On Sunday, Dartmouth students "judo-chopped" and "pulverized" Cornell, Yalies were "grand theft auto'd" and "rick-rolled" and a Columbia University student suffered the misfortune of being "projectile vomited on." These malicious acts were all carried out virtually on GoCrossCampus' Ivy League Championship, which began earlier this month.
GoCrossCampus, an annual competition in its second year, is an online world-domination game where participants, competing under the name of their universities, control virtual soldiers in an attempt to conquer territories. In the Ivy League Championship, teams from each of the eight Ivy League schools are given territories to defend, and the ultimate goal is to defeat all other schools' teams by Nov. 16, according to Matthew Brimer, co-founder of GoCrossCampus and a senior at Yale University.
Last year, over 11,000 students, faculty and alumni participated in the Ivy League competition, which the Princeton University team won. There are currently 3,668 players registered for this year's competition.
"Last year there was an issue with cheating, as people created computer programs that allowed them to create hundreds of phantom accounts so the actual number of people playing was much, much smaller, though still popular," Nick Selz, a senior at Yale and the coordinator of this year's Ivy championship said. "We expect to end up with 6,000 to 8,000 people [this year]."
During last year's Ivy tournament, some participants used false e-mail addresses to find out other teams' strategies and some students held strategy meetings in person, rather than online, in order to avoid espionage, Selz added. The web site now allows teams to evict members they believe are spies.
This year's Ivy championship includes several new features and improvements, Brimer said. The game now balances power so schools like Cornell University, the largest Ivy League university, do not have an advantage over smaller schools like Dartmouth.
The web site was redesigned this year, after play was delayed during last year's tournament because of server overload, Brimer said. The coordinators of the tournament also enhanced the landscape of the game by including fortifications and teleporters.
"We've re-architectured the platform so it's much more robust," Brimer said. "There won't be technical issues as there were last year."
Kevin Treadway '10 and William Hix '12, commanders of Dartmouth's team, called on anyone with a College e-mail address to join the competition.
"I joined GXC because I thought it would be a fun, social game," Hix said in an e-mail message. "We have the lowest player count even accounting for the size of our school and need a lot more people to join if we want to remain viable."
GoCrossCampus has also partnered with the Ivy Council, an organization that aims to increase programming and communication between students at Ivy League colleges and universities.
"Ivy Council seeks to initiate, support, and collaborate with intercollegiate programs like GoCrossCampus," Bing Chen, president of the Ivy Council and a senior at Princeton, said in a press release. "This is one step towards the propagation of innovative, intercollegiate programs created by and for Ivy League students. The Ivy Council is thrilled to partner with GoCrossCampus for the Ivy League Championship and looks forward to further partnerships in the future."
Though GoCrossCampus did not profit from last year's tournament, this year's event is sponsored by Ticket Network, a ticket exchange software company and the tournament is now officially known as the Ivy League Championship presented by Ticket Network.
In addition to the Ivy League Championship, GoCrossCampus hosts a number of other tournaments, including mock World War I and World War II competitions. The site was founded by undergraduate students at Yale and Columbia University.
