Cory Doctorow On For the Win, Gold Farming, and DRM

adaviel passes along a New Scientist interview with Cory Doctorow, who has been touring for his new book For the Win. The SF author and technology activist talks about DRM, gold farming, and much else besides.

Comments

interesting quote from the subject of the article

[mogness]

Awesome quote from this guy in the article, on DRM and his work. Makes you think about who is really gaining from this whole DRM and copy protection gambit.
Hint: it's not the artist.

Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem writers face. In the 21st century, if you are not making art with the intention of it being copied, you are not making contemporary art.

BoingBoing

[Alejandros]

For those who don't know, Cory Doctorow also co-edits BoingBoing, a popular tech/culture group blog that's worth checking out.

Gold Farming History

[Tauto]

"When did gold farming start? First reports were in Central America and Mexico in about 2003." I remember gold farming in Asheron's Call in early 2000. Here's a link to a blurb about Sony's problems with EverQuest in April 2000. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017_3-239052.html

Re:Gold Farming History

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember EQ in 2000-2001 having whole guilds set up to farm platinum and items, as well as "fatten" up characters for eBay. One of the worst mistakes Verant/SOE made at the time was in Velious and the Sleeper event which denied people the ability to obtain what was the highest end weapons after the Sleeper was awoken.

What happened was that guilds would farm the zone, then once their characters has a set of primals, would release the Sleeper, then everyone in the guild would ebay their chars, knowing that they had items that were unobtainable.

This was before the Chinese and Koreans hopped on and made currency farming a science.

boingboing hijacked? [citation needed]

[wygit]

Boing Boing became a Web site in 1995 and later relaunched as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. All four Boing Boing contributors are, or have been, contributing writers for Wired magazine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing

Self-promotion, on the internet? say it ain't so!

Cory, Xeni, Dave and Marc ARE boingboing. Cory's also a writer who stands behind his opinions on copyright, licensing the electronic versions of his books via Creative Commons, with free downloads in non DRM formats.

disclaimer: I also happen to like his writing. I Loved "Little Brother", and liked Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, Content, Makers, and am halfway through FTW

Having actually READ the novel

[silentcoder]

A few points of import. The goldfarmers in the novel never steal accounts. They just play the game, and build up large banks of gold to sell. While all WoW players know that a significant part of the banks that the goldsellers sell were acquired through account-theft, these are not the people that FTW is about.

I don't think you can call playing the game 18 hours a day a crime. The fact that they subsequently sell the gold - well that's only a crime in the concept of breaking a EULA... which is not something I have EVER heard a /. poster speaking AGAINST.

Furthermore, the world in the book is a bit different, it's set a few years in the future - and the games are no longer MEANT to be a closed economy there. There are official channels of gold trade, where real stockbrokers invest in game gold much as they would invest in any other currency. The goldfarmers in the book use black-markets though because they are excluded from these official channels of trade (which is in fact the game-companies' largest source of income).

I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say - this is not a a novel about thieves who live of other people's hard work. It's a novel about hard workers being exploited and demanding a better life. It uses the MMORPG world as a millieu but it's really a book about economics and a scathing attack on the world of sweatshop workers - in all it's forms.
It includes solid chapters on economic fundamentals, inflation (and how the kind of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe came to be) how it works, and how often it doesn't.

In short, it's a very, very good book. As SIFI I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, it writes about technology that's every day life NOW. There are some minor practical changes to the games concept in the time of the book but nothing that all gamers aren't expecting now. It's not science fiction, it's a much more a kind of social activism fiction, which happens to use a technological mileu.
Mind you, I didn't consider Little-Brother to be science fiction either, 99% of the technologies in THAT novel are things that you can download right this second. What it was, was an excellent novel that happens to also teach the fundamentals of crypto, privacy and security systems.

So in short, I really LIKE Doctorow's niche, he uses his fields of expertise, to set novels with a much wider social message - that's to me what good writing is all about.

Re:Having actually READ the novel

[silentcoder]

Well now, I've read it, you haven't.
The man did his research, and Doctorow has a good writing style for it. He entirely breaks from the fictional flow for about one in three chapters, and gives a very solid, and accurate description of core parts of economic theory, gradually building up as they will all ultimately impact on the plot. It almost reminds me of the Science-of-Discworld books, where even chapters are story, odd chapters are non-fiction genuine science... well lectures.

Here it's not quite so much lecturing (it would make the book rather unappetizing) but that is it's structure, and it's very clear that every single piece of writing on the economy is well researched, solid and factually correct. You can of course dissagree with his biases, he is a clear socialist and much of what he FAULTS in the system, you may degree is how it should be - he will REALLY piss of the libertarians since he seems to think the purpose of the economy is to serve the population (as opposed to the the other way around as in typical capitalism, or nobody at all as in libertarianism) but while you may disagree about what he thinks is good and bad things, this is a conclusion on philosophical grounds. The facts underneath about how he economy WORKS, what determines inflation rates, how does arbitrage work... those facts do not change. Regardless of your political and economic leanings, right now arbitrage works a certain way, and a factually correct description of that process will remain factually correct whether it says "yay for arbitrage" or "therefore arbitrage is a form of parasitic economic activity"...

So yes, debate his conclusions if you want - but unless you've actually READ the novel, you don't GET to tell the person who DOES that a novel about economics is NOT accurate in it's research about economics.

Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic

[walshy007]

Hate to be a spelling nazi but it's "paid" not "payed"

Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic

[capedgirardeau]

He credits Tim just fine on his website:

http://craphound.com/overclocked/2007/01/08/about-this-sitefaq/

So this time he didn't spell it out, but it's not like he is claiming this idea is "his"

I think he just agrees and feels it is basically a fact in the culture today.

Tim first wrote that idea, that I am aware of, back in 2002 so after 8 years or so, I think it might be fair to say that it has become fact or reality to many of us.

Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic

[_Sprocket_]

I also heard him give credit during some radio interview. I'd imagine after giving numerous interviews to promote a book, one would slip up on some details here and there while covering the same ground so many times.