For The Win!

For The Win by Corey Doctorow describes and highlights the situation and problems that can go wrong with our future society if the gaming industry monopolizes the economy. Both virtual and real worlds are merged into one as people can now make a living through either worlds, unions are formed, and most of the real-life problems we face now be seen in the virtual. Each of the main characters came from different social and cultural backgrounds but is somehow connected through MMORPGs. Their connection sparked more than just friendship but strong camaraderie through fighting corporate monopoly and union aggression. Towards the end of the story, lives were sacrificed but everything was revealed by the media.

The book has many inferences of the day to day news we hear about third-world country working conditions as well as children of wealthy family that are suffering from gaming. It made me quite uncomfortable which in this case is a compliment because it shows how realistic the novel is perceived. Back to the concept of gold farming, don’t we all start asking ourselves… where do these game currencies come from when in-game avatars messages you about a sweet deal for 10million xxx? I started thinking of Mathew’s unfortunate situation.

The second half of the novel deals with the main protagonists fighting together to make a difference. With Leonard illegally entering China to assist with the effort, these players, activists, and workers united to initiate their ultimatum against the corporate giants. Later, China reacted to this problem by raiding these hideouts and killing people. With blood stained on the officials, media now has the power to put everything to an end.

Overall, the novel is compelling because of the social issues it made me realize. Maybe I am over analyzing this but things like Chinese violence against civilian (1989 Tiananmen square massacre), Gold farmers in China (the stereotype we have as a society), gaming addiction (the situation of the other protagonists), and several others. If that was the intention of the author then this book should really be a bestseller.

Q: Do you think this could be reality without all the dramatization?

Talking about workers in the third world

"For The Win" is quite a frightening novel to me, especially when those "gold diggers" can actually exist in game world as machine. The novel describes how a group of gold farmers are collecting golds to benefit their own bosses, and if not follow the rules, they would be punished. Even for those who want to quit or form their worker unions can possibly got beaten up or even imprisoned. This book simply is linking the situation in the third world countries to those of the first world countries.

When looking through all the characters, we can assume that this fiction is not simply a teenage novel but a metaphor that depicts the real world situation. Mala and Matthew are both from the South East Asia and both have the great ability to gold farm but are strictly controlled by the higher status people. It metaphors the world of communism and dictatorship when powers are only shared by a few leaders. In addition, in the end the workers successfully live in a better lives is just like the people in China and India are living better life now than ever before.

This novel reminds me of the incident that happened in China this year. The Taiwanese Boss Terry Guo, who owns Foxconn Technology Group, one of the world biggest technology manufacture company, is famous for his strict discipline on workers. However, it is not the problem, the main problem was that thirteen people who worked under him committed suicide in the year of 2010. The news shocked the whole world because Foxconn Technology Group actually have a good working environment. Anaylists later discovered that it was that Chinese people today are not the people we used to think they are as before. Many of the new generations have their own life goals and making them to manufacture technological components and doing the same action over and over again can kill people. In another word, China's living standard is rising up enormously.

In reality there are a lot of workers who are earning so little just to do us a favor and make our lives easier. For example: Foxconn Technology Group is the world largest provider for the components of iPhone and iPads. So no matter how harsh it is to the workers, it is certain that we need these people to make our lives more convenient. But what will happen if everyone gets wealthy and no one is doing the job for us? do you think it is better? this is my question for you all.

The Severity of For The Win's Message

The main premise of the novel, For The Win, by Corey Doctorow involves an economy that strives from both the virtual and real worlds. This is accomplished from the process of gold farming, with real money being traded for virtual goods and services. Doctorow helps us arrive at this conclusion through the main characters that come from very different backgrounds, but are interconnected through online multiplayer games. Eventually, they go toe-to-toe with corporate and union heads and things get violent. After lives are lost, the media broadcasts their situation and they shed light on the issues of the company.

The story was more interesting than I had anticipated and is somewhat scary of how the economic future for some will unfold with the increase of online multiplayer games to more and more people. Other than economics, this also opened my eyes to just how harsh some of the working conditions of some countries can be. It frightens me to know that there are people working like slaves for things that so many take for granted.

When I say working like slaves, I am referring to the working conditions for those participating in gold farming. Doctorow points out how bosses force their workers to get as much game currency as possible so they can sell it for actual money. Also surprising is the fact that they actually make money doing it. People who buy in game currency may not realize how their sellers actually got it. And the people who work for this barely receive proper pay at all.

Other topics brought up in the novel were interesting as well, such as gaming addictions and online networking. Also, this may not relate exactly to gold farming but in one of my other classes we talked about Zynga, the developer of Farmville and other social networking games. Pretty much, this company made an incredible amount of money selling virtual goods for real money for people’s farms, etc. I remember my professor mentioning how they made more revenue than EA (Electronic Arts) in a span of time because of the low cost to make the virtual goods and the amount of people buying them. In my opinion, this is insane considering how popular EA is. However, Zynga banks on people trying to establish their virtual properties as classy as possible and they are obviously willing to pay to do so. I know this may not fit the exact definition of gold farming, but it is just amazing how a company is making so much money off of virtual goods that essentially have no value.

