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maryehavens 's review for:
In Real Life
by Cory Doctorow, Jen Wang
Positives: advocating for female gamers, positive modeling of female gamers in both online and tabletop gaming, portrayals of real challenges of gaming in other countries, specifically China.
Negatives: this may just be me but I do not understand online currency like Bitcoin or these gold pieces in CoarseGold. On one hand, I get it: monetizing the game to level up. Where I get lost is the actual money being exchanged for game money. Why would people do that? And is Bitcoin and these gold pieces even the same? I've even watched a show called Things Explained to detail how this works and they might have well been speaking Greek - I just don't get it.
I love Wang's illustrations. The story: not so much. I wish that Doctorow had gone into more detail with the parallel activism with Anda's dad and Ah Duo's situation at his Coarsegold gold farming job in China. I'm also glad that Doctorow showed the conditions for these gold farmers - people in an impoverished situation with limited job opportunities. I'm sure there are parallels here with the banks of people sending out spam/creating Fake News, etc. These may not be bad people, just people with limited opportunities to make a living. I'm glad that Doctorow illustrated these points but it seemed like too many elements at once with the addition of the Fahrenheits AND Sarge's agenda. The little sprinklings of curse words were unnecessary and, I'm assuming, elevated this to YA instead of Juvenile. But I feel the book itself is better served as a juvenile book if they stripped some of the elements OR expand on the activism to make a better story. Just my opinion.
I think this is part of a series. I really liked Anda and her experience in online gaming seems very realistic.
Negatives: this may just be me but I do not understand online currency like Bitcoin or these gold pieces in CoarseGold. On one hand, I get it: monetizing the game to level up. Where I get lost is the actual money being exchanged for game money. Why would people do that? And is Bitcoin and these gold pieces even the same? I've even watched a show called Things Explained to detail how this works and they might have well been speaking Greek - I just don't get it.
I love Wang's illustrations. The story: not so much. I wish that Doctorow had gone into more detail with the parallel activism with Anda's dad and Ah Duo's situation at his Coarsegold gold farming job in China. I'm also glad that Doctorow showed the conditions for these gold farmers - people in an impoverished situation with limited job opportunities. I'm sure there are parallels here with the banks of people sending out spam/creating Fake News, etc. These may not be bad people, just people with limited opportunities to make a living. I'm glad that Doctorow illustrated these points but it seemed like too many elements at once with the addition of the Fahrenheits AND Sarge's agenda. The little sprinklings of curse words were unnecessary and, I'm assuming, elevated this to YA instead of Juvenile. But I feel the book itself is better served as a juvenile book if they stripped some of the elements OR expand on the activism to make a better story. Just my opinion.
I think this is part of a series. I really liked Anda and her experience in online gaming seems very realistic.