Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Spore: even after all those troubling delays, it’s still quite possibly the most exciting game of the coming year. When we hear that Will Wright is even demonstrating it to the spaceheads at NASA, it sounds like we get to nod solemenly at its cleverness as well as clap for joy at its gloopy, many-legged wonders. Here’s a from-the-hip recording of his presentation, which, not unsurprisingly, focuses on the planetary exploration and colonisation aspect of the impending evolve ‘em up:

Image: NASA.

I heard a bunch of rumours about this last year, but it seems that this procurement document confirms the big space club’s interest in a multiplayer online gaming experience. This is the interesting bit:

NASA is in a position to develop an online game that functions as a persistent, synthetic environment supporting education as a laboratory, a massive visualization tool, and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging, game-play experience.

The NASA concept is pretty progressive: have it be a paid, playable game, but also being simulation enough to use in scientific work. Could we see the missions to the Moon and Mars played out by gamers decades before the actual missions kick off?