The the win, second half

      Lu/Tank came to Guangddong area because he was told that he could become a very rich. However, he and other people who came with were working in a bad condition with bad pay. Moreover, no one can get real paper to live there so that they buy the forged ones. Because of this reason, they are living in an atmosphere where they are scared of police because police can put them in jail. Moreover, their bosses know this fact and take advantages of them.  Lu said that this is a serious problem in China where riches get rich and poor are being used.  

       Justbob had her whole network online. She forms the good fighters and treats them well so the fighters love her. Her mission is to take on four worlds at the same time: Mushroom Kingdom, Zombie Mecha, Svartalfaheim Warriors, and Magic of Hogwarts. She wants to seize control of the economies of all four worlds. She wants to get the majority of the gold, good items, and power. Webblies and friends of Webblies such as Leonard, the American who came ovesea into China are fighting together in order to help gather around goldfarmers around the world and make the world better. The whole point of the second half was that the majority of the main characters work together to make some good changes. During the fight for making the better world, hacks and difficult proxy changes were involved.

       People are working in such bad conditions with low pay only because they are doing it for their living. This book teaches many other aspects other than just the definition of goldfarmer. It teaches the ethics, economy, culture, virtual society, and so on.  Goldfarmers are still out there selling items and game money, and one can find them easily online.  I Googled “buy game money” then it shows hundreds of links. No one knows under what kind of work condition these game money and items are made or found. It may be similar to the Goldfarmers from “For the Win” or not.  Moreover, there are still goldfarmers out there with low payment and poor treatment. I think this issue could be related to “Fair Trade” because similar to the goldfarmers many farmers and workers from other countries worked in a poor condition with unfair trade; nowadays, fair trade help the farmers from other countries to trade their goods in a fair price. Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries obtain better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as social and environmental standards (Wikipedia).

 Q: I talked about fair trade and how it relates to the reading. Do you guys think goldfarmers are deserved to be treated better with higher pay? 

An article from BorderHouse.

(http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=3231)

This article discusses how some Japanese men are dressing up as women and how it is a trend.

I define myself as conservative in moral issues but liberal in economic issues, this is not the news I wanted to see, along with the legalization of marijuana in more states (that I discussed in other classes), but the more shocking part, as a direct quote from the blog:

"How on earth is this video game news?  ”Hey everyone, there is this Japanese manga artist who likes to wear women’s clothing as a hobby – isn’t that weird?”  The article only briefly mentions his mother (a famous manga artist who drew Candy Candy), and doesn’t at all mention his skills as an artist."

 As the comments provided in the website really sums up greatly, they 'greatly undermine' gender identity and the basic values that human have.*

*i apologize for those who support LGBT movements, and I would also like to add that I do have friends that are LGBT and I treat them no different than I would have treat others.

There once was an incident in South Korea as well, that one guy dressed up as a women and asked for a date in a website (he did say that his gender is male) and then did received too much hate/love mail that he had to hide himself.

What are your thoughts on it? Am I too conservative?

For The Win and Problems

In the book, For The Win, the one of the most important concept, Cory Doctorow brought up is Gold Farming. He relates it to the real world labor condition, and economic issues. Even though the book was totally based on game stuff, and  MMOG, but it also has great relationship with some problems like social issues, game addiction, gold farming, labor union, and economic issue that were caused by MMOG. Gold farmers faced unacceptable condition, and the unfair sweatshop situation for gold farming turned out to be the reason people turn around and decided to go for rebel.

The most important issues in the book are gold farming. Gold Farming is a game business in which some bosses try to make real money by selling items, game currency, game character, and whatever worth to players. The bosses order their labors to earn game currency, and game rewarding. But the condition is really harsh. It would sound really cool because people can make money by playing, and enjoying game. However, the labors couldn’t find themselves enjoying the situation, because of bad work condition. The sweatshop for gold farming was the one of main problem in the book.

Even though the book was fiction, gold farming, and almost same stories is happening in the real world. I know a lot of Chinese people have their own PC café where owners, I’d say “bosses”, run more than 50 computers, and give their workers job about earning game currency, and rewarding by cheating the game or using hacking programs. Lots of corporation declared a war fighting with the gold farmers. Blizzard, NCSOFT (the maker of Lineage), and Gravity (the maker of Ragnarok) are known as good game to do the gold farming, and it’s quite easy to find a hacking program from it. Probably most MMORPG game companies have a team or department specialized in dealing with the gold farming problem. For example, lots of Chinese abused Koreans’ social security numbers, so they have no problems to make their login ID, and they use hacking program to make a lot of currency in short time which is generally impossible for normal users. This actually results in chaos to game itself because just like real world economy, if too much money is brought to the market (in this case, game market or game trade system), there will definitely be an inflation, and game company will not be able to control the game market. Therefore, now lots of Korean companies block users playing in china, and open Chinese server where only Chinese players can play within.

