For the Win, Cory Doctorow
For the Win, Cory Doctorow
List: $29.00 | Sale: $20.31
Club: $14.50

For the Win

Author: Cory Doctorow

Narrator: George Newbern

Unabridged: 16 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/11/2010


Synopsis

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual gold, jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, millions of “gold farmers” toil in electronic sweatshops harvesting virtual treasure that their employers sell to First World gamers for real money.
           
Mala is a brilliant fifteen-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the nickname “General Robotwalla.” In China, Matthew defies his former bosses to build his own gold-farming crew. Leonard lives in Southern California and spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia. All of these young people, and more, become entangled with the mysterious woman called Big Sister Nor, who builds them into a movement to challenge the status quo.
           
Fighting pitched battles in the virtual worlds of every MMORPG worth playing, Nor’s network of gamers is so successful that it incurs ruthless opposition. Ultimately, Big Sister’s people devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

About The Author

Canadian-born Cory Doctorow has held policy positions with Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and been a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Southern California. He is a co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing (boingboing.net), which receives over three million visitors a month. His science fiction has won numerous awards, and his YA novel Little Brother spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mark on November 22, 2010

"A review of 'For the Win,' by Cory Doctorow." by Cory Doctorow. David was a hip, streetwise, golden-hearted teenager. He was a native of Mumbai. He was talking to his friend Ravi, who was slumped in a booth in the corner of the teahouse. Ravi was from San Diego; he had never been to India before. "I......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 14, 2015

I’m not sure if I’ve just read a novel or had a lesson in economics. Cory Doctorow’s dystopian novel For the Win tells the story of the exploitation of an online role playing game’s economy. In the running of what could be classed as electronic sweatshops throughout Asia, gold farmers suffer from ve......more

Goodreads review by Lizzie on June 23, 2015

I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would. I expected it to make me cranky, but I really enjoyed reading it. When I thought hard about it, though, it was missing something... revelatory, I think, that's keeping me from rounding up the rating. In my heart. (And on Goodreads.) One thing I......more

Goodreads review by February on July 07, 2010

Maybe it's just me, but Cory's books are beginning to read like libertarian fanfiction. As with Makers, this book was didactic and segued into "let's study economics" a little too often for my liking. As always, the bad guys are demonized and the good guys get all the sympathetic ink. "Heavy-handed"......more

Goodreads review by Kara on June 01, 2016

I don’t much like economics. I like Cory Doctorow’s metaphor here in For the Win of the economy like a train: most people have no idea where it’s going, or whether the driver is even still alive; while economists speculate on all of this, some people pay attention to them while others just ignore th......more