The grants will be used to develop resources to help "enhance secondary students' academic experiences and improve educators' abilities to engage and stimulate their students" in STEM subjects. All of the proposed programs focus particularly on NASA-themed content.
The article highlighted the different agendas of the administrator (who brings the budget), educator (who is concerned with lesson objectives), and game designer (who wants to create an engaging game). I think that if students are not sufficiently engaged by the game, the educational objectives would probably not be delivered successfully either. If budget cuts ended up taking the fun out of an educational game, perhaps it might be worth rethinking if it should still be a game?