Tag: For the Win

Monthly Review – May 2012

Posted May 31, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 0 Comments

What a great month we have had here at Literary Exploration. The site was officially launched on the 1st and we have been releasing a new post every one to two days. I really hope we can keep up this momentum and I’ve been working hard to get more and more content on the site for your enjoyment.  You might have noticed some older books being reviewed on the site as well as some new releases and ARCs. I hope you are enjoying the mixture of old and new as well as the different genres because we plan to read books and put up content of all types of books. We are proud to have a guest post up already as well as two books that I’m hoping people will enjoy when they are released in June.

On the forums on Goodreads we have been reading the classic detective novel; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. This was the first time I’ve ever read this book and I’m still trying to work out why it took me so long to read it. Next month we will be reading another classic novel, when we read the Victorian novel; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I hope you can join in the discussions on Goodreads and have your say on what books we will read in the future.

My reading has been going really well this month, from trying out my first book in the popular Harry Hole series, to the laughs of the weird things customers say in bookstores. Highlights for me included the Russian classic Crime and Punishment which may be a massive book; it was just a beautiful crime novel and a real joy to read. Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan which will be released on the 26th of June is an exciting follow up to The Last Werewolf; it’s dark, gritty, over sexed and I highly recommend it. As well as Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Drive by James Sallis which are both great crime novels.

May’s Books

 

For The Win by Cory Doctorow

Posted May 1, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 0 Comments

For The Win by Cory DoctorowTitle: For The Win (Goodreads)
Author: Cory Doctorow
Published: Tor, 2010
Pages: 480
Genres: Young Adult
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

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 very poor work conditions in the effort to mine gold and find virtual treasure to sell to first world customers. The novel has a typical ‘unite and rise against authority to improve our lifestyle’ plot but add a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) this book makes for some interesting concepts. While this book is a book about slave labour, gangsters and forming a revolution, this book also dives into the world of global finance in a very educational way.

This book reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s novel Reamde, in the sense that it explores the world of gaming from the perspective of gold farming. While Stephenson focused on all the aspects of creating a MMORPG for the purposes of gold farming and money laundering, For the Win focuses on the concept of the in-game financial system and how fragile global economy can be. The author floods the book with many different financial theories and uses the games economy to help the reader understand just how global finances work. While this novel focuses on the in-game aspects of economics, the theories taught are very real.

Like Reamde, For the Win made me thing of an aspect of gaming that I never released existed. While Reamde hired a geologist to create the world of T’Rain’s mining system; For the Win had an economist working for the game developers. This book was a real eye opener while still making a great story. To begin with I had trouble keeping up with all the characters Doctorow tried to introduce, characters from USA, India and China; but slowly I started to get a feel for which character was which. I don’t think Cory Doctorow spent enough time exploring his characters, I felt like I only got a glimpse of each character and I would have liked more. For the Win is a book for gamers, but non-gamers might also enjoy the thrilling ride this takes the reader on. It is more than just a lesson in economics and it is more than a novel about unionising Gold Farming. While very predictable this ended up being a great read.