Underdogs lead in online campaign

In the online virtual reality game GoCrossPoliticalBash08, that is.

The game is hosted by gocrosscampus.com, the entrepreneurial site that ran the All-Ivy Risk Tournament last fall. Competing daily for control of the country, 1,500 players nationwide participate in the game, of which 200 are Princeton students and alumni.

“It’s different from the Ivy League tournament because I’m meeting a lot of students from other schools in California or even Alaska,” Lauren Clark ’10 said.

Colbert is leading the competition with 16 territories, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is in second place with 14 and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) follows closely behind with 13. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) suffered due to cheating, internal conflict and bad decision-making in the game. Both are tied with fewer than five territories. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and another team, “Don’t Care,” were eliminated by the Colbert team.

“Don’t Care was wiped out early for obvious reasons. Romney never really got a lot of support. Clinton has been kind of hiding in a hole and saving her strength. McCain was ... doing well and then collapsed. Ron Paul, Colbert and Obama are [in] a triumvirate right now,” said Douglas Hohensee ’08, member of the Ron Paul team. If the Ron Paul team loses, Hohensee plans to switch to Team Colbert.

Ever-changing alliances between teams do not reflect reality, however. Team Obama is currently allied with Clinton, who is also allied with Romney, who is also allied with Paul.

The distribution of University students among teams reflects much of campus voters’ preferences on Super Tuesday, as reported in the Feb. 5 issue of The Daily Princetonian. The Obama team counts 70 University students on its roster, and 48 play for Colbert. Thirty play for Paul, 22 are on Team Clinton, 19 were for McCain and six for Romney.

The game, however, is not intended to represent the political polls.

“It’s hard to say that Steven Colbert and Barack Obama are leading in the real world, so I would say that it drastically misrepresents the political sphere, but it certainly represents the world for college students,” said Brad Hargreaves, a senior at Yale and one of the site’s founders.

During the All-Ivy Risk Tournament last fall, which Princeton won, GoCrossCampus was plagued with server issues that forced the site to pause the game several times. Hargreaves said the site has not encountered server issues this time and hopes the game will end before the semester is over.

“Most of the people playing this game are college students, and when [Colbert] announced his candidacy, he garnered a lot of support,” Clark said. “Students support Colbert sort of as a joke.”

Though the rules of the competition are still based on the board game “Risk,” students are more partisan in this game.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I think the Ivy League Risk [Tournament] was more of a fad partially just due to the partisan nature of [‘Risk’],” Hohensee said. “You can’t say ‘Go Team Princeton’ on this one. People on campus support different candidates.”

“It’s really just amusement. If you want to promote your candidate, you don’t do it on GoCrossCampus, you do it in real life,” he added.