Wednesday, July 18, 2012

REVIEW - For The Win, by Cory Doctorow

Recommended to me by good friend, fellow music fan and ardent but - as this book revealed - not entirely reliable book recommender, Jon Larner, this was one of my vacation reads. 

The recommendation came when we discussed the great Makers, another Doctorow title I'd read. That book was a genuinely great story, about technology and invention within the context of a smelly economy.

Jon enthused about Doctorow's other books, particularly For The Win, which used a story about the mechanics, participants, and economics of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplasyer Online Role Playing Games). As Doctorow himself describes the book, "For the Win connects the dots between the way we shop, the way we organize, and the way we play, and why some people are rich, some are poor, and how we seemed to get stuck there".

What I didn't know was that Doctorow pitched this at "young adults", which epithet covers a wide audience, not exactly perfectly describing yours truly.

While I learned a lot about the dynamics and politics of these games, most of that was arguably useless, and certainly un-interesting, at least to me. I thought it would have been more relevant, as I like and play most games, but somehow the level of detail Doctorow covered proved tedious.

Whatever, I look forward to a discussion with Jon, armed with a +10 demon drencher, and a bagful of rocks, runes, and rubies.

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