Finished reading For The Win, concluding the tale of online workers rights. The story ends with the characters all uniting, taking the struggle for works right to a new level. Well the characters face real-world violence, leading to the death of several characters, the overall sense is of victor. Ashok, the economist, creates what is essentially a Ponzi scheme in the virtual worlds, which forces the game companies to allow the game farmers to work and sell to players. The virtual union and real-world unions unite, and a gold age begins.

I found the ending to be hopelessly optimistic. The main part that bothers me is the Ponzi scheme in order to hold the virtual economy hostage to force the game companies to allow gold farming. In reality there would be no way that game companies would submit to such a ridiculous events- they have absolute control over the virtual economy and can fix what ever attempted scheme that golf farmers would attempt to pull. One cannot challenge the absolute authority in a virtual world- otherwise they would not be the absolute authority. The overall impression the book left me with was that something needs to be done about the workers rights of online workers – they are far to easy to abuse in the real world. However, the book seems to assume certain things about the virtual worlds which, in my experience, are not that way in the actual instance of virtual worlds.

I finished reading For The Win, part 2, today. The book continues the stories started in part 1, and adds the viewpoints of several new characters. I found the book’s concentration on the worker’s rights fight during part 2, especially Yasmin’s (A former member of Mala’s army) encounter with Ashok and the leaders of other Unions in the country. The disjoint between the views of the online workers toward what they do and can do against the ‘real-world’ union’s views on the online workers is quite interesting. The online workers feel they are a valid part of the workforce, deserve rights, and can fight for those rights. The real-world unions view the online works as children playing games, and do not see the advantage of adding them to the union movement. I must admit that I have a little skeptical of the idea of online-unions, not because of the humans rights issue, but because of the  moral issues that arise from unionizing a form of work that is actually illegal. No matter the problems that are in the real-world for the online works, the work they are doing is illegal due to the terms of use agreement in the game. The basis of their work is so relate on an industry that is actively fighting to remove them from the game. The book seems to ignore largely ignore the game owner’s rights, demoting them from the owners of the game to being a challenge in the gold-farmers existence. Unionizing is about basic rights and protection for works, and that I approve of, but it does not seem at all logical to unionize over an industry that is on such a unstable playing field, where the work done by members can be wiped out and removed in seconds by game administrators – who would be doing nothing wrong.

Recently, I made my first podcast. Quite the exciting moment in my life, let me tell you. I tried to make it about a hike in the Rancho San Antonio open space reserve, near where I grew up. For the most part, it sticks pretty close to being about the hike, although I feel I put in a lot of random stuff about the area mostly because I did not know what else to talk about. The experience of making the podcast was actually not particularly interesting for me. Lots of people seem to love the experience of making podcasts, as it allows them to communicate their ideas and themselves in a more efficient and personal manner then, say, blogs. I personally do not have that same urge to share information making the podcast creation process feel a bit unnatural. Once I got started talking, it was fine and I was able to freely ramble on about whatever wandered into my mind (train of though style), but the actual overall experience is not something I would naturally try to seek out and do. The follow up of editing was a bit more fun for me, once I got over listening to myself talk. I really just dropped out the ‘um’s and long awkward pauses, then added some music – mostly because I felt I had to add something shiny to the thing.

Overall, the experience of making the podcast was awkward at first, but once I got started and no one got angry at me, it was fairly straightforward. It is not something I think I’ll try to do again, just because I very rarely have something to say that has not already been said by someone else, in a more clear and eloquent fashion.

Over the past few days I’ve been reading For The Win, written by Cory Doctorow. Doctorow is a British-Canadian blogger, journalist, and science fiction writer who strongly supports liberal copyright laws and creative commons. For The Win is the second book by Doctorow and focuses on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (mmorpg) with a touch upon topics of economics, labor rights, gold farming and power-leveling. Part 1 of the book introduces the stories of three people: Matthew Fong, a Chinese boy who is an incredibly talented gold-farmer but has to deal with the established gold-farming gangs; Leonard “Wei-Dong” Goldberg, an American boy who spends all the time he can playing games with his in-game Chinese friends and guild members, who are gold-farmers and power levelers, but Leonard has to deal with his parent’s apposition to playing and eventually runs away. Mala, or General Robotwallah, is a Indian girl who discovers that she is a natural strategist in online games, and forms an online make-shift army out of the players in a local cafe, eventually getting them all hired by a Mr. Banerjee who has her hunt down and kill rival gold-farmers, until her army is defeated by Big Sister Nor, who leads the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web. The three character’s stories alternate chapters, each with their own themes.

This book was a new experience for me, and a pleasant one. I am already a huge fan of science fiction and this book was a very good addition to what I have already read. I’m only done with part 1, but I find the issues it brings up already to be quiet interesting. The author sets the stage for a very pro-labor rights message from the beginning, detailing the hardship faced by gold-farmers. The labor rights of gold-farmers and their ilk are always at stake, as the entire industry is illegal in most games terms-of-use. Even with that knowledge, I still feel like action needs to be taken, for basic human rights. Even with the obvious labor-rights issues, I found that my dislike was focused on the brutal members of the gold-farming communities and not the corporations that run the games, which was a nice change from many science fiction books these days. The story of Leonard is of particular interest to me, as he shows the particular issue of game addiction; his obsession with gaming is ruining his real-life relationships, but he does not seem to care. The author has yet to make this actually seem like a problem though, which worries me about how his story might continue. Overall, I like the book and the stories, and look forward to continued reading.