The story of Turf
The first game of Turf was created by Gabe Smedresman at Yale University in January 2007, and lasted 40 days. Called Old Campus Tree Risk at the time, it was a strategy game and would-be art piece, where the board was the freshman quad, each residential building formed a team, every student could be a player, and trees flew with banners reflected the state of the game.
Old Campus Tree Risk was a tremendous success: 62% of undergraduates played - 3300 people, many of them playing an online multiplayer game for the very first time. Gabe released the code behind the game open-source, and Harvard ran a thrilling game a few weeks later: alliance, betrayal, hacking, bribery, and several Youtube videos ensued.
Andrew Fong was a student at Harvard involved in that first thrilling game. He was accepted after graduation into Y-Combinator to pursue a version of the game. A few months later, Gabe left his job as a developer at Google to join Andrew and take what is now known as Turf to the next level of gameplay. Andrew and Gabe were aware of the chord that they had struck – students lived in close proximity to their neighbors but didn’t have a reason to engage with each other and explore their community. Turf had managed to bring people together, turning random neighbors into a more vibrant community. Today, Turf can be played by communities on the map of their choosing.
In September 2008 Turf closed its first round of outside funding, from Harrison Metal Capital. Andrew and Gabe continue to break new ground, developing new ways to let people compete and express themselves while getting to know the neighbors around them. Currently, Andrew and Gabe are working to improve gameplay, make the maps more beautiful, and add features to better connect the communities that play Turf. The results of recent games can be found here.
We're always looking for new real-world elements to bring into the game, and ways to incorporate local businesses, schools and groups. If you want to run a great game for your community, any community, contact us!