Before I look at the book, I wasn’t that familiar with the gold farming concept and how badly it could happen to the real world. it was interesting, and good enough to realize that we’ll face different kind of problem that interact with real money, and virtual money.

Here are my questions for you guys, have you ever heard someone working for gold farming, and made a lot of money from it? Then is he still happy doing it? Or just doing it for living?

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?

For the Win Part 2

The second part for For the Win features the Webblies in their fight to help unionize goldfarmers around the world. It has most of the main characters working together to help create that change. Leonard, the American, has actually illegally smuggle himself across the Pacific Ocean into China help his friends and colleagues. As we talked about in class, the Webblies consists of players, activists, and workers. The activists have taken a more hands on approach in fighting back against the workshops as they take their movement within the game.
The action of the books picks up as the law enforcement in China becomes violent against the Webblies. They raided places where they could apprehend members of this group. The police rounded them up and took them to jail. In very extreme cases, they shot at the members of the Webblies. One major figure who was killed was Lu who was shot when running away with Leonard and Lie. Along with his death, there were 42 people who were killed in the shakedown at that hideout. Due to that outcome, the media picked it up and it gave some exposure to their cause. Leonard and the others caught the attention of Conner of Coca Cola Games. With the Webblies in control of the games, Conner and the company were at their mercy.
The book overall was pretty good. The unionization of goldfarmers at a global scale is a huge up taking. Since it is illegal to do so because of user agreement, it would be hard to formulate that kind of union as video game reserve the right. If this would ever happen, would it ever be successful?

Gold Farming

As an ex-WoW player I was very familiar with the concept of Gold Farming, but only after reading some of the FTW and watching those videos in class have I realized how serious it was. Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions about Gold Farming is that it's a fairly new invention originated in WoW. Actually, the earliest instances of real money being traded for virtual goods can be tracked back to 1970s and 80s. Then, in 1990s with the emergence of massively multiplier online role-playing games (MMOs) this problem only persisted. Now, is this really a problem? I have no idea why companies like Blizzard look down upon people selling their virtual property for real money.. I mean, gold farmers will put in even more hours if there is a demand and chances are they will do it month after month which means profit for Blizzard. On the other hand, the players who purchase such goods or gold will not stop playing the game, if anything as they will gain more money or better items, they will be even more interested in playing the game.. to me, it seems like a win-win situation. Can someone explain to me why is it illegal, then?

Another thing I would like to touch upon is that the first thing I think about when I hear the term gold farming is China. I believe this is due to the fact that most of the GFs are indeed from China as can be seen on these EQ2 charts:

Now, another question coming your way: How come China is so famous for GFs? What makes China so special that such great % of players from there choose to be GFs? Is it harsh economic conditions or something else?

On a final note, while I was researching GFs in order to learn about them, I stumbled upon a site that compares GFing to drug trafficking.. do you think that's a stretch or indeed, are there similarities?

Gold Farming and my thoughts.

I want to present an opinion about gold farming and why I think it is illegal (beside the fact that company banned it) in light of Jasmine's question, which I haven't really thought about it.

In MMORPGs, my basic assumptions (the core level) is that it is - even though it is almost exclusively team-work oriented game - played by one human being, and that they shall acquire it within game only. I have not experienced a single game that supports or encourages outside exchange methods such as paying items in cash*

*Closest example I can think of it right now is that EVE online offers you to pay a monthly subscription fee in in-game currency/items, but that's about it.

Introduction of gold farming, most likely started in Korea/China, effectively drives down the cost of goods created in game dramatically, for obvious reasons; they do not exists to achieve their personal goals - rather, their 'goal' is to earn more profits. And to exchange the in-game profits to real-world currencies, they sell their items/golds/whatever is necessary.

I understand that as professor Nakamura mentions, some people maybe are doing it for their living; in this article, I do not want to go deep into moral issues that are raised in both side of players: that are aided by the presence of semi-legal market and that are damaged by the presence of gold farmers*

*I cannot understand the fact that they were angered by the term 'gold farmers' - it is their job.

People that are aided by gold farmers have much to say. They could say that they want to show off their characters*, they want to beat/enter certain dungeons, and many other goals there might be. However, as professor Nakamura says, their eventual goal is more or less to earn a profit out of their characters.

*This goes into Korean cultures, that they are really busy studying and since they all wear uniforms, they are forced to show off their characters in any way, and it usually is done throughout cyber world.

For many of people that are so-called 'damaged', their reason is to 'kicking the ladder away', that they want to keep their positions as they are stronger than others and want to keep their positions*

*this is from Ha-Joon Chang's famous book, which uses same concept in terms of developed nations-underdeveloping nations.

As I finish the 'for the win' book, I would like to discuss more into it. However, I want to hear many of others' opinions, on what they think about it, and others.

