Perhaps witnessing the impact America’s Army has had on recruiting results, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning its own game—a massively multiplayer online title set in the year 2035.
Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond is in development by a team of three developers, including one behind America's Army: Virtual Heroes (America’s Army), Project Whitecard and Wisdom Tools. The full title is being created using the Unreal Engine and is set in a time when humans have begun forming settlements throughout the solar system.
The game also seeks to be a proponent of science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning and, as of now anyway, has a goal of granting real course accreditation to users.
Moonbase Alpha is the mini-demo game component that is expected to be issued early next year. A short video slideshow teasing the mini-game can be viewed here.
Edge-Online also has a recent interview exploring the game with NASA’s Learning Technologies Project Manager Daniel Laughlin.
GP: Remind us in three or four years to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see how much this ends up costing taxpayers.
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$10 says marsins are gonna be the tank of the nasa mmo. *big smiles*
http://www.magicinkgaming.com/
Moonbase Alpha?
Oh, just great.
Will we be dumping highly unstable nuclear waste on the moon in the hopes it'll blow up too?
Actually, it sounds interesting. Especially the course credit.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000
Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
Sounds sweet. Too bad I'm too old for the course credits.
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You KILL Vampires. You don't DATE them.
You are NEVER too old for course credits.. Assuming these are College Level Credits..
If they would let you explore farther out worlds for randomly generated life (generated at the time of the planet's discovery, then kept that way) I would really love this, but sadly that would likely be too costly for them to impliment (not to mention it would be pretty far out there for a game that is trying to be a valid way to study space exploration as it is today)
This could be a sweet idea. I hope it's free to play.
Are we going to get to take Jupiter apart and make a Dyson sphere?
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000
Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
America's Army makes a lot of sense but I don't get how this is going to be very beneficial to NASA.
http://www.eliteownage.com/nice
I don't see how it would be either since NASA only takes Air Force personnel & military personnel. Unless that rule has changed.
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry
This would be totally cool. I hope a game like this will be a huge open environment, since Unreal engine is pretty badass.
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry