The current New Scientist has a fine interview and feature about my latest novel, For the Win:
What do gold farmers think about their lot?
The gold farmers are a lot less worried about being exploited in real life than they are about being hunted mercilessly in the game. They encounter an awful lot of racism when they move around in games. Anyone with a Chinese name or talking in Chinese is immediately accused of being a gold farmer. If you are on a server where players can attack each other, people will try to kill you. They did have stories about being exploited, too, but a lot of them are 17 and still can’t believe they’re being paid to play video games all day.When do you set the action in For the Win?
At a time when 8 out of 10 of the world’s top economies are virtual economies. Scarily, in 2001 the game EverQuest was ranked 77 in the world – on par with Russia as it was then.
