Chris Crawford pitches game that may help put a ship on the moon

Game industry veteran Chris Crawford has been selected as one of the three finalists of the Games for Change Festival's Shoot for the Moon design challenge. The contest challenged developers to make a game that could capture real-world data that might be useful to SpaceIL -- a nonprofit organization which seeks to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon -- and drum up player interest in space exploration. Crawford's pitch, titled Rocket Science, appears to be a straightforward rocket design/launch simulator in the vein of Kerbal Space Program that can be played in a browser. Rocket Science is the only prototype without a public demo -- the other two finalists, Moon Rush and SpaceIL Academy, are playable right now. Both were developed in Unity -- the former by a student team at Ohio State University, the latter by indie studio Theorify. The three finalists get two complimentary passes to the Games for Change Festival later this month in New York City, where they will present their concepts in front of a live audience and jury. The winner will receive a prize of up to $25,000 to create a space exploration game that will log and submit data to SpaceIL, to aid it in its efforts to win Google's $20 million Lunar X Prize.