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    For the Win: A Novel
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    For the Win: A Novel
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    For the Win: A Novel
    Ebook566 pages8 hours

    For the Win: A Novel

    By Cory Doctorow

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

    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, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world's poorest countries, where countless "gold farmers," bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

    Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of "General Robotwalla." In Shenzen, heart of China's industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

    The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister's people must out-think the system. This will lead them to 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.

    Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation



    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMay 11, 2010
    ISBN9781429989046
    Unavailable
    For the Win: A Novel
    Author

    Cory Doctorow

    Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual; Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, non-fiction about monopoly and creative labour markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

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    Reviews for For the Win

    3.5/5

    340 ratings47 reviews

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    • 5/5
      AMAZING. Fictionalized and heightened, but the ugly truth behind "Gold Farming" and the Online Gaming economy is presented here in a way that will get you in your emotional center instead of letting your eyes glaze over as facts and figures are dryly presented to you.
      Should be required reading for any sociology course or economic class. I think I would have understood "Free Enterprise" better in High School if this had been part of the curriculum.
    • 5/5
      Gamers, economics, intrigue, action and suspense! One of the best books I've ever read!
    • 4/5
      Combine near-future fiction with an intro to economics course for an interesting and entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      I'm not so sure this is really a YA book. It's sprawling fiction which reads more like a techno-philosophical novel for adults. There are multiple plot lines, and the stories of the various characters are peppered with bits of "Cory Doctorow explains it all for you." Doctorow has a unique perspective on how cutting edge technology intersects with history, sociology, and economic theory. I don't think there's another person who would be able to mix theory with fiction in such a way.Unfortunately to me For the Win is a little too big, there are too many characters, too much theory, and the whole thing ends up too muddled. I loved Little Brother, and I think that book was much more focused, and ultimately more compelling.
    • 3/5
      A story of how online gamers manipulate games in order to turn virtual gold into real money. The gamers are led to unionize and face challenges from their criminal bosses and their oppressive governments. Interesting idea, but Doctorow fails to make the story interesting. The characters don't seem to be developed very well and the story drags quite a bit, finally working its way to a lukewarm ending.
    • 4/5
      Somewhere, Joe Hill is smiling. He's got tears in his eyes, too.

      Doctorow is easily as preachy as Heinlein. I like that in an author I respect and admire, one who has obviously reasoned his way to his positions. This book is far more violent than most books I like, but the violence is never gratuitous. There is a cast of thousands here, and it took me several hundred pages to start sorting them out.

      Well-written, tautly plotted, and only semi-incomprehensible in parts- to a non-gamer like me. I got the gist of the gaming parts with little trouble. And I learned some economics theory.

      I'm going to have to read it again.
    • 4/5
      Has much of the same excitement of Little Brother, but a bit more revolutionary fervor (good) and a slightly muddier plot and confusing subject and conclusion (bad).
    • 4/5
      Another great book from Cory
    • 4/5
      For the Win takes place in an era where online gaming corporations control the economy and leave millions of workers impoverished, particularly in developing countries. Finally, workers who are fed up with the status quo begin organizing and calling for the right to unionize. For the Win describes how the conflict between workers and corporations escalates and the effect it has on people around the world. The story follows main characters from India, China, Singapore, and the United States. I would recommend this book for upper middle and high school students. Although it has some complicated economics and becomes a bit preachy at times, it remains an exciting page-turner that is especially relevant for today's increasingly online world.
    • 3/5
      I liked this, but it didn't have quite the emotional depth and resonance of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. And he felt he had to cram in a little too much economics into the exposition, which felt a bit forced. Still, I enjoyed this effort, and its depictions of labor unrest in the developing world felt as real as anything I've read on the subject. That said, the labor organizers and activists came off as a little too good to be true. Not to say the labor organizers and activists aren't on the side of the angels, but they seemed a bit idealized here. Anyhow, generally a good read, and I recommend it, but the depth of characters didn't quite bring it to the 4 star level.
    • 3/5
      Tried this a couple of times to no avail. Lots of characters whose motivations I cannot understand and cannot tell apart and the story is murky at best. Seems to be about some kind of trade union for games players or something but pretty unclear to me. Just can't get on with this, it's going in my 'donate' pile.
    • 4/5
      Doctorow is one of the most current near future science fiction writers. This is a great tale about gold farmers (people - usually in poor countries - who play games to build up game gold and then sell it to rich westerners) and their struggle to unionise themselves. I enjoyed the book, as I usually do with Doctorow, however it also left me a little unsatisfied and seems a bit naive in places.
    • 5/5
      If somebody alked up to me and said, "I have a book I know you're going to love. It's all about economics, labour unions, and the unfair working conditions in developping countries," I might suspect this person doesn't know my reading tastes very well. Such a book might appeal to those with specific interests, but me, well, that's not my thing.And then this person would hand me For the Win, and I'd be intrigued because it involves gaming, something I'm familiar with. And then I'd read it, and be blown away.That's Doctorow's genius in this book. He can take all of the above concepts and make them not only interesting, but make them into something that anyone can relate to, especially today's game-happy youth culture. He can take economics and break them down into the simply complex and absurd things that they are, and make it comprehensible. He makes the legnths that some companies go to to control virtual wealth seem like what it is: ridiculous and yet incredibly valuable. This book makes you look at the world, see it in a different light, and get outraged that it isn't better. It's hard-hitting, heartbreaking, and like the games it talks about, endlessly entertaining.The characters are, above all else, wonderfully human. There are sides of right and wrong, and the lines are clearly drawn, but the people on the side of good are still flawed, violent and angry and they make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes end up fatal. These are people you could pass on the street, could see at school; they don't have to be half a world away in some poorly-ventilated sweatshop, and that just seeks to underscore the message of labour equality that's the main focus of the novel. "There are no Chinese workers. There are just workers."If you think this books comes across as being a bit preachy, you'd be right. But when your characters are fighting for the right to refuse 22-hour shifts without being beaten, fighting for the right to not be raped in order to hang onto their jobs, I think a little preachiness is allowed.This book came to me highly recommended, and it leaves my hands in the same state. Go, pick up this book, read it and learn things that you may not have even thought about before. And I dare you to tell me that at the end of it, you didn't feel your moral centre being tugged at, even just a little.
    • 3/5
      Not sure why I'm feeling so committed to finishing this. I'm not enjoying it, and I'm starting to wonder if it will ever, ever end.

