Me on Waiting on Wednesday (324)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: Warcross
Author: Marie Lu
Release Date: October 3, 2017
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers (Penguin imprint)

From Goodreads:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu—when a game called Warcross takes the world by storm, one girl hacks her way into its dangerous depths.

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

I do wonder if this is how the world will be in about 500 years, if everyone will be plugged into some kind of virtual reality. if everyone will be plugged into something, if games will turn into life or death battle situations. If we'll become that numb.

Me on In Real Life

Title: In Real Life
Author: Cory Doctorow
Author/Illustrator: Jen Wang
Release Date: October 14, 2014
Publisher: First Second (Macmillan imprint)

Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on. It's a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It's a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. Gaming is, for Anda, entirely a good thing. But 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. 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.

In Real Life is an exploration of many things. Gaming, economics, friendship, wealth, poverty, labour, heroes and villains. There are two worlds, both in real life and in gaming: what's on the surface, the sparkle and excitement that's constantly promoted, and what's underneath, the downtrodden. When Anda glimpses that underneath side, she learns the hard way that nothing is easy, that right and wrong aren't simple terms anymore, and that fighting back isn't always the answer.

Anda is a sweet girl. She's nice, and she's a bit lonely, she doesn't seem to have many friends beyond those who play D&D. When she's introduced to Coarsegold she's found her place to be, a place where she can expressive and happy, where she can meet new people who like the same things she does. All she sees is the camaraderie, the working together.

It's not that big a part in the book, but there's a moment near the beginning that I found interesting. When Coarsegold is first introduced, the girls in Anda's class are asked if they game, and then if they game as female characters. Out of the three shown, none of the girls keep their hands raised. After reading Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff earlier this year, a book about a teenage guy who games as a female character in a game similar to Coarsegold, I found this moment curious. Girls are playing as guys and guys are playing as girls. It's an interesting look at how we want to appear to others online, and at gender.

Anda certainly gets a crash course in economics, labour, and poverty here, learning that gamers will pay other gamers in real life currency to obtain special items and in game currency for them. That that's how some people, like the teenager in China she meets through the game, make money to live. That they have to farm gold for others because their current job pays so little and provides no benefits. Her way of living now seems luxuriant: living in a house with her parents, a computer, good food, a car, good health benefits through her father's job thanks to a recent strike and resolution. Not everyone has the freedom to strike against their employers as they do in countries like the US, Canada, and England (to name a few, I'm sure there are many more). This is eye-opening to Anda, and she knows she can't leave it like this.

While exciting and entertaining, bright and colourful, this book also hits on some harsh truths and consequences, some we forget when wrapped up in the bright lights of games. Anda's story is one of learning, of consequences, of economics, of wealth and poverty, of human rights, and of friendship.

(I received an e-galley of this title to review from First Second through NetGalley.)

Me on Guy in Real Life

Title: Guy in Real Life
Author: Steve Brezenoff
Release Date: May 27, 2014
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins imprint)

It is Labor Day weekend in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a boy and girl collide on a dark street at two thirty in the morning. Lesh, who wears black, listens to metal, and is new to MMOs; and Svetlana, who embroiders her skirts, listens to Björk and Berlioz, and dungeon masters her own RPG. They should pick themselves up, continue on their way, and never talk to each other again. But they don't. This is a story of two people who do not belong in each other's lives, who find each other at a time when they desperately need someone who doesn't belong in their lives.

Guy in Real Life is entertaining and thoughtful, filled with great characters and a fair amount of gamer culture. But hopefully that doesn't scare away any non-gamers.

In this book the reader meets Lesh, maybe a little withdrawn, but maybe that's all the black clothes and the heavy metal. The reader also meets Svetlana, vaguely hippie-ish but extremely creative and artistic and comes across as random who a lot of people don't understand. They have their similarities, mostly that their parents don't quite understand them and want them to be not who they currently are. Their collision starts something, starts this weird journey through forests and graveyards. I liked that there was so much character development, that I could see them changing in different ways, figuring things out, figuring themselves out as the book went on. I also liked the chapters narrated by Lesh's RPG character, it was an interesting glimpse into the game.

The book isn't all about gaming, not completely packed with MMO terms and 20-sided dice jokes, but it is about two characters who game, one online and one with an in-person group. It's something they're interested in, something they're passionate about. Something they look forward to after a long day of school, parents, and real life pressure. And I love that. It doesn't have to be games, it could be art or music or sports. It's the enjoyment they get out of taking part it in that makes them feel realistic.

Roleplaying is a curious thing. It gives us the chance to be someone else, to live a different life, often a life filled with magic and monsters, with quests and heroes and dragons hoarding gold in dark caves. But it's not just in games that we put on a costume and pretend to be someone else. We do it at school, at work, in the grocery store, at the mall. We do it constantly in order to portray a role in front of others. It's who we want to be, or who we think we want to be, or who others want us to be. But showing people who we really are? That's so much harder.

I think this book says a lot about identity, about the ways in which we figure out who we want to be at different times. About the little things we see in other people that make us think about who we want to be instead of who we are at that moment. I hope that people who aren't into gaming, video or tabletop, give this book a read. I found this interesting, a little more serious than I was expecting, and a great book about two teens meeting by chance and what follows. The good and the bad, the raiding and the trolls. The adventure.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from HarperCollins Canada.)