For the Win by Cory Doctorow

The book caught my eye because I have read another book by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, you should go read it right now) and I thought it would be interesting. I WAS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!!!


This book has a scary looking cover, making you think it would be all about war, but it isn't really all about war.

This book was particularly interesting because I recently finished US History I, and one of the last units we did was the Industrial revolution and reform movements. This book took something in the present, video games, and brought in this historical aspect. I'm not sure if Cory Doctorow purposely made it like history, but it was awesome nonetheless. I definitely didn't expect it to have all these things that reminded me of my history class.

So I went into this book pretty clueless about the way most games work, I play basic games, but I don't have a lot of time for those cool games on the internet with the different worlds and stuff like World of Warcraft or whatever it is.

But this book explained perfectly how stuff like that worked, how people can make a living playing these games.

So what happens when there are millions of workers all over the world, working in terrible conditions for these bosses, playing games, but still in slums and they can be beaten for bad days and money taken away for no reason.

Simple, reform movements, strikes, lockouts, lock ins. All that stuff you hear about from the early 1900s.


This book was beautifully written, a little hard to read because you actually have to think about what they are talking about, but it isn't confusing.

Go read Little Brother, and then read this book. Now.