Now look at what the Internet has wrought. Anyone who has suffered family fallout over an evening of Monopoly, or lost sleep over a Fantasy Football roster, knows this all too well. Their mini-marketplaces and ersatz economies are just as hard to predict as their real-world counterparts. Ages 12 up.Games have unintended consequences, good and bad. Characters come to life through Wang's (Koko Be Good) fluid forms and emotive faces, and her adroit shift in colors as the story moves between the physical and gaming worlds is subtle and effective. It's a noble cause, but it comes with potential consequences for both Raymond and Anda.

Initially, Anda is led to believe that Raymond and his ilk are corrupting the game, but after she discovers their tenuous economic circumstances and poor living conditions, she begins urging Raymond to demand better treatment. After joining the massively multiplayer online game Coarsegold, Arizona high schooler Anda meets Raymond, a boy from China who works as a 'gold farmer,' collecting in-game resources to be sold for real-world cash (a concept Doctorow explored in-depth in 2010's For the Win). In a heartfelt and of-the-moment story, Doctorow draws on his technology acumen and activism to portray the intricacies of 21st-century global citizenry, while also touching on what it means to be a gamer (particularly a female one). This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person's real livelihood is at stake.įrom acclaimed teen author Cory Doctorow and rising star cartoonist Jen Wang, In Real Life is a sensitive, thoughtful look at adolescence, gaming, poverty, and culture-clash.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. Gaming is, for Anda, entirely a good thing.īut things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer - a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. It's a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. It's a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero.

Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on.

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow