John Carmack's thoughts on the NASA-sponsored MMO |
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The other day, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called for proposals to develop an MMO video game. The main focus of the project is to be "the front-end of a larger synthetic environment." The organization mentioned that a total amount of US$ 3 million will be allocated for the project and that it would be happy to work with "a partner with commercial-quality game development experience."Upon reading the same, gaming site Gigagamez sent an email to John Carmack about his take on this. We know you are all familiar with the guy as he is responsible for video games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. But we guess you are not aware that Carmack also owns Armadillo Aerospace with aspirations to conquer orbital space flights.
Anyway, Carmack said that he doesn't have the time to be directly involved with a project like this, but he also commented that he would be very delighted to give NASA an afternoon for pointers and initial help. However, the industry veteran expressed some doubts if an MMO of this kind will take off, so to speak. He remarked,
I do support efforts to enhance math/science/engineering education, and I could imagine something interesting coming out of it if they were willing to focus on game-like scenario and actions, rather than trying to be some sort of generic Second Life sort of environment.
There have been reports several days ago that the NASA project has been cancelled, because some of the agency's officials were not so keen on spending too much money on a video game. The above-mentioned gaming site also sent an email to NASA Learning Technologies' Daniel Laughlin and found out that the green light is still on for the project. Laughlin responded,
I can tell you that NASA is still supportive of the idea but that there have been serious budget cuts this year including news of one right after the announcement went out. For now, we are trying to regroup and find the resource to push ahead with the project. So the plan is still in the works, but the when and the how are up in the air at the moment.
The idea of NASA creating an MMO is very interesting, but given that the project was suddenly cancelled due to recent budget cuts and that even video game developer Carmack implied that he was skeptical about it... well, then we'll just have to wait and see what will happen to the NASA-proposed MMO.
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