The latest showdown between Ivy League schools isn't taking place on the football field - it's on the battlefield of the new online strategy game GoCrossCampus - or, at least it was. The recently founded Web site is down indefinitely for repairs, but the founders promise play will resume as soon as they fix the problems, possibly within the next two weeks. Once the site is running, the schools' rivalries will play out on the Web site's Ivy League Championship, which began on Oct. 22.
After a little more than a week, the game involved about 15 percent of Ivy League undergraduates, according to Yale senior Brad Hargreaves, one of the game's founders. Nearly 1000 Brunonians are registered, and more than half regularly participated before the site went down, according to J.P. Eberenz-Rosero '10, one of the four commanders of Brown's team.
Eberenz-Rosero compared GoCrossCampus to the game Risk. He said the similarities, like the strategy and chance involved, were what initially attracted him to GoCrossCampus. "The map, instead of the whole world, is the northeast part of the U.S.A., and it covers all of the regions that are around the Ivy League schools," Eberenz-Rosero said.
To organize players, commanders issue battle plans about attacking other armies, defending territory and placing armies. Registered users then place their armies onto the map and await the battle.
John Cucco '09, another of Brown's commanders, said two differences between Risk and GoCrossCampus are the levels of participation and cooperation required to succeed.
"Each person controls their own armies," Cucco said. "To succeed at the game you need to have not only a lot of armies but a lot of discipline in that you have to get people to sign on to the site and follow the orders that have been decided."
Players agreed that the time commitment required by the game was minimal.
"One turn is usually one day, so you only have to go on for say, five minutes a day, and then you don't have to go on again until the next day," said Ben Xiong '11, a regular participant.
But GoCrossCampus doesn't end at the computer screen - another quality that makes it stand out from other online games. Hargreaves called it a "locally social online game" because it involves "the people you eat with, live with, go to class with every day."
"The beauty of the game is ... you can have strategy meetings with the people that live in your building," Hargreaves said. "You actually have in-person interactions instead of in-game interactions."
Xiong agreed. "You're not just playing with random people - you're playing with people from your school, so there's a bond built in there," he said.
Hargreaves said the founders have received comments from many students who have met new people through the game they wouldn't have otherwise interacted with.
The social aspect of the game is one reason why Hargreaves thinks GoCrossCampus is more similar to a "co-ed game of pickup football than World of Warcraft." He said because of the types of people it draws, the attitudes people take to playing it and the social dynamics that form within the game, he considers GoCrossCampus an "online sport" rather than an online game.
GoCrossCampus began as a game played among the residential colleges at Yale. It was originally designed by Yale alum Gabe Smedresman, but Hargreaves, along with three other Yale students and one Columbia student, decided to spread it to other schools.
After spending the summer planning and developing the site, the five founders contacted the Ivy League schools and several other institutions, including Rice University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Washington University in St. Louis. The game launched on Oct. 15 at RPI, where students battled other students from the same college.
GoCrossCampus had attracted about 10,000 users by the weekend of Nov. 3, after its launch at other universities. Because its servers began experiencing an unexpectedly large amount of traffic, the game began to operate very slowly, and users had difficulty even logging in.
"It was supposed to be really easy and quick for people to go in, place their troops," Cucco said. "Once it became real slow, I think fewer people used the site and people gave up on it."
Because of the overload, the founders have put the game on hold. Hargreaves estimated it would be back up in two weeks but cautioned that he couldn't guarantee anything.
Cucco, the Brown commander, described other problems with the site as well. "People reported not being able to place their armies in the correct place, placing them and losing them - the game all of a sudden would not keep track of their armies."
Hargreaves said they have received a large number of user suggestions, most of which they will not be working on right now.
"It's probably best just to fix some tech issues and then re-evaluate gameplay issues later, whenever that may be. Maybe not this year - but there will be another one," said Hargreaves, who predicts the Ivy League Championship will become an annual event.
Eberenz-Rosero, Cucco and Xiong found out about the game through an e-mail the Undergraduate Council of Students sent out on Oct. 23. During the first few days of gameplay, a user on the Web site's message board suggested holding a meeting. Through this meeting and active involvement online, Cucco, Eberenz-Rosero, Jeff Hofmann '08 and Dan Altman '08 were elected commanders.
According to Eberenz-Rosero, in total there were nearly 1,000 Brown students registered when the site was paused, and about 50 to 60 percent of them participated regularly. "It's never too late to join," said Eberenz-Rosero. "I think the most important thing is to have as many people to join as we can."
