In Real Life

Written by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang

A gamer faces moral dilemmas when virtual rules clash with real-world poverty.

3.8 Goodreads · 40,433 ratings

175 pages· GN390L

$20.99Save 5%

In stock. Also at Amazon or Bookshop.

Bookroo's summary

Anda thrives in Coarsegold Online, a game where she leads and conquers. But her world shifts when she meets a gold farmer, a player breaking rules to survive. As their friendship grows, Anda must navigate the blurred lines between right and wrong, questioning the impact of her actions on a real person's life. Can she balance her virtual heroism with the harsh realities of poverty and cultural divides?

From the publisher

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From acclaimed author Cory Doctorow and rising star cartoonist Jen Wang comes In Real Life, a sensitive, thoughtful look at adolescence, gaming, poverty, and culture-clash. Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on. It’s a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It’s a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. Gaming is, for Anda, entirely a good thing. But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer–a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person’s real livelihood is at stake.

At a glance