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 Moon
Virtual 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 Alpha.
Moonbase Alpha
Moonbase Alpha was finally released in July 2010 as "a realistic multiplayer game that will allow players to experience a hypothetical day in the life of a lunar astronaut." It was developed entirely by Army Game Studio, the primary creator of America's Army, and Virtual Heroes. NASA said it was "meant as a precursor" to the in-development MMO.
The game is set in a fictional lunar outpost in the year 2032, where players are tasked with repairing critical systems after a meteor strike. You have 25 minutes to repair the life support systems with various tools and robots at your disposal. It was partially based on designs for the Constellation program, NASA's crewed spaceflight plans for future Moon and Mars missions. Constellation was fully cancelled later that year with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, but some parts of Constellation eventually became the Space Launch System that completed its first launch in 2022.
Moonbase Alpha didn't receive much attention from the mainstream gaming media, at least at first, and initial reviews were mixed. GamePlanet said in its review, "it's a pretty tech demo with a couple of hours of enjoyment attached. We're not complaining though, it's free after all." In the context of the Constellation program's imminent collapse, Popular Mechanics said "the astronaut simulation game is a lost cause," and Moonbase Alpha was "excruciatingly boring."
Moonbase Alpha achieved over 100K downloads in the first two weeks, according to Army Game Studio, and it passed 300K downloads after eight months. SteamDB tracked an all-time peak of 1,443 simultaneous players in July 2010, which is in fact better than Concord.
Moon maestro
In the multiplayer mode, Moonbase Alpha required coordinating with other players to repair the lunar base, either with voice or text chat. The latter functionality was powered by a variant of DECtalk, the speech synthesis software originally released in 1984. DECtalk is probably most recognizable as Stephen Hawking's voice—he used a CallText 5010 unit with the Perfect Paul voice for nearly 30 years, which was replaced by a reverse-engineered and emulated version near the end of his life.
The speech synthesis was usually more entertaining than the actual game, just like playing with Microsoft Sam on Windows and MacinTalk (later PlainTalk) on Mac. The viral video 'Moonbase Alpha provides a realistic simulation of life on a natural satellite' showed off some of the most popular spam phrases, like "aeiou" pronounced as "ayy-you," and "John Madden."
Importantly, the developers of Moonbase Alpha didn't turn off DECtalk's pitch and duration controls. This allowed players to send specially-crafted commands to sing songs by pasting commands into the game chat. As an example, this is the 1966 Batman TV show theme as a Moonbase Alpha song, with the "na-na" parts spelled out as "nae nae" and the final "Batman" as "bae-ttmae-nn":
[nae<99,20>nae<99,20>nae<99,19>nae<99,18>nae<99,18>nae<99,19>nae<99,19>bae<140,25>ttmae<600,40>nn]
Online games turned into speech synthesis singing competitions, with a community of people creating and sharing DECtalk equivalents of sheet music. The video 'Moonbase Alpha: The Musical' highlights many of these songs, including "Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan, theme songs for Spider-Man and the A-Team, and "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen.
There's no better gameplay than oxygen alert sounds playing alongside a speech synthesis cover of "Party Rock Anthem." There are many other great Moonbase Alpha songs, some of which were created outside of the game but with similar DECtalk technology.
The legacy
The promised space MMO eventually arrived as a Kickstarter project in August 2011, initially called "Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond" and later renamed to "Starlite: Astronaut Academy." The fundraising campaign was organized by Project Whitecard, the Canadian game studio that was helping with development.
Starlite was planned as a PC, mobile, and console game based around the fictional Arthur C. Clarke Astronaut Academy Station, described as "a sort of Hogwarts in space." The missions would be set around the Space Academy, Mars, the asteroid belt, and other locations in our solar system.
The game blew past the $25,000 goal with a total of $45,719 in Kickstarter funding. It also received an additional $750,000 from the Canadian government, MacArthur Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other sources. However, the game never materialized. A short demo called "Starlite: Astronaut Rescue" was released on Steam in 2014, and another "Star Rangers" game was released as Early Access in 2016, with both games receiving negative user reviews.
In a 2023 campaign update, developers cited "internal disagreements" and "constraints in funding" as reasons for Starlite never arriving. Less than a million dollars for a multi-platform MMO probably wasn't realistic. Virtual Heroes also tried a Kickstarter campaign for a direct sequel to Moonbase Alpha, which only raised $4,510 of its $480,000 goal.
Moonbase Alpha's viral moment has long since passed, but it still maintains a cult following and a connection to the larger vocaloid music production community. There are even new songs every once in a while, like a fantastic cover of "Industry Baby" by Lil Nas X from 2022, with the vocals of Hatsune Miku alongside Moonbase Alpha's DECtalk.
Content warning: NSFW language
Moonbase Alpha is still available for free on Steam, and a modified version installed in 2012 as an exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry in Tampa still appears to be open. If humans ever step foot on the Moon, Mars, or another celestial body again, I hope the first word will be "aeiou."
This article was adapted from an episode of Tech Tales, a podcast exploring the technology world's epic failures, forgotten successes, and everything in between.