The office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) just released a 177-page overview of questionable projects that have been allotted nearly $30 billion in federal funds.

“The Blaze” has scoured the list to pick the top six money wasters, and a Hope College project leads the list.

1. Nearly $300,000 for a Video Game

The National Endowment of the Humanities has awarded a professor at Hope College nearly $300,000 for a multi-player game that connects Civil War re-enactors online.

The game, titled “Valley Sim,” allows students to “take on the identity of one of 25 real-life citizens of two communities that were on opposite sides of the Civil War.”

The game is based almost entirely on an Internet chat system.

“The NEH grant will be used to expand the basic framework of the game into a tool that can be applied to other areas of the humanities,” the Coburn report adds. “Perhaps we’ll see Battlefield or Call of Duty replacing WWII lectures? Or maybe the money can prop up something less wasteful in the realm of higher education. As cool as it might be to introduce games into the classroom, it might be a better idea to convince students to put the controller down and get back to the basics instead.”

Keep in mind the above are just six examples of the dozens and dozens of bizarre projects unearthed by Sen. Coburn’s office. There are many, many more contained in the report. Some are simply puzzling (money for alcohol for a dry county) and some are infuriating ($52,000 in continued pay for Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan).

We can only assume that the $3 million for NASA to study how Congress works came in a close second.