Get Herald RSSGo Cross Campus' Ivy League competition, which captivated many students' attention last semester before pausing due to server problems, will start fresh on Sept. 16.
Ivy League students and alums will have the opportunity to bring their colleges online glory in what co-founder and chief marketing officer Matthew O. Brimer, a Yale senior, called "the single largest competitive event in the history of the Ivy League."
Go Cross Campus is an online strategy game where students, fighting in the name of their universities, are given territories and three options: attack, defend or move. The number of students participating and the quality of leadership within the game determine how successful a school will be in conquering other schools' territories.
This will be the tournament's second year. Last year 11,000 students and alums participated, which overwhelmed the company's server. Brimer said the Web site has been rebuilt from the ground up and is now "a much more stable game that easily handles thousands and tens of thousands of players." The tournament is owned and run by a company formed by students at Yale and Columbia.
Yale sophomore Nick Selz, the director of the company's Ivy League Championship, explained that other changes this year include the replacement of armies with "vitals." Instead of each person controlling his or her own army, players will have one avatar to control, a soldier who represents the player. However, this doesn't mean that individual players can be killed because each time a player logs on he or she will receive new vitals as avatars.
Go Cross Campus tries to capitalize on competitive rivalries already in place within the Ivy League, Brimer said. Some students have gone as far as spying on other schools, using college e-mail accounts belonging to collaborating friends enrolled elsewhere to register as students from those other schools and reporting on strategies discussed in the school-specific chat room. "It actually got to the point, I think, that Yale stopped using their chat room," Chris Archuleta '11 said.
Mike Cohen '11 joined the tournament last year and said he felt it was his obligation to Brown to obey the instructions e-mailed out by the commanders.
"I felt like I had to do it for Brown and for my compatriots," he said. "And then troops died, and more of them died, and then we died."
"It's like fighting an actual war," Archuleta said. "The competitive nature between schools was so awesome."
Last year some students at Brown met in person for Go Cross Campus meetings to discuss strategy and delegate leadership. While Archuleta said the meetings consisted of a core of around 30 people, Brown had 1,000 total players registered to participate in the Ivy League Championship.
Yet Brown participation was small compared to levels at other schools. Last year, many Brown students lost interest when the magnitude of other schools' participation became apparent. "It was evident very quickly that Yale was such a huge school with so many people that we had no chance," said Francios Baldassari '11
"I wish we would have known about (the game) sooner," said Archuleta, who added that Brown could have put up a better fight with more time to advertise and recruit members.
Many students stopped playing after the game's server slowed down and ultimately stopped for three weeks.
But Baldassari and Cohen said that if improvements have been made, they will be willing to try the game again this year. "I'll probably give it a shot," said Cohen.
Danny Klotz '11 and Jenna Kaye-Kauderer '11, high school friends of Selz, are trying to increase awareness of the tournament within the Brown community by planning a launch party for the championship on Sept. 16. "Ideally we want to get more people from Brown involved," Kaye-Kauderer said.
"We're throwing the party just to get people excited and to make them aware that this is going on, so we get a really good team and win the championship."
is a member of the 
