Sadly, my team, and every other plausible team I’ve talked to has decided not to even submit a response. NASA appears unwilling to commit to even the smallest points, leaving everything up to ‘later negotiations’. I hate to tell you NASA, but serious companies won’t bid on the possibility that you’ll let them use the ‘meatball’ (your only real benefit in terms of marketability), forget about creative control, IP ownership and other concerns.

Fronting $20M+ for an MMO (and then upkeep/maintenance costs every year it’s live), where NASA maintains control over content would be a nightmare. I can easily foresee the problem where the NASA-hired education ‘experts’ don’t understand games, much less MMOs…and then tell NASA what needs to change.

I’m afraid this game will never be built unless NASA changes its mindset from this ‘volunteerism’ to the fact that the developer needs to have sole control over the game.

first off most of the information i have read on the internet has indeed been from people with there heads up there ass, nasa has no marketability in enternainment, you need a brain transplant the one you have isnt working. of all the companies out there gaming and otherwise nasa has the most to offer from both educational and entertainment points of views…point of fact: lucasarts - good movies, some good singleplayer games, MMO sucks ass, 0 education; then you have say SL a craptastic VE were you have a little education value in the form of modding (sorta)and thats about it good for maybe making a buck or two; then you have nasa were you have the potential to create a VE/MMO were you can go and explore the environments of the nasa compounds(anyone with half an IQ point would give there eyeteeth for) fly a spaceshuttle or design one and test it maybe making trips to the moon or mars or some other planet and go through different processes of creating spacestations and/or space colonies-not only are you learning about science in a fun new way but your experimenting and having fun in an original way not to mention that all of that information can be gathered and used by nasa to create those spaceships/stations/colonies etc. i for one would love to even take a sorta vurtual tour of the nasa buildings let alone have any input used to create/design the next mission or station or whatever.

so for all you people with your heads up your collective asses keep your mouths shut so that those of us who have more than half an IQ can work with nasa to make this MMO a reality and be able to enjoy it.

Anyway, yes I am passionate about this and I wish them all the success in the world. I’m also disappointed to no-bid the work, there is no way I could sell it to my boss or investors. Quite frankly, the only way I see it working with the way they have structured the budget is for NASA to run an open source program to develop this.

First, state educational goals ARE relevant due to the “No Child Left Behind” program. If this project cannot show how it is meeting the STATE educational requirements (ie, how it is going to improve students performance on the skills tests) it will not be allowed in the classroom. Certainly every states requirements are similar, but it’s still a battle that will have to be fought state by state, if not district by district. There are also all kinds of accessibility issues that will have to be addressed before this can be deployed into a public school. How will blind or deaf students interact? You make it clear that you have no understanding of the realities of inserting product into the real world US educational system.

You are correct in that there are no specific educational requirements in the RFP, and this is going to cause serious problems later.

I’m sorry, I was not clear. I was not talking about making just any MMO and making your investment back. I was talking about making THIS MMO and making your money back. I totally agree that with 15 to 20 M you could definitely make a MMO that would make it’s money back. I just don’t think this is it (if it’s done as a classic 3d MMO RPG style MMO).

Sorry, my “fixing the data” comment was actually political ;) For example, obviously the administration wants to down play ozone depletion over Antarctica. The “real world” data is missing for 90% of the continent. Therefore, they fill in the data showing that there is no depletion for the areas that are missing. Now, maybe that is the correct data, but maybe it isn’t, but the impression that you get from their visualization is exactly what the administration’s political hacks want you to see. When 90% of your data is missing I don’t believe you can call fixing that (or rather “making the data show what you want it to show”) as “a simple fix of aberrant visual data.” (Incidentally, this is the example they actually used at the workshop, I’m not making this up. Perhaps they had another datasource that showed that there was no depletion which they did not show. I’m just tellin’ what I saw.)

As far as real world data not being problematic, well, I’m guessing your a biz dev guy. For instance, one time when I was writing a data acquisition system I went and asked the engineer that was writing the control and monitoring software what tolerance he needed the data at so I could design what type of pre-filtering I needed to do. He looked at me funny then said with a straight face “Zero.” When we deployed his software it was initially incredibly unstable and he couldn’t understand it. It worked perfectly against simulated data. Data which had no noise in it, no drift, no modeling of the mechanics of the system, etc. Now, if you have never used real data before, you don’t expect to have to deal with these issues. Game developers don’t use real data, they “massage” the data however they want to make things fun and presentable in an understandable way. Which is 100% great, for a game. As much as they went on about how accurate the physics needed to be I expect this would be classified more as a simulation than a game, and if they want to use all these real-word data sources, they better be ready to deal with these kinds of issues.

I have no interest in messaging you privately.

There are NO specific educational requirements (in the context of classroom based curriculum or state goals), and the state specific “standards of learning” are not relevant. You make it clear that like many others, you didn’t bother to “read the directions” and “pay attention in class”.

I’d be more than happy to educate you on the business model and 1) how to make a good MMO as well as 2) commercialize it for a return on investment (ROI), all within a reasonable $15-20M budget. However, I’d have to charge my normal consulting rate, I don’t have the time otherwise.

Using real world data has its own issues, but they aren’t problematic. The visualization guy’s comments about “fixing” the data makes total sense if you know anything about visualization or presentation. The accuracy and integrity of the data is not changed, they simply fix aberrant visual “artifacts” that can be confusing because of how the data sets are put together, etc. You should read “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte. Maybe read up on visualization techniques while you are at it.

Feel free to message me privately to continue discussion…I don’t like spending much time conversing with anonymous people that claim to be experts or tell me I have something wrong and then don’t back it up.