The developers behind the Club Cardinal platform have partnered directly with Stanford’s financial aid department and adjusted each player’s in-game wealth accordingly. The new update, inspired by the success of last month’s “Wildfire” release, has seen overwhelming approval from both students and faculty.
The Flipside was able to sit down for an interview with the platform’s development team, which described how “with the new update, we’ve been able to add a layer of realism that the platform had previously lacked. By reviewing each student’s socioeconomic status, the algorithm can determine whether they can wear Patagonia, if they’re allowed within the map location ‘Starbucks”, and so on.” The team also boasted of how the number of people using Club Cardinal to meet peers of strictly equal family income had tripled since the update.
The university also worked closely with the Club Cardinal team to ensure the quality of the release would properly represent the Stanford name. After contacting Provost Drell through email, she revealed that “although the Board of Trustees suggested we serve in-game advertisements to students on financial aid, it was pointed out that collecting ad revenue would make it harder to justify the 5% annual tuition hike we have planned for the next ten years.”
It’s no surprise that Club Cardinal has become the most popular form of socializing among students, quickly toppling the previous champion, “awkward small talk in Zoom breakout rooms”. Now that undergraduates can role-play blacking out on the Row from the comfort of their parents’ homes, life on the Farm has never been so good.
