After reading Part 1 of Corey Doctorow’s “For the Win”, the story that interested me the most had to do with Mala and the game Zombie Mech. In this particular story, Mala is a gifted girl who plays the online game Zombie Mech extremely well. Mala is so good in fact, that a representative from Zombie Mech appears in the small game cafe where Mala plays and asks her to hunt “gold hoarders” in the game. These gold hoarders accumulate a large amount of in game credits and then sell them to other players for actual money, thereby turning a profit. Mala is therefore recruited to find these gold hoarders and destroy them and take their fortunes before they can sell them to potential buyers.
What’s so interesting with Doctorow’s writing is that when you are reading the stories, it’s easy to become immersed in the world of the game along with main character and forget that there is action continuing outside of the gameplay of the characters within the story. So when the representative of Zombie Mech, Mr. Banerjee, appears and offers Mala a job, the clash of the real world and Mala’s game world is made all the more apparent. What’s also interesting here, is that in virtual reality, Mala has created a means of making a viable income and supporting her family financially. It’s amazing to me that we are at a point now where we can literally make money out of literally nothing.
I feel that it’s also important to recognize the kinds of relationships being built within this story. Mala’s friends jokingly call her “General Robotwalla” because of her excellence in gameplay, however by the end of the story, these same friends are termed by Mala as her army and even salute her. These relationships, that were created in a virtual reality have spilled over and taken root within real life interactions as well.
This point points out a common theme in video games. At the being, many players are half heartedly involved in some resistance or guest, and as the game develops, the get consumed by that situation and you have yourself an entertaining game. In For the Win, Doctrow definitely seems to play into this system of design.