In Real Life by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang (illustrator)
Graphic Novel, Published October 2014
Plot Overview
Teenage girl gamer, Anda, is offered the opportunity for a free trial membership to a guild in the MMORPG Coarsegold Online. IRL, Anda is a slightly chubby girl, but in-game she can be the warrior princess she wants to be. Almost immediately, Anda discovers that users are illegally harvesting in-game currency to sell to n00bs for real-life money. She gets quickly swept up into the market of eliminating this players, also for real-life money. It’s not long before she comes across a player that tells her the truth of ‘gold mining.’
My Review
To be completely honest, this book seems a bit more suited to the sociology section of a book store. Before the novel even begins, Doctorow introduces it as a demonstration of economic and social organization. As I came to understand this idea, ‘organization’ is the ability humans evolved in order to either organize or participate in organized events or jobs. This book was pitched to me as a girl-gamer-friendly look into the MMORPG world, with a bit of realism thrown in with the darker side of gold-minding (or farming in-game items for real-life currency), so I have to admit I was a bit bogged down with this introduction. While I do agree that this is an interesting topic to research, I wish it hadn’t been attached to seemed to be to be a teen-friendly graphic novel.
But for the actual content and illustrations, this book is beautiful and well-crafted. I loved the style of the illustrations and the playful, soft edges to everything. It seemed like the kind of image that was at times imperfect but still easy to identify, making it a lot easier to relate to the characters. I liked that Anda, a slightly chubby high school student, was not featured as being the chubby gamer girl but instead the focus was more on the game and her enjoyment of it. At the same time, I also felt connected to her experience in trying to have a safe time on the internet (i.e. her Mom is overprotective about her not talking to strange, older men online).
I think this is a great story, but not necessarily suited for teens. It dives into the more corrupt aspects of online gaming where people break the rules and lie about it to get more people to help them out. In addition, Anda comes to know a boy who is basically working in a modern day gaming sweatshop… Which, personally, I found really out of place for what this graphic novel was set up to be. Maybe it’s just my own personal expectations for this one, but again, Doctorow’s introduction really threw me for a loop and made me experience this book a lot differently than if I’d just read it bare without the socio-economic influences.
My Rating: 3/5 stars
(review original posted on my other blog here on May 31, 2016)
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