FTW

Cory Doctorow’s For The Win is a story based on three individuals that met each other through playing MMORPGs. There are several main characters in the book each representing different social issues we face right now. Mathew is a great gold farmer who worked for Boss Wing but he rebelled with other gold farmers and went on strike. Mathew symbolizes modern day unionization of workers due to poor working condition. A good example would be Chinese workers; around five months ago, Foxcoon Technology Group had to deal with unionized workers because the pay was too low that some workers suicide in order for their family to collect compensation (the compensation was larger than what these workers could make in a lifetime). Subsequent events happened in other factories owned by various huge corporations leading to a significant increase in wages across the Industrial China.

Mathew’s character also portrays the current working conditions and the darker side of China and other third-world country. Mathew represents a lower class man trying to survive by making a living out of playing computer games. This can be translated to sweatshop workers struggling to pay their bills off low wages.

Other characters such as Leonard/Wei-Dong is a gamer who ran away from home because his parents were about to send him away. Leonard’s introduction into the book demonstrated a level of cultural acceptance issue. He adopts a Chinese name, wakes up 1am, to raid with his online friends. His character shows some of the gaming problem among youth in the society and the means these players seek to find their own community and culture. Leonard went as far as to flip his life around in order to find belongingness. Other characters such as Lu, Mala, Mr. Banerjee, Jasmin, etc each plays an important in the book but more importantly; each of them represents a social issue revolving around gaming.

Though I was never a gold farmer, I knew one. He was recruited at an internet cafe and was promised cash for a certain amount of ingame currency. It sounded enticing and promising because it becomes a source of income for him to pay for his personal desires. However, he realized that it has taken a toll on his life. After several intervention, he finally quit his job without any “problems” and went to college.

For The Win

In Cory Doctorow's fictional novel, For the Win, the author holds the audience's hand as he gives us a look into the underbelly of the gaming world. More specifically, by framing the economics and politics of the gaming world through the perspectives of a few major characters, the author attempts to better illustrate how computer games have brought the world together not only socially, but on every level. Through the use of the Matthew character, we are introduced to a story arc in which (adolescent) gold farmers face harsh work conditions and oppression at the risk of beatings, jail time and possible death. While the story calls for a more humanistic view of foreign gold farmers, it also acts to show the typical living and work conditions that are present across the world today, one in which people literally have no choice but to work ludicrous hours to make ridiculously low wages. Moreover, the story demonstrates the reality of video games and how they are not merely entertainment media, rather, media with powerful implications and the potential to effect lives in unforeseen ways.

Readers are later given a deeper look into video game economics through Connor Prikkel who, while intelligent enough to be attending Standford in pursuit of a PhD, realizes the economic potential of gameworld currencies. The story of Prikkel acts to give credibility to gameworlds as having the potential to be "worlds" in which people find value in their characters, their characters' lives, and the items or possessions within the gameworld. Moreover, the author puts to rest the notion that video games are frivolous and meaningless as he states that the value of currency, whether in virtual worlds or the real world, are imagined and can only exist so long as there is faith in it. With this, we are taken on an unrealistic grind in which Prikkel uses the same energy and addictive properties of video games to buy, trade, and sell his way into real world riches through virtual world goods.

With the creation of the Webblies and the development of the relationships between Mala and Yasmin as well as the activists including Big Sister Nor, Krang, and Justbob, the author successfully illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the internet as it affects the physical world or rather, how certain aspects of gaming and virtual worlds can transfer over to the real world while others cannot. Through the struggle to get the Webblies unified and running as well as the clear dissonance in the quality of life between different characters who play the same games, we can better see that while there is great potential in social networking and video games/virtual worlds, the extent of this potential is severely limited by how much value an individual places in these worlds. While it may seem redundant, this brings me to again question: What is it exactly, that makes virtual worlds, virtual relationships, and virtual goods, any less "real" than their "real-life" counterparts? Is putting monetary value in a rare or epic in-game item or even a virtual house any different from putting monetary value into digital music or a movie ticket or a luxury vehicle?

For the Win - First Half

So far, For the Win by Cory Doctorow is a fictional book about different people around the world who get paid to play and eventually all get connected by the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web (IWWWW), a union of people who get paid to play.

There are many different characters in the book. Matthew is a master golf farmer who used to work for a guy named Boss Wing, but then he and the other workers went on strike. Leonard/Wei-Dong is a paid gamer in America who ran away from home because his parents were going to send him away for playing too many games. Lu is a friend of Leonard and Matthew, participated in the strike, and got interviewed by Jiandi, the host of the Factory Girl Show. Mala is a girl from Dharavi who started playing games for fun, but then got noticed as a extremely good gamer by a man named Mr. Banerjee, and now gets paid to attack other workers within the game.Yasmin is a 14 year old girl who was Mala's friend and was part of her "army," but then realized the people she was attacking within the game were just workers just like her, so she decided to join the IWWWW. Big Sister Nor is the leader of IWWWW, but was badly beaten and in the hospital (at halfway through the book). All the characters mentioned except for Mala are part of IWWWW.

