In the second part of Cory Doctorow’s book For the Win he begins with the story of Big Sister Nor. Big Sister Nor is a teenage girl from Singapore who works at one of the largest gold farming conglomerates in all of Asia, but is fed up with the poor conditions that she is forced to work under. In countries like Singapore and China, people among lower social status, especially youths have hard times trying to survive. Doctorow describes the nights in Singapore as riddled with crime and other illegal activities. Judging from Doctorow’s description many of us not from China or Singapore would think that being a gold farmer then was pretty good profession. However, this is not the truth at all.
After doing some research on the conditions that gold farmers are subjected to, i found that there are an estimated 100,000 gold farmers in China today and that while earnings for virtual items in games are estimated at 900 million, the average gold farmer only makes 145 usd a month (http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/documents/di_wp32.pdf). Unlike many of the gold farmers that Big Sister Nor works with, she has an education and seeks to use it as a means to better her situation as well as the situation of the other gold farmers forced to deal with horrible working conditions all across Asia. With the rise in popularity of a Mar themed MMORPG in Brazil, Nor sees an opportunity to finally take charge of her situation. Inspired by the first ever workers union the IWW (Industrial World Workers Union), Big Sister Nor decides to name the workers union for gold farmers the IWWWW ( International Workers of the World Wide Web). Doctorow states that after Nor established the union is quickly gained nearly 20,000 members and qucikly became a force to be reckoned with.
After establishing a strike that was facilitated through the use of the online games the workers used to make a living ( they collaborated through online gaming chat functions). Big Sister Nor created the idea that if workers were united against their corrupt bosses, they could actually achieve something beneficial to creating more fair and equitable gold farming practices world wide. This would allow workers to make a decent wage as well as not forcing them to work for excruciatingly long hours, and making sure that the conditions in which they work as suitable.