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.