So far the book is entertaining and informative. Doctorow really puts the reader into the shoes of these characters. Before I read the book, I thought of gold-farmers as people who just were too lazy to get a real job so they decided to sell gold to make money without caring about messing with game economies. Now I can see that there are large factories of people who farm gold for a living and get paid very little. In addition to helping readers understand why people do this, Doctorow gives lessons like the basic economy lecture between Ashok and Yasmin on pages 83-86.

One thing I don't like about this book is how Doctorow writes out the in-game parts. The games are fictional, so it's hard to picture what's happening and what's actually going on. I know he's trying to compel the reader by using all the details of the games, but with the number of different games he writes about, it all just gets confusing and I usually just skip over those parts.

Overall the book is quite interesting and I haven't really dreaded reading it. My question is, who is your favorite character so far?

Gold Farming

The novel is based around the story of 3 people, who are all connected through the gameplay of MMORPGS. Wei-dong(leonard) who is from Los angeles and obsessed with video gaming, he ends up joining the webblies who are a union of workers who want to better pay and to unite illegal game players and help oppressed players like the other 2 people within the story his connection with Matthew Fong leads him to runaway from home and attempt to join him, like Mala( general robotwallah) who is a fifteen year old game player who takes place in battles over the internet, she works in terrible conditions and is in charge of a virtual army in India. She also works for Mr.Banerjee who pays her attack other gamers along side her friend Yasmin. Then you have Matthew Fong from south china and he wants to develop his own gold farming business, yet he is constantly harassed from his boss.He quits a sweatshop he was working at, and tries to make a living selling to lazy players.

Being that im not much of a gamer beyond, sports game and some RPG's, i had never had any experiences with gold farming or even knew what it was, however reading into the novel has really increased my knowledge about gold farming. Which is where people play games for hours and rack up on virtual goods and sell it to other gamers who want to level up or are to lazy to do the work in exchange for real money. This was a very interesting concept to me and i found myself looking further into the subject and trying to find out exactly why and how it takes place.

What are your experiences with Gold farming?

FTW

Cory Doctorow's For the Win may be a bit teen-targeted and melodramatic, but he does certainly raise a few important points with regards to gaming. The book is split up into numerous plot threads, some related and some not, each of which highlights different gaming-related issues through the eyes of a particular character.

The story of Wei-Dong, Matthew, Lu, and their party of Chinese (and not-Chinese) gold farmers has easily contained the majority of these developments so far. Wei-Dong was an American working with the Chinese farmers who had become addicted to his game, and it had an enormous impact on his studies - he dropped from straight As to low Cs in an alarmingly short timeframe. The resulting problems eventually compounded to such an extent that he ran away from home to start living alone, gold mining on his own until he was old enough to escape his parents' authority. Matthew, Lu, and the Chinese side of the guild were working at the same task under harsh conditions for what could almost be considered a mobster boss until they were raided by the police, beaten, and dragged off to prison. Lu managed to get away and meet a girl, Jie, who runs a radio show revolving around injustices towards workers like him. A few casually mentioned points of interest are the playful use of the derogatory term "gweilo" (a rather rude way to refer to a foreigner) towards Wei-Dong by Chinese members of the guild, which reflects on the overuse and possible desensitization of gamers towards similar derogatory slang in today's competitive gaming environment, and Jie's passing mention of the Skinner Box, a study of addiction revealing that a rat will eventually learn to press a lever a given number of times to receive food, but will continually hammer on the lever if food is dispensed at random intervals. This is a very important principle to apply to gaming, whether it is to study video game addiction or simply how to draw players into a game and coerce them to play more. Similarly discussed is a character who is studying a "formula for fun," trying to find the optimal way to get players to come back to a game whether they enjoy it or not.

Much of what I got out of Mala's story was the sense of uncertainty between members of her team and the concept of paid griefers, whose job it is to hunt down and thwart competitors' gold miners. Situations like this raise the question of when playing a game is no longer playing a game, and when it becomes business, as well as identifying the fickle nature and detachedness of supposed in-game "allies." Online gaming is often ignorant of class, race, gender, and other factors, and this story serves to highlight the upsides and downsides of this fact. When playing a game for real-world gain, there is much to gain and little to lose by betraying "allies" for a higher bidder, and one has to wonder how well-defined "friends" and "allies" in such an environment truly are, with few consequences for immoral behavior and devastating results from being turned on.

As I've started to flesh out, among the basic story told in the book, there are hidden questions being raised - in some cases questions that people haven't had to ask before because there existed no context for them. What are some of the issues that you found stood out at you when you were reading the book? Were any of them unique to a gaming environment, or do they have a broader spectrum as well?

