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In Real Life
Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
I just finished reading In Real Life by Cory
Docotorow. It's a graphic novel adaptation of a short story he wrote around 10 years ago, adapted and illustrated by Jen Wang. In it, a young girl named Anda starts playing a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Game) like World of Warcraft, named Coarsegold Online. Anda creates the warrior avatar KaliDestroyer and begins exploring her new world. She makes guild friends with some other players and through one of her new friend gets hired to wipe out Chinese gold farmers in game. One time, while she's attacking some gold farmers, she actually chats with one of them and she makes friends with a boy from China, Raymond. The comic explores her conflicting feelings about wanting to maintaining friends in guild and standing up for her new friend Raymond. She even helps him organize a strike for better health benefits, with disastrous consequences. As she learns to stand up for bullies in-game and beyond, Anda’s self-confidence at her new school grows by leaps and bounds. Doctorow’s story is sure to resonate with dorky kids who have to juggle real-life friends, in-game friends, and parents who just don’t understand.
The story is beautifully illustrated by Wang, whose amazing color palates help keep distinct what’s in game from what’s outside the game. Not quite in anime style, but definitely different from your typical super-hero style, Wang’s artwork vividly brings to life Doctorow’s words. As Anda becomes more sure of herself, she starts to look more like her avatar KaliDestoryer, a simple but effective visual touch.
The story is relatively straightforward, but introduces kids to the exploitative working conditions that hire a whole generation of young men who would rather game for 16 hours a day than work in a factory making zippers. While not a full polemic on the injustices of our digital economies, Doctorow has a small essay introduction that asks his readers to think about the effects of how they spend their time, and what they expect to get out of their hard work, in-game or in real life. He invites readers to think about the effects of the way technology has allowed us new ways to make friends and organize, ways that were unheard of before the advent of the internet. I really enjoyed it and I know other gamers might, too. It has a girl protagonist, but it's not an especially girly book, so perhaps readers of both genders might be drawn to the idea of a hero who is a nerdy outsider, who likes video games, and who is willing to stand up for what's right.
The story is beautifully illustrated by Wang, whose amazing color palates help keep distinct what’s in game from what’s outside the game. Not quite in anime style, but definitely different from your typical super-hero style, Wang’s artwork vividly brings to life Doctorow’s words. As Anda becomes more sure of herself, she starts to look more like her avatar KaliDestoryer, a simple but effective visual touch.
The story is relatively straightforward, but introduces kids to the exploitative working conditions that hire a whole generation of young men who would rather game for 16 hours a day than work in a factory making zippers. While not a full polemic on the injustices of our digital economies, Doctorow has a small essay introduction that asks his readers to think about the effects of how they spend their time, and what they expect to get out of their hard work, in-game or in real life. He invites readers to think about the effects of the way technology has allowed us new ways to make friends and organize, ways that were unheard of before the advent of the internet. I really enjoyed it and I know other gamers might, too. It has a girl protagonist, but it's not an especially girly book, so perhaps readers of both genders might be drawn to the idea of a hero who is a nerdy outsider, who likes video games, and who is willing to stand up for what's right.
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