      As usual, Cory Doctorow has an interesting story, but buries it in a series of digressions on related topics (this time, online gaming culture and labor unions). He's obviously brilliant, but it's the kind of brilliance that can bog down his larger points.
      ***
      Annnnnnnnnnd we're done. Finally. Online gaming culture, virtual economies, and labor unions--all interesting topics, but between three major topics and the huge cast, the book is overambitious and doesn't hold together that well.
    • 3/5
      I honestly expected more. 34 year old male. I had just read Ready player one though.. hard to compete with. I still liked Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson a bit better. I look back on this one with fond memories though, I remember that I was dissatisfied while reading it.
    • 2/5
      I just couldn't read this any more. It sounds more like some political statement than a good story. I grabbed this because Little Brother was really good and moved quickly. This one just dragged on and on. I gave up on it a little less than 1/2 way though. I just didn't care about the characters or the story enough. I'm glad I got this as an ebook version for free and didn't have to pay for it.
    • 5/5
      All around the world, people are playing games, battling for online gold, jewels, points, levels and status. And in poor nations, there are players who play for these treasures, but then their employers trade the virtual gold for real money -- from those who want to pay to skip to higher-level play immediately. This is the story of brilliant Mala in India, Matthew in Shenzen, Leonard (aka Wei-Dong) from California, and Big Sister Nor in rural China, who are all trying to break out of the sweatshops where low pay, fear and the threat of violence hangs over them if they do not earn enough every day. Big Sister Nor wants every "gold farmer" to join a union, to protect the rights of those who work from abusive employers and allow them to earn a decent wage and work decent hours, but those who make the money off this scheme will use any means necessary to keep things as they are -- including murder. The plan is to crash the virtual economies of every game in the world, all at once... if they can pull it off. Great for gamers and anyone who needs a challenging read with a big-picture view, 8th grade and up.
    • 5/5
      I liked FTW much more than Little Brother. It did spin on, and on, and on; but it handled the page count better than many of his other works. Watching the development of economic, political, and cultural ideas was exciting and interesting. There were a very large number of concepts that Doctorow tied nicely together into one solid package.Although I didn't feel like it quite hit the 5 star mark for me, it was VERY close. I look forward to recommending it to my son as well!
    • 4/5
      I read most of this book from the free epub available on Cory Doctorow's website. My first ever e-book!Unfortunately, I noticed a number of errors, and not just in the area of typos. That, and the repetition of some phrases and information made the reading experience less enjoyable than it could've been. I compared it some to my print version and it seems at least some of the errors were fixed. So I can only assume the epub was from a proof version of the book.But apart from all that, I did like it pretty well. I prefer the short story, "Enda's Game" to this, which is based on it. Kids are being used as gold farmers and other workers in various games. Adults and big business get rich off of their backs. They get paid poorly and have no rights. The story's set in America, China, India, and Singapore.I felt like I wanted more of the action to take place in the games rather than 'the real world'. And it would've been interesting if we didn't have _any_ white boys as main characters. It feels sort of like a crutch to me. If the story needed an American kid, he didn't need to be white. He didn't need to be male.But it's a very believable world. I could really see this happening. The near-future-ness of it makes me wonder how much is _already_ happening. And I learned a new word! 'av'. Yea, somehow I knew PvP and PK and some other game terms, but had never picked up 'av'. And then, of course, I immediately ran into it again in This Book is Overdue when she was talking about Second Life.Yea, I'm hip.I'd probably rank this as Cory's second-best book, behind Little Brother. But I haven't read Makers yet. (My Sony e-reader won't display the epub of that. Grr. May have to try the pdf.)Oh, and my Clarion classmate, Keyan Bowes, got a shout-out in the acknowledgements!
    • 3/5
      So the kids in MMORPGs from all over the world start a union and take on game companies and repressive governments with mixed results. It is really a thinly veiled economics lesson, and Doctorow's fatal flaw this time around is doing what YA authors are supposed not to do: talk down to the their readers. There are clearly times when the narrative stops and there is a break for the "okay kids, now it is time for a lesson" nonfiction passage. Of course the in-game economics are the same as RL economics and there are thinly veiled explanations of our nation's most recent crisis of capitalism. So if someone reading this is unconcerned with aesthetics, it could be a great book for kids who want to learn about economics or adults that want to learn about MMORPGs. Doctorow is surprisingly neutral towards labor issues considering how polemical he is on other issues, even in his YA books. This is the best fiction of his I've tried so far. There are still too many characters, many of which I don't understand the motivations of, and a lot of the action takes place "in game." (Should I be enough of a jerk to mock: OH MAN THAT IS AN AWESOME KEYSTROKE!!!!) But the thing is, and this is a major theme of the book, if millions are playing the games and I'm not that just means I'm a dinosaur and I can make my jokes as I whistle past the cultural graveyard.
