Would You Play A NASA Video Game?
With so many gamers exploring outer space and killing aliens, why not let the real outer space experts have a try? NASA recently announced their plans for the massive multiplayer online (MMO) game, Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond. To show they were serious about making the game fun as well as educational, the space agency licensed it to game studio Project Whitecard, an independent, commercial company. So while NASA wants you to learn about physics and nuclear radiation, they chose to let Whitecard be invested in making the game addictively playable.
NASA’s Web site was already full of interactive multimedia and even games. But somehow, the lessons about teamwork and resource management in the earlier Moonbase Alpha never went viral.
Astronaut will let players face realistic challenges as they colonize Mars in the year 2035, according to Project Whitecard CEO Khaled Sharif. While players can get a Mars rover to explore the planet, they will first have to understand “how the friction of the wheels interacts with the Martian surface,” said Sharif.
Plans are already in works for an iPad 2 version of the game. Will you be trading your World of Warcraft for the stars with Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond?
