information that the government sponsored project is not receiving money from the government in the first place.

A team of 20 developers asking for $50k? Give me a break! Are they all volunteers?

After reading the post the other day about NASA teaming up with Tor/Forge to create "NASA inspired works of fiction", I'd like to see the same idea applied to games.

What stands out with the Tor/Forge deal is that NASA is teaming up with not a single potential author of content, but to a lot of authors -- the eggs are nicely spread out as it were. And there will be a good diversity of content.

This is really in contrast to this awkward attempt to get a computer game developed. Instead of reaching out to many developers, they chose just one developer to create an "MMO". A developer that's found itself begging (unsuccessfully) for scraps on Kickstarter. Bad sign. Eggs, one basket, you get it.

What I wouldn't do to see NASA do a variation on this Tor/Forge project in conjunction with Flash game portals such as Kongregate, indie game sites like indiegames.com, or game dev technology companies like Unity or YoYo Games. Imagine 100 indie game makers all out to create "NASA inspired computer games" using Unity3D or YoYo's GameMaker?