    • 3/5
      Poor teens around the world are working in gaming sweatshops as gold farmers, collecting game gold and making money for their bosses. The game gold makes up some of the largest economies in the world. Tired of mistreatment, the web workers form an international union.
    • 4/5
      A fantastic story about the life of geeks as well as the life of those in poverty in asia. (not my best sentence) This book grasps global economics in a way only possible by doctorow and is an overall great read.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the best YA books I've read this year. You want to understand the world children live in, what they can do for hours and hours in a game, this is a book for you. Do you want to be enlightened to the fact that sweatshops exist in all shapes and sizes? This is the book for you. Are you interested in economics, stocks, ponzi schemes and other scams, unionization and it's future? This is definitely the book for you.With a patient hand, Cory Doctorow gives clear, easy to understand examples of everything I talked about in my previous paragraph. Even if you are not a gamer, an explanation is always handy when gamer terms are brought into this story. If you are a teenager, then no worries - every single scheme is detailed out with easy to understand analogies. The story flips back and forth between China, India, the US .. the entire globe. Everywhere children are being mistreated by the "bosses", those monopolizing the gold farming market - but these kids are good. They're really good, and now they are demanding the decent rights that every worker should have. This is not your typical video gaming set of kids - these are children who play 15+ hours a DAY farming the same area over and over - why? Because they love the games.I could seriously rattle on and on about how much I loved this book, but I want everyone to read it. Gamer or no, this book should be on your list - give it to the teenagers you know, recommend it. I feel like, for the first time, I have some understanding with regards to how economics works .. all because of a book about gaming.
    • 2/5
      Finished this book (audio) a few days ago and would like to point out it was a very very slow starter that I nearly shut down several times. However, things picked up and I was able to finish it. My overall rating is really based on the story as narration was excellant. Also, there probably are not many books I will like for a while after reading Ready Player One and now trying to compare all others to it, they cannot stand up. With that said, For the Win is ok, not great, but if you can get thru the first few chapters you will enjoy the conclusion.
    • 4/5
      I read this as a free download but am going to buy multiple copies of the book as presents. If you love collective bargaining, rousing tales of union struggles, and speculations about the near future, I think you will love this too. I'm not even a gamer and I loved the gaming aspects. My only question was is Doctorow serious when he dedicates chapters to chain bookstores. Does anyone know? I love the dedications to independent bookstores, but the chains confused me.
    • 5/5
      Inspiring, gripping, adventurous story about gamers all over the world banding together as the Webblys to fight for workers rights and fair compensation. I didn't always understand the gamer-ese, but that didn't matter or detract from the story at all...I had a hard time putting the book down, cried toward the end, and cheered when I finally reached the last page. Absolutely on par with Little Brother as one of my favorite books by Doctorow.
    • 3/5
      Chris brought a copy home from work for me, hurray.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.One thing I knew right away, though -- it really is overlong. This story doesn't have to be 500 pages. To its credit, there isn't any thread or character I immediately think of cutting, but there's just a lot. This book is a ton of people. Maybe a trim in each region would have helped. (Yasmin & Ashok in India and Matthew in China are nice but not critical. Conversely, more about Big Sister Nor would have been good.) The funny, exclamation-pointy authorial economy lessons work pretty well, and they lend some seriousness to the plot points, but they do stick out a bit too.But generally speaking, the deeply international setting is wonderful, and written like the author has been on the ground in those places (not sure?), the slang is cool, there's a lot of day-to-day culture that feels right, and the sociological take is almost never off-key. (There are perhaps a dozen too many "chin-waggles".)The best parts just stick out really well. Jie and her "Jiandi" folk-hero internet pirate radio show fame in China is amazing. That whole long, long, long scene when she first scoops Lu up and keeps him safe in one of her