On Friday at 7 p.m. in Higgins 310, the Entrepreneur Society hosted what could possibly become the next big phenomenon of Web 2.0 - GoCrossCampus, an extensively multiplayer, team-based online game (or according to its creators, a "sport") for affinity-based communities such as college campuses. Web 2.0 is considered the second dot-com boom - a generation of Web-based communities, comprised of Web sites like Facebook and Wikipedia. As of now, the game is in private beta form. In other words, only those who attend or used to attend schools involved in the game can play; one needs a "school.edu" e-mail address. The notion of "affinity" is very important. GoCrossCampus is not primarily concerned with being a "massively multiplayer" online game like World of Warcraft or EverQuest. Instead, it is a merging of social networking services like Facebook and MySpace and massively multiplayer online gaming, taking elements from both to create a new form of entertainment and interaction between the aforementioned venues.
Nonetheless, the gameplay is very simple. According to the company's Web site: "Each day, you will receive new armies. You will need to place these armies on a territory your team owns. If you wish, you can then command your armies to attack, defend or move." The creators intend the more complex parts of the game will be learned over time via interaction with players, both allies and enemies. It is somewhat like the board game Risk.
"Risk is essentially a world map with various countries and territories. You can place armies on that map and compete with three to six friends. You can take over other countries. You can hopefully take over the whole world. It's sort of a model of megalomania," said Brad Hargreaves, the CEO and CFO of GoCrossCampus, who is a senior molecular biology major at Yale. "Anyway, we've taken that model of megalomania, made it so that more than one person can be on a team, and changed some rules."
Instead of a board with six players, with GoCrossCampus you now have an entire college or university on each team.
"We decided to bring this concept of massively multiplayer, team-based games to as many people as possible. Not just to more colleges."
The game was initially developed by a student at Yale for a project he was doing for the Yale College Council. Hargreaves found him in the spring of 2007 and talked to him about what his team was doing. The former was enthusiastic and joined the GoCrossCampus team.
"You can imagine what it was like when we launched the Ivy League championship, which included all eight Ivies, on a map of New England," said Matt Brimer, the chief marketing officer of GoCrossCampus, who is a junior sociology and economics major at Yale. "There were a lot of competitive feelings, a lot of rivalry. People really bought into the game, thinking, 'I can beat the crap out of my rival school.'"
As a product, GoCrossCampus does not currently have any competition. Unlike intense massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, GoCrossCampus is a more casual game.
"We think of it as massively multiplayer social gaming," Brimer said. "You have your social networks like Facebook and MySpace. They offer every type of tool for social interaction, but there is no inherent reason to do so. On the other hand, you have massively multiplayer games, which are very immersive environments. They take up time and are very much single-player-focused games. You might be in a guild with other people, but you still have no team-based structure to these kind of games. Another thing about these games is the learning curve is extremely high. There's a million options, preferences and so on. For instance, one of my friends almost dropped out of Yale because she was consumed by World of Warcraft."
GoCrossCampus takes some of the tools from social networking, such as a live chat among team members and with other teams, and it also provides a means and motivation for social interaction.
"When people discuss between their teams, they're discussing strategy. They're not just on to talk - instead to send diplomatic envoys to allies, to encourage all your friends to fight for your school," Brimer said. "The whole thing is rooted in this team based structure. You're not just playing for yourself. You are playing as a team that already exists in real life."
Some social networking incorporates online interaction - things like poking on Facebook - but it isn't part of your real world. One doesn't go up to a friend in real life and poke him or her. He talks to that person.
GoCrossCampus is built on the pre-existing pride of networks.
"I am loyal to Yale and would like nothing more than to go online and kick the s- out of Harvard," Hargreaves said.
Thus, though a game by technical standards, GoCrossCampus' creators like to refer to it as an online sport that is for an entire school or affinity-based community - businesses, fraternities, sororities - to play.
The game had its inaugural launch this fall, while a prototype of the game was released at Yale and Harvard last spring. Right now it is offering intracampus and intercampus games. The former is set on a map of a particular campus with different factions like residence halls fighting for territory. The latter is set between colleges. The best example of it is the recent Ivy League championship - the object of this game was to take over the entire geographical region of New England.
Nevertheless, one of the main issues for the GoCrossCampus team is revenue.
"Kind of crazy to be in the position that we are now. And we continue to lose money, but that's a good thing. Because there are people called venture capitalists out there," Hargreaves said. "I am the one managing the product and making sure we are in the right position financially - to pay people to make the game we want or to outsource to developers for the game or to get the team in the position we need to be. So, it's very ambiguous what exactly a CFO of a company that makes zero dollars in revenue should do - essentially kind of go along and work things out best as possible."
Making money is a long-term plan, and Hargreaves finds it difficult to work the college demographic.
"When you're going into college audiences, people really look down on you making money on something," he said.
As of now, the company plans to follow Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg's approach: keeping monetization down to a low scale until the company is larger and has a robust foundation.
"Monetization is something you have to take a really hard look at," Hargreaves said. "You need to scale it as you think you need it."
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