For the Win

For a fiction book, I can see the scenarios in the story happening in real life. The story about Matthew Fong and the goldfarmers is clearly feasible. As a World of Warcraft player, I have first handily dealt with goldfarmers due to their spamming. When I would go to look WoW-related sites, there will many popups and ads advertising goldfarming services. Also, there are times where doing all the work in the game takes a toll. A player, who feels like it takes too long to advance, might be entice to get those services. Like in the book, I can see certain organizations trying to cash in the opportunity of getting gamers to do that or just scamming them as well. In the case with Matthew, Boss Wing makes it a mob-like business with Wing forcing players like Matthew to work for him. From the looks of it, Wing’s place for his players to work in is like sweatshops but with people playing video games. I can see all of this hard and stressful but for people, especially from poor countries, it might be the only thing that they can get any employment. Plus, the idea of unionizing these groups
For Mala’s story, I have a hard time seeing that happening where rival companies pay people to kill other people within other games to kill the enjoyment. Again, there are many different online games that I am not aware of or played in. So, I cannot say that I have seen it before. Being killed constantly within a game can be very intimidating and frustrating. After awhile, I can see that people being discouraging playing those games. However, as tactic for companies to do, I find it hard that companies would do such a thing. From what Mala and her “army” are doing, I feel somewhat bad about those who have to goldfarm to make a living. By cutting them off, it is terrible to do so.
Wei-Dong or Leonard Goldberg is example of person who makes video games his life. It looks like he was addicted to video games as it controlled what he did as school and other activities were taking a back seat. However, he did get money from goldfarming. The constant denial of him playing too much video games shows that he was really addicted. By running away from his parents, it also showed that all he wanted to do was to play video games. Another part I found interesting from his perspective is how he was in with the foreign group of players. He is referred as a gweilo, a foreign devil. Goldberg did become friends with players he worked with. They only used that term as a friendly gesture. When the group ran a dungeon with a customer, they referred to player as a gweilo.