NASA enters the video game industry

Besides sending people to the moon and stuff, NASA has also begun dabbling in video games. These are more of the educational variety as opposed to the "Let’s invade another galaxy and kill anything that moves" kind of games. According to Gamasutra, NASA has churned out two video games in the past two weeks - a Facebook trivia game called Space Race Blastoff and an air traffic control app dubbed Sector 33 (available free on iTunes by the way).

In space no one can hear you play games

Speaking to Gamasutra, NASA feels video games are an excellent way of educating people and since their focus is on spreading knowledge, both games were developed internally by a bunch of "aeronautics, education, and programming contractors" as opposed to actual game designers. So yes, don’t go expecting Crysis 2-esque visuals in any of their games yet. If on the other hand, you wish to learn about air traffic controlling or space, we suggest you check both games out.

When quizzed about the future, NASA.gov manager’s Brian Dunbar says they don’t have any concrete plans yet but we’re guessing if there is a significant interest in these educational games, NASA would definitely churn out more content.