Doctorow's Next Book is For the Win, Literally

A sci-fi author and co-editor of the cultural site BoingBoing is working on a new book scheduled to come out in April that deals with economics and video games.

Cory Doctorow, author of the upcoming book "Makers," is a self-professed activist, journalist and blogger. In promoting his new book, he has mentioned his next project called "For the Win," a novel for young adults that deals with union organizing in video games, according to his web site. 

Not too much is known about the book, other than what we have been able to piece together from various interviews that Doctorow has done to promote Makers. In an interview on Tor.com in August, it was revealed that the book is a followup to his short story, "Anda's Game":

"For the Win" is almost done. It’ll be, I think they’re saying May 2010? Or March, one or the other. A month that starts with an “m” and is in the spring of 2010, provided I can turn it in on time, which is like the end of this month, I’m a little late with it. They’ve given me a little extension. It’s coming along pretty well and it’s nearly done, I’m just writing the climax now. And I’m pretty excited with how it’s turned out.

 

It’s a book, as you know, about union organizers who use video games to evade the restrictions on labor organizing in the developing world and special economic zones, and who organize gamers, gold-farmers, who then go on to unionize factory girls and so on. And it uses this conceit to explain some macroeconomic, cognitive economic, and behavioral economic ideas, in the same way that Little Brother used its conceit to explain cryptography, security, statistics, and risk.

In an interview with io9 in late September:

In terms of research, I'm doing a book now called "For The Win" and I knew a lot of action would be in the Pacific Rim in the subcontinent. So I went to China and India. I tend to get super obsessively geeky about stuff I'm interested in just as a matter of course. The stuff I'm chasing for BoingBoing I get deep on anyway. Facts are cheap. The zeitgeist is hard to absorb, and that's what you get from reporting and dropping in on people's spaces.

And from his most recent interview on Sci-Fi Wire earlier this month:

"For the Win" is discursive, using video games and gold-farming to explore subjects like macroeconomics and labor politics in a way that's accessible to adolescents.

Doctorow apparently got help from game designer Raph Koster, who worked on the MMO Star Wars Galaxies. According to a chat log on Koster's site from late October:

Raph: Tell them what [For the Win] is about!
doctorow: Ah! FTW is about gold farmers who form a trade union across Asia and the US and Eastern Europe and change the macroeconomic landscape!
Raph: It kinda has relevance for the audience.
doctorow: And Raph helped me get the game stuff right!

According to a few bookseller sites, the book will be available in hardcover, paperback and audio CD. For readers interested in MMO economics, it should be a fascinating read, particularly since it will be written in a way that teens can understand.