NASA MMO stalls on the launch pad
by Akela Talamasca 
Apr 22nd 2008 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, Making money, News items, Opinion, Academic, Virtual worlds
For one brief, shining moment, it was filled with promise. Now, regardless of all the other things it would need to have gotten right, the speculative NASA MMO will also have to learn to fly on its own. In a news post at Gamasutra, it's been related that the Learning Technologies group has, for some reason, either rethought or lost its 3-year/$3,000,000 budget to develop its educational MMO. Instead, they'll be asking any interested developers not only to design and build the thing, but to host it as well.In return, " ... NASA will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities." Well, gosh, that's awfully big of you. So in other words, some shop will create and maintain an MMO all on its own, with all the associated costs, and if they're lucky, NASA will think about letting them try to make their money back somehow. Tempting, to be sure. It's unknown at this time how many proposals they've received, but it's little things like this that make it plainly clear to us that NASA's head is mostly filled with space.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fleet Goldenberg said on 5:28PM 4-22-2008
I know one of the guys at NASA Learning Technologies and asked him for his take on this story. His response was,
"We are looking for a developer who can propose a business plan to make a profitable game while NASA invests in the education and subject matter experts."
He said that others had contacted him to enquire about the story and that he has posted corrections to the story in a number of places.
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Tele3dworld said on 2:27PM 4-24-2008
The Bar was full at 12:00pm and very few made it back for the afternoon session. Whe the real deal was explained. People don’t think anymore; they only hear want they want to hear and ignore the rest.
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