For the win

When it comes to the world of gaming, as in the “real” world, winning isn’t everything–it’s the only thing. And in order to win, as a blurb on the cover of Cory Doctorow’s latest fascinating and ambitious novel For the Win states, “Online or offline, you’ve got to organize to survive” (Doctorow). The novel ‘For The Win’ by Cory Doctorow emphasis on the lives of teen gamers around the world. These teen gamers all around the world work in teams for the boss gold farmers. Matthew Fong quits a "gold farm," a online sweatshop where they sell the game points, in the industrial South China city of Shenzhen. Matthew and his gold-farming friends make their meager livings by logging on to earn game points and prizes they can sell to hapless beginners or lazy players. These gamers all work together to get the gold out of dungeons and other areas in games. Then they sell it to their bosses, where the bosses buy for actual money to wealthy First World gamers. For the Win is consists of primarily a teen audience, but it has many economic, ethical, moral, and philosophical elements in it that influence everyone in the world in the begging of the novel.  Los Angeles high-school student Leonard Goldberg, aka Wei-DongWei-Dong, is the main character and people think he is a Chinese logged in from China. The author talks about his game routine in his guild raid and the conversation between players from all over the world.   It’s a game that sometimes is played for keeps, because people who want to quit working for some of the bosses and either start up their operation or organize a union of gamers can find themselves beaten by the police or the bosses’s goons, imprisoned, fined, or possibly killed, to serve as an example to others.

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.

What is this I don't even

This goes beyond "casual" gaming, into the realm of "passive" gaming. Seriously. I understand that the game is targeted at people who don't normally play games and might need a little help to gain that "feeling of competence", but what good is a mimetic interface if you don't even have to mime what you're doing?

ESPN's Outside the Line

I don't know if it's re-run or whatnot, but in this hour (2pm, november 19th) I was flipping through channel and I found out that Kobe Bryant, a prominent, top-of-the-level basketball player and a huge gamer, was apparently dressed up as a soldier in newest Call of Duty..or whatever the FPS game is.

I do not know if I can get a copy of it or review it later on, but I think it's really good topic especially we have just discussed this not a while ago. the so-called panelists were discussing if Kobe has any responsibility should there be one.

I'd like to watch it, but my TV is really malfunctioning (it needs good smack once in 2 minutes) and I can't really concentrate. someone can help me out here?

This Woman Is The Nintendo Wii Killer

This was an interesting article I found while browsing Kotatu.com.

http://kotaku.com/5692114/this-woman-is-the-nintendo-wii-killer

Race and Identity in Digital Media

First and Foremost i apoligize for my late posting....I enjoyed reading Proffesor Nakamura's article, because it deals with a subject that is very present within todays gaming community. She begins by explaing online racists microaggression, which occurs very often in online gameplay. She then goes on to explain neoliberalism which "celebrates freedom, progress, and individualism." She goes onto explain that the virtual mcommunities we play in would be ideal neoliberal space, because through the anonymous avatars that are created gender and race cannot be seen. She then goes onto explain gold farming and how it came about and what its purpose was. She then closes out the article by talking about the game aganist all odds which puts its player in the situation of being a refugee and forces you to make decesions that effect whether or not you make it out alot. This game is seen as a form of education beacsue while playing you get insight into what these refugees experience, also there are links that are provided that allow the players to get more information about issues involving the refugees.

I found it really interesting when professor talked about online microaggression within her article. This is a subject that hits home for me because i experience it often, although i am at times guilty of trash talking i know where to draw the line. We see through online gameing that people are willing to say anything to get into the mind of the person they are playing aganist, this can often lead to racists or sexists comments which are often used. I often wonder ways that this can be controlled or if there can be a penalty enforced to crack down on these issues, and i cant seem to come up with any ways to do this without enfringing the freedom that we all desire within gaming communities.


What are some ways that we can control the online racists microagression that we see in gaming today?

Race and Identity

Before the internet and participation in virtual communities were not as actively used as now, many scholars predicted virtual world as the place that would be the closest to Neoliberalism ideals because of the thought that avatars would generate and produce "one's "self" without any type of constratint or limitation, such as gender, size, body shape, or skin color (Nakamura 2). However, unlike previous beliefs that virtual communities like social networking sites and virtual workds (MMOs) will be a place of "raceless, genderless, and disembodied space", problems regarding race and identity are apparent in virtual worlds. As Professor Nakamura suggests that "microracism and sexism" are even part of a virtual world.

Problems of racism and sexism can be found even from the starting of making one's own avatars in virtual world. Professor Nakamura suggests that "avatars are often constructed from a fairly narrow ranged of faces, bodies, and features...which creates a normative virtual body" (Nakamura 2). I believe one of the biggest problems of this limited-portrayal of avatars contribute to "false" standarization of beauty. Whites are often considered as physically attractive even in virtual worlds just like in the real world contribute whites as the standard of beauty while placing other colored-races as less-attractive.  This limitiation of choice in creating avatars is not only a problem in MMO games. For example, when we create profiles for ourselves in online communities and social networking sites, most of them only give us options of choosing between male or female. This can be looked as stereotyping of genders and not giving enough consideration to transgenders and bi-genders. Professor Nakamura gives an example in MMO World of Warcraft where "players are often assumed to be men unless proven otherwise" (Nakamura 4). Because of the stereotypical belief that more men play games than women construct sexism idea in virtual worlds. Also while black and Latino users are the "heaviest users" of video games, limitation in choices of selecting characters in many games is "highly unrepresentative of the actual population and even of game players" (Nakamura 5). This example also poses a problem of racism in virtual worlds.

