Massively

Nicodemus at the Kill Ten Rats blog took great exception to coverage of a recent meeting held by NASA. The meeting took place Monday in Baltimore, and was an opportunity for the space agency to pitch the idea of a NASA MMO to prospective developers. As reported by sites across the internet, the whole thing was a bit of a bust. As we phrased it here at Massively, "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."

According to Nicodemus, that's completely incorrect. Not only will NASA be offering up a 3 million-dollar budget to an interested company, but the development partner would be able to commercialize the resulting product separately. Further comments from articles covering the event were disparaging of NASA's stance on the use of its logo but the KTR article clarifies that not as a commercial interest, but instead one of proper use: "They have very specific and restrictive rules about how, where, and when the NASA logo is presented. Most large companies have similar rules, but NASA is REALLY picky about it. The logo can't be used in such a way as to imply that NASA endorses a particular product or political stance, or whatever. They were quite clear about their willingness to try to work around this a bit and make it work."

The post's author was at the event, felt the tenor in the room, and read over the FAQ at the official NASA MMO site. He came away with a completely different point of view than almost everyone who wrote about the pitch. Hopefully further statements from NASA will clarify this issue in the near future.