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Controversy over Game by Yale Student
Techtree News Staff, Mar 24, 2008 1454 hrs ISTStarted as an experiment by Yale student Gabe Smedresman in January last year, "Turf" went on for over a month and registered over 3,300 Yale students
"Turf", originally the brain child of a Yale University student, is now fighting for turf against 'GoCrossCampus', a similar game created by fans of "Turf".
"Turf" pits thousands of players -- affiliated to dorms, colleges, and companies -- against each other, in weeks-long online war games similar to Hasbro's board game, 'Risk'. The difference being: in "Turf", the turf is the college campus.
Started as an experiment by Yale student Gabe Smedresman in January last year, "Turf" went on for over a month and registered over 3,300 Yale students -- which is more than 25 percent of the student body.
The "Turf" Web site claims that the power of the game is the very real strategy meetings, parties, communication networks, government structures, friendships, alliances, and betrayals that emerge in its course.
Incidentally, Smedresman, along with Harvard students Andrew Fong, Matt O Brien, and Hugo Van Vuuren, even founded a company called Kirkland North (kirklandnorth.com). Not to be left behind, fans of "Turf" and creators of 'GoCrossCampus' too formed a rival company (gocrosscampus.com).
On Friday last week, the New York Times reportedly carried an article about 'GoCrossCampus' saying that "the game, a take on classic territorial-conquest board games like 'Risk' may be the next Internet phenomenon to emerge from the computers of college students."
Miffed at not being mentioned in the article, Kirkland North is believed to have contacted the New York Times. Subsequently, the newspaper carried a new article mentioning "Turf" on its Bits Blog.
"Turf" pits thousands of players -- affiliated to dorms, colleges, and companies -- against each other, in weeks-long online war games similar to Hasbro's board game, 'Risk'. The difference being: in "Turf", the turf is the college campus.
Started as an experiment by Yale student Gabe Smedresman in January last year, "Turf" went on for over a month and registered over 3,300 Yale students -- which is more than 25 percent of the student body.
The "Turf" Web site claims that the power of the game is the very real strategy meetings, parties, communication networks, government structures, friendships, alliances, and betrayals that emerge in its course.
Incidentally, Smedresman, along with Harvard students Andrew Fong, Matt O Brien, and Hugo Van Vuuren, even founded a company called Kirkland North (kirklandnorth.com). Not to be left behind, fans of "Turf" and creators of 'GoCrossCampus' too formed a rival company (gocrosscampus.com).
On Friday last week, the New York Times reportedly carried an article about 'GoCrossCampus' saying that "the game, a take on classic territorial-conquest board games like 'Risk' may be the next Internet phenomenon to emerge from the computers of college students."
Miffed at not being mentioned in the article, Kirkland North is believed to have contacted the New York Times. Subsequently, the newspaper carried a new article mentioning "Turf" on its Bits Blog.
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