Professor Nakamura also talks about "gold farming" in many online games such as World of Warcraft and Lineage II. Because of the fact that most "gold farming" occurs in Asia, especially in China, the illogical belieft that all gold farmers are Chinese and thus, Chinese are gold farmers is apparent in virtual world among gamers. Many gamers believe "gold farmers" do affect negatively in gaming environement and this claim might be true. However, the hatred against gold farmers lead to the hatred toward Chinese population is a racial problem that is important to take a look at. For example, when I participated in a raid in World of Warcraft, I once introduced myself as a Korean (in American server). There, not all, but some players who are ignorant of Asian countries related me as a gold farmer. In a way, issues of racism and sexism are dealt more seriously due to the fact that players are not communicating face-to-face. The anonymity in virtual worlds is also the cause of the treatment of racism and sexism in more violent manner among some players.

As we can see from the game "Against All Odds", there are some edutainment games that are made for the purpose of teach cross-racial and cultural empathy. While I was playing this game, I acknowledged the purpose of the game that "works to teach players "the importance of treating refugees with tolerance and respect" by "letting you experience what it is like to be a refugee" (Nakamura 9). However, the lack of entertainment element in the game prevented me from concentrating on playing the game. The expereince of playing the game was more like reading a manual of how refugees are treated in the world. Here, I noticed that the entertainment element is also very important in attracting more people to play the game and letting them fully focused on playing the game. In order to utilize this type of game, more resources are needed to make the game educational and entertaining at the same time.

Question: What do you think about lack of choices in selecting gender in most games and virtual spaces? (most games, social networking sites, and other virtual communities let users to identify themselves as either male or female) Do you think this causes a problem in shaping transgenders and others who don't consider themselves as neither male nor female to be viewed as less-human in today's society?

Race and Identity in Games

Professor Nakamura starts by talking about how racism and sexism are a part of the virtual world. "While computer-mediated communication and digital telecommunication have been praised for their ability to let users experience a “color blind” social environment, hate speech, racist imagery, and other anti-social behaviors that found in virtual worlds and other online social spaces are surely forms of electronic microaggression."

She goes on to talk about how the virtual world is supposedly a "race and gender free-self," exhibiting a "neoliberal ideological position," and how this isn't really the case. Games often let players create avatars of themselves, creating the idea that there are no limitations, but many times players are only given a few options for faces, bodies, and features, creating a "normative virtual body, one that is generally white, conventionally physically attractive, as well as traditionally gendered, with male and female bodies extremely different in appearance." An example of this is when Tracey John, a Chinese woman, tried to create her avatar, there were a variety of accessories, "but when it came to skin color, it only offered different faces in one pale hue."

Racism and sexism also occur through player interaction. Even though women and players of race are given the option of being themselves, they often choose "more normative" ones, meaning gender and race are very prevalent within games. In World of Warcraft, many females will play as males to avoid sexual harassment. This is done so often that real girls with girl avatars have to convince others that they're female. In Counter-Strike, a Cuban-American player named Danny Montaner (aka fRoD) was accused of cheating and was told "Go cut my grass you fucking spic." In World of Warcraft, people who work for companies by working 12 hour shifts of earning items and gold are called "Chinese gold farmers, since most of the farming occurs in China. A popular farming spot in the game is called "China Town" by some Western players. This is very offensive because while many gold farmers are Chinese, not all of them are, meaning it's just the Chinese that get a bad rep. "A player who speaks either Chinese, ungrammatical or “broken” English, or refuses to speak at all, or who repetitively harvests the game’s prizes or 'mobs' is often assumed to be a 'Chinese gold farmer' and may be targeted for ill-treatment or even virtual death."

Nakamura then goes into a lighter note about how games can help put people in the shoes of those of different gender or race. In the game Against All Odds, players play the part of "a young person's flight from oppression in his or her home country to exile in an asylum country." The goal of the game is to increase awareness and knowledge about refugees, and I think it does this well. I played the game and having me actually in their shoes and having to make these tough choices really made me think of what that would be like in real life.

People are always going to be racist, or at least hold some racial stereotypes, but in today's world, no one is really public about it. What do you think can be done to decrease the racism and sexism within the virtual world?

