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.