Students enlist for GoCrossCampus battle

The move is part of an online battle, waged among the eight Ivy League schools over their virtual campuses as part of gocrosscampus.com, an internet strategy website that was founded two years ago.

On Oct. 10, Princeton’s GoCrossCampus team took up virtual arms, vying to reclaim Princeton’s lost first-place title in the online game, based on the popular board game Risk, in which players battle for global dominance.

Princeton won the Ivy League tournament in 2007, but it was defeated last year by Penn following a targeted campaign by the other Ivies against the Princeton-Cornell alliance that had helped Princeton emerge victorious the previous year. With more than 700 players, including 250 to 300 alumni, Princeton’s team has the most players of any school. (In previous competitions, Yale has had the largest team.)

“We eliminated Columbia last weekend, and Cornell and Brown killed off Dartmouth,” said Humphrey, who is also the head recruiting officer for Princeton’s team. “I can’t reveal too much in the way of diplomatic secrets here, but Penn is still in a tight position,” he added.

The number of players undergoing voluntary conscription for Princeton continues to grow by about 10 people per day as more students create accounts using their Princeton or alumni e-mail addresses, Humphrey explained.

There are no tangible benefits to battlefield victory on GoCrossCampus, but that hasn’t daunted the Princeton team. “Last year a company had a deal to give a huge HDTV to someone on the winning team, but this year it’s just the satisfaction of demonstrating our superiority,” Humphrey said.

Each day players can log on to gain reinforcements, which are given to players as a reward for being active. Each player controls and attacks with his or her own set of troops, following orders from an elected command structure that communicates battle strategy to team members by a virtual forum. About half the commanders are alumni.

The Princeton team won’t reveal its strategy, Humphrey said, but “a lot of our analysis deals with what times people log on, how much energy we can get to attack other teams late in a turn, how to best hide our intent.”

Commander Odie Ayaga ’08 praised the accessibility of a game that permits battlefield strategy “from the comfort of one’s own dorm room.” Ayaga said in an e-mail that GoCrossCampus is “one of the most contentious competitions within the Ivy League.”

“What I probably enjoy most about the game is seeing hundreds (or thousands!) of loyal Tigers come together from various generations and parts of the globe to represent Princeton and work towards a singular goal: the conquest of the Ivy League,” Ayaga said.

Most leaders of the tournament are veterans of the online competition and enjoy games of strategy. “I like playing Settlers of Catan and Carcassone,” commander Jessica Chong ’07 said in an e-mail. “When I was a junior and senior, I used to take over the Bloomberg [Hall] first floor lounge with my friends [to play].”

But this game is more intense. When asked what the team would do if Princeton won this year, Humphrey said, “There are intentions to meet up at Reunions. Not much else yet.”