Meaning of Race in Digital Media

In the essay "Race and Identity in Digital Media," the author posits that modern day racism has become far less common and has taken a more subtle form, one which disappears for the most part, from the public sphere of discussion. However, there exists the problem of "microaggression" and "microracism," existing in online social spaces and virtual worlds in which, although less direct, have the potential to harm those exposed to it. This is especially important to note as social networking sites and virtual communities "are becoming part of a public sphere, where ideas and intimacies are exchanges, relationships formed and maintained, and identities are constructed and sometimes policed" (Nakamura, p.2). As consumers of digital media place increasingly more value into their media experiences, the Internet, once hailed for "[producing] a sense of self that seemingly transcended nation, race, and gender," has now become an true-to-life extension of the real world (Nakamura, p.2).

"The neoliberal position maintains that social disadvantage is a result of an individual's failure to 'make themselves' correctly, and that inequality is due to this poor personal choice rather than other people's prejudices against particular races, genders, sexualities, or class positions" (Nakamura, p. 3).
The neoliberal ideal takes a position as unrealistic as the utopian perspective, claiming to offer virtual communities "color-blindness," or a "disembodied space where gender and race cannot be seen." On the contrary , however, this outlook in and of itself is rooted in the hegemonic perspective of class and race and although ideal, is unrealistic and acts in detriment towards the understanding of race in the digital world. Moreover, while digital games commonly allow their players to design and create avatars as representations of themselves, too often, players are given numerous options all within narrow constraints that serve to further the aforementioned hegemonic order. This, along with the underrepresentation of minorities in key roles in video games, has resulted in a video game world which is "'highly unrepresentative of the actual population and even of game players,' and that a lack of media representation 'can have identity and self-esteem effects on individuals from these groups'" (Nakamura, p.5). Moreover, such misrepresentations of minorities within the world of gaming have led to instances such as that experienced by professional gamer Danny Montaner as real-world racial stigmas bleed over into the digital realm.

As players place more meaning into their regular consumption of digital media and the interactions within, it is important to understand the social implications of race, class, and identity representations within such virtual worlds. Are digital media in general constructed with race and discrimination built into their foundations? In other words, are such problems inevitable or is it possible to manipulate how race and gender are seen through such media?

Against All Odds and In-Game Discrimination

I played through most of the first and third modules of the UN Refugee Agency game, "Against All Odds" and was not very impressed. I did not really feel sympathetic towards my character in the game. If anything, the limited nature of the gameplay made me appreciate the predicament less than before. The only part that was vaguely powerful to me would be the first part of the first module, where you must lie to not be beaten and thrown in jail, otherwise, the rest of the game seemed to trivialize a large portion of the "difficult decisions" you were forced to make. As much as this serious game was trying to let me "experience what it is like to be a refugee," I don't think that experience was conveyed to me very well.

One of the things I found very interesting was the emergence of in-game racism towards female dwarves in WoW. This racist attitude stemmed from the frequent choice of female dwarf for Chinese gold farmers, but apparently now has become a real in-game racism, where players will be harassed and greifed if they inadvertently choose to be a female dwarf. It is also interesting to note that gold farmers of any nationality are referred to as "Chinese gold farmers" by many players.

Do you think that racism could originate in a videogame without influence of racism against a culture outside of the game? For example, could an online community just begin to hate elves because they are different from other races?

Discrimination in the game world

Professor Nakamura's article "Race and Identity in Digital Media" talks about the racism that exists in the game world. Although it is claimed that the issue of racism has become better in the real world, many people still hold discriminated discussion in private (p1). Part of the private racism includes online racist microaggression. According to Nakamura, "online racist microagression is disembodied and occurs in an easily-escaped form, on a computer that can be turned off or walked away from" (p1). It is powerful because since people cannot see each others' faces, it is so easy to insult others without any consequence.

Neoliberalism is often used to justify racist acts since it claims that "social disadvantage is a result of an individual's failure to "make themselves" correctly, and that inequality is due to this poor personal choice rather than other people's prejudices against particular races, genders, sexualities, or class positions" (p3). The idea of Neoliberalism is similar to the concept in the modern world that the reason why minorities cannot get good jobs is because they don't try hard. It totally discounts the existence of white privilege. Although Neoliberalism claims that inequality is due to poor personal choices not the prejudices, it is clearly not the case in the game. According to Nakamura, girls often experience prejudices that "many female players adopt male avatars to avoid sexual harassment" ,and that they are often "unable to convince others that they are "real girls" (p3,4). Similar to girls, minorities often experience prejudice by the underrepresented of their images in the game. According to Nakamura, users of color and women are often forced to choose dominant images since their identities are underrepresented (p5).

In a more severe form of discrimination, minority players often receive insulting commends from other players based on their race. In Michael Kane's case, he is often insulted by the words "Mexican" and fucking Spic" since he is a famous Mexican player in the game Counter Strike(p5). In another example, Chinese people are being discriminated in World of Warcraft because of the gold farmers. Without taking into account of those Chinese who simply just want to play the game, people insult the ethnicity as a whole. This problem can even lead to real-life discrimination against Chinese people.

According to my experience, I have only experienced two major discrimination in real life. However, I realized there are a lot more racist commends when I watch Youtube videos that consist images of Asians. So my question for you all: have you seen any racist commends on Youtube and what are the videos about?