Track 2 Summer: For The Win

Welcome to Track 2: For the Win! This track begins on July 15, 2014 and will focus on reading Cory Doctorow's science-fiction novel "For the Win". In addition to reading this book and over the course of the "book club" we will be having discussions about human ethics, virtual economies, player status and esports. This track will be very laid back and will feature Google Hangout Discussions, Virtual World Office Hours, Weekly discussions, video comparisons and mini tours. If you wish to get the full experience of this book club, we suggest you go and download World of Warcraft here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ . This takes about a day to download with the updates that it will need, you can play free up to level 20 to get an idea about what the main characters are doing. 

The book has three main protagonists: Matthew, Leonard and Mala. Matthew is a talented strategist in China able to calculate what dungeons to do that grant him the most amount of gold in the shortest amount of time. Oh and did I forget to mention he could play eight high-level characters all at once. Yeah, I have trouble keeping track when I use double-screens, talk about multi-tasking! Mala is a brilliant fifteen-year-old from rural India whose battle techniques have earned the nickname "General Robotwalla" and has built quite the reputation for herself on the servers for her ruthlessness. Even though Matthew and Mala are from across the globe, Leonard lives in Southern California where he would rather play online games than do his homework, doesn't that sound like a lot of kids these days... Anyhow, this book has a deeper layer as these characters and their stories somehow become intertwined when they meet with the mysterious Big Sister Nor who recruits them to help cause some mischief and mayhem in the Virtual Economies, but they don't know that. Will her plan succeed? You will have to read to find out.

Now the games in the book: Svartalfheim Warriors, Savage Wonderland & Zombie Mecha; they have real world equivalents (Age of Conan/Nexus, World of Warcraft and Mechwarrior Online.)

Now please join and use the G+ Community Group - Metagame Book Club to further your discussions with the group. For Track 2, please use the "For The Win Discussion" and "For The Win Questions" Categories when posting for this strand to get points and to keep things kind of organized.