User:PseudonympH/GXC

GoCrossCampus (usually abbreviated GXC) is an online social networking service and online gaming community startup founded in 2007 by Yale University students Brad Hargreaves, Matthew O. Brimer, Sean Mehra, Jeffrey Reitman, and Columbia University student Isaac Silverman. The website features game play similar to Risk and Diplomacy, with a major difference being that every individual player controls a number of units. Individual players manage their troops, elect commanders, identify spies, collaborate on a battle plan and coordinate actions with their team. Typically, games take place between dorms or residential colleges on college campuses. This shifts a significant portion of the social aspect of the game off the internet and into the real world. GXC has also held two inter-university games, the Ivy League and Florida Championships, the former game attracting almost 11,000 Ivy League students and alums. As of May 2008, two "open" games have taken place, where anyone with a .edu email address can sign up and play. The first consisted of people from around the world playing for their preferred U.S. Presidential candidate (which ended with non-candidate Stephen Colbert taking first place), while the second (still ongoing) pits teams favoring one of the characters from the NBC hit comedy series, The Office.

History
The first game began between students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on October 15, 2007 and ultimately had 1,148 participants. Games were also started between the Ivy League schools (October 22) and at Rice University (October 30) soon after. However, the site could not handle the load of several thousand students logging in simultaneously for the Ivy game, so it and the Rice game were postponed at the beginning of November. The RPI game continued, with Cary and Crockett Halls becoming the first team to win a GoCrossCampus game. The Ivy and Rice games were resumed in early to mid December, after several deployment optimizations including stronger servers to support greater load. The Rice and Ivy games were forcibly ended (with no team conquering the whole map and the winners decided by who controlled the most territories) on the night of December 30. Two games have been hosted at schools outside the United States, one in January 2008 at Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology and another at Tec de Monterrey starting on March 31, 2008.