secret apartments and puts him on the air is probably the coolest part of the book. I also really liked Wei-Dong ("Leonard") and his flight from American boarding school, and his voyage in a teched-out shipping container. He gets the only kid-and-parents family drama in the book and that's done nicely, though feels a bit out of place in this book about teenagers, the internet, and bad business.In general, this felt like a great book for this author to write because it's awesome to have so much internet in a novel, written by someone who isn't only doing research, who feels it too. (This reminds me of the item on my wish list that is John Green write a book about internet friends.) Pretty much all of this stuff is real, or like what's real, and it's a deep level of detail but written really invitingly. Most of it isn't in my experience, but enough is tangential that it's exciting or funny or touching when it should be. All the hacker-ish stuff is totally thrilling to someone who's never done any of it, I won't lie. You lost me at "proxy", but ok I am totally flipping the page! The level of totally real espionage needed just to stay online, it's great, portrayed really well, and relevant to actual real places.The only thing is, the thrust of the book, unionizing the gamers and this mission's clashes with authority... I'm not sure any of this was... necessary? I mean it's set up to make a lot of sense, and we can see in the story how these workers are exploited (and just, charming to read this YA book about labor organization you guys). But I think the workers of the world thing connects in only a limited way. Characters die (one of which was surprising, one of which was not). And this ambition kind of hurts its ending -- the scope is so big that waiting for all the laces to tie up is sort of ho-hum, eventually.Moments I liked:"'You violate the social contract, the other person doesn't know what to do about it. There's no script for it. There's a moment where time stands still, and in that moment, you can empty out his pockets.'"And:"Wei-Dong loved his parents. He wanted their approval. He trusted their judgment. That was why he'd been so freaked out when he discovered that they'd been plotting to send him away. If he hadn't cared about them, none of it would have mattered."And, a joke worthy of repeating on the internet:"He could feel everything that was happening in the games he ran. He could tell when there was a run on gold in Svartalfheim Warriors, or when Zombie Mecha's credits took a dive. ... He could tell when there was a traffic jam on the Brooklyn Bridge in Zombie Mecha as too many ronin tried to enter Manhattan to clear out the Flatiron Building and complete the Publishing Quest."
    • 3/5
      A letdown after Little Brother. The disappointing thing about this book to me was that only the (highly unpleasantly stereotyped) corporate bad guys hacked. (In either the good or the bad sense.) So our gold farming / wage slave heroes were left with only quaint 20th century labor organizing.
    • 4/5
      I loved the first half of this book, but for me, the second half bogged down.Imagine a world a few years forward from ours. On-line gaming is a really, really big deal. The amount of money moving around within the games is huge. It's all play money, of course. Except there are significant numbers of people willing to trade real money for it."Gold farms" are a booming business-- groups spend long hours playing to earn game cash and other rewards, which then get sold to players looking for a boost. At first glance, it seems like a dream come true-- get paid to play video games. However, sweatshop conditions for these farmers take the pleasure away, and the demanding bosses with out of game enforcers take away the possibility of starting your own business.The book follows several people:Matthew is a young man in China, who is attempting to set up his own crew farming gold. His old bosses are not pleased.Wei-Dong is an American high school student. He's renamed himself to fit in better with his Chinese buddies he plays with all night. He finds himself living on his own when he runs away from his family, who are about to ship him to a school that will help him stay on track, away from any distractions.Mala lives in India, and commands her own army of players. When they first are offered money to play, it seems too good to be true. They find themselves deeper and deeper in a situation far less pleasant than expected.More characters are introduced throughout the book, and I was overwhelmed by them all near the end. There were so many, each with a role to play.At the beginning of the book, I loved the look at the interplay between the real and gaming worlds. The look at the meaning of money was fascinating and thought provoking. Bringing in politics and unions also kept causing me to stop and think about it. When the game-makers views of the issues were added, I loved seeing that side. Eventually, it got to be a little too much.Overall, that's my opinion of the book-- too much of too many good things.
    • 3/5
      Cory Doctorow's books are always a great read. They bring up interesting questions about Internet culture and rights, as well as explain things that may seem confusing to people who don"t obsess about the issues (like myself).

      I recommend that everyone at least try out Doctorow's novels, they might not be what you enjoy but at least you might learn something.