Moonbase Alpha: That time NASA made a meme video game

Summary

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States, has tried many different ways to encourage public interest in science education and space exploration. That included a brief pivot to video game publishing, of all things.In 2009, NASA teamed up with multiple video game studios to create a space-themed MMO. The result was a moon base simulator game that became a meme: Moonbase Alpha.To the MoonVirtual Heroes was founded in 2004 as a game studio focused on training simulators and other non-entertainment "serious games." Its first major client was the United States Army, which tasked the company with working on updates for "America's Army," the 2002 first-person shooter. That game was the first major use of video games as a recruitment tool for the United States military, which somehow remained online until 2022.Virtual Heroes was acquired by Applied Research Associates in 2009, a research and development firm working on everything from building evacuation simulators to advanced directed energy weapons. The company's presence in the military-industrial complex, combined with a 2006 concept for a multiplayer virtual astronaut game, helped gain the attention of a certain federal space agency.In 2009, NASA announced plans for a massively multiplayer online game, called "Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond." The game was pitched as a learning tool that would recreate spacecraft, technology, and robotics based on NASA prototypes, built on top of Unreal Engine 3. Three studios were tasked with development: Virtual Heroes, Canada-based Project Whitecard, and Information in Place (now WisdomTools).Daniel Laughlin, project manager at NASA Learning Technologies, told Yahoo Games, "We want to create a fun, compelling gaming experience that will give players the chance to learn about science and engineering careers while they play the game." It was set for a 2010 release, with a demo to arrive before the end of 2009. That demo eventually became Moonbase A...