For The Win... Overview

                Corey Doctorow’s book, For The Win,is set in the near future in which gold farmers slave away in virtual worlds that boast economies rivaling real world ones.  The workers in these game worlds are often times servants and are abused.  The stories of the characters in the book intertwine and link through gaming and technology.  A China-obsessed Jewish teen from Southern California, kids from Indian slums and Chinese gold farmers collide with union leaders, greedy bosses and an underground talk radio celebrity.  The perspective of the games is through massively-multiplayer-online games.

                While reading this book, one idea consistently kept looming over my head.  Although the act is technically illegal, how can gold farming be tolerated?  That is, though many people farm gold around the world, it seems to be ok.  Professor Nakamura provided an excellent analogy in class by comparing gold farming to prostitution.  While they are both looked down upon, they still popularly exist in the world.  It is sad that people are forced to make a living out of such a repetitive practice.  In the book, Wei-Dong states, “The future’s a weirder place than we thought it would be when were little kids.  Look at gold-farming, how weird is that?”  The same could be said for prostitution.  People are willing to practically do anything now-a-days for monetary value, especially acts that they never saw themselves doing.

                Given the harsh current status of the global economy and further development of online gaming, do you foresee gold-farming to become increasingly popular?  What impacts would have on society as a whole?