Abstract
This essay analyzes the graphic novel In Real Life as an example of Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang’s intention to raise young people’s awareness about gender and economic disparities within the gaming industry. Broadly, In Real Life combats the pervasive cultural anxiety that Jane McGonigal challenges in her book Reality is Broken–namely that young people’s growing connection to technology, and specifically to gaming, will cause them to spend their lives “wasting time, tuning out, and losing out on real life” (2011, p. 11). Specifically, it provides a realistic, accessible example of digital citizenship for twenty-first century youth. The innovative notions of digital citizenship Doctorow and Wang present in the text call for an end to gender and economic marginalization as facilitated by a gaming industry in which many young adults participate. By connecting gaming to activism, In Real Life offers a new avenue by which to use young adult literature to inspire civic engagement on the part of young people. The aim is to show that the imaginary activism depicted in literature not only has the potential to, but is actually designed to engage young people as active users, consumers, and shapers of technology.
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Notes
Cultural critic and creator of the Feminist Frequency video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Anita Sarkeesian has received rape and death threats since 2012 for speaking out about sexual discrimination in video game culture (Collins, 2014). In October 2014, Sarkeesian canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University after an anti-feminist detractor threatened a mass shooting and campus police refused to search attendees for weapons, citing the state's concealed-carry law (Collins, 2014; Dewey, 2014). Along with Sarkeesian, game designers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu, and gaming journalist Leigh Alexander were also forced to leave their homes this year due to threats of death and sexual violence against them and their families (McDonald 2014).
Because gold farming is publicly frowned upon in the video game industry and its legality is a hot topic of debate, information on real-life gold farmers is difficult to gather and statistics are uncertain. To date, the most comprehensive academic overviews of the practice have been published by Heeks (2008, 2010) and Nardi and Kow (2010). Heeks estimates that the gold farming industry is worth in excess of $1 billion US and employs an estimated 400,000 people (2008; 2010, p. 7). Most academic and critical sources cite these numbers as authoritative. Alternatively, Nardi and Kow (2010) express concerns about the dominant archetype of the Chinese gold farmer and “its failure to look beyond a vision of the virtual sweatshop and its Third World paraphernalia.” Whether stereotype or reality, Doctorow clearly bases his In Real Life character Raymond on this archetype, presumably because it renders the character more sympathetic to the Western readers whom Doctorow is targeting as potential activists.
In her series of educational videos Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (2012-), Sarkeesian (2014) identifies a wide variety of misogynist tropes that recur in video games including the Woman as Background Decoration, the Ms. Male Character, and the pervasive Damsel in Distress. Sub-categories of the Damsel trope include the Disposable Damsel, the Euthanized Damsel, and the Damsel in the Refrigerator; the latter is drawn from Gail Simone’s groundbreaking 1999 bibliography of female murder victims in comic books, Women in Refrigerators (http://lby3.com/wir/).
Coarsegold can be likened to contemporary MMOs such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Guild Wars, and Eve Online. Superdata Digital Goods Management estimates that as of April 2015, there were 1.2 billion active gamers worldwide (“MMO,” 2015b); the leading MMO, World of Warcraft, has a fluctuating membership of 7–10 million subscribers thus far in 2015 (“U.S. Digital”, 2015a). MMOs are projected to generate $11 billion globally by the end of 2015, $13 billion by the end of 2017 (“MMO,” 2015b).
Originally published on Salon.com, “Anda’s Game” is now available in print as a part of his short story collection Overclocked (Running Press, 2007) and on Doctorow’s website (craphound.com), where he includes a new introduction explaining the origins and intentions of the story.
As Doctorow has explained while on his book tour and also in his introduction to “Anda’s Game,” the character of Liza is based on his real-life wife Alice Taylor, a blogger, game developer, prominent figure in the gaming industry and former professional Quake player (2007).
Bots are not real avatars, but automated “robot” avatars programmed to collect gold in the game; creating bots requires sophisticated coding skills.
The conclusion of the novel is problematic because it undercuts the feminist message the text has worked to develop. When Raymond returns to Coarsegold to find Anda, his newly dashing, Anglicized avatar approaches Anda’s. She is literally beneath him: sitting on a bench in a submissive posture with her arms cast down at her sides, shoulders slightly pitched forward and face tilted up to look at him. Raymond half bows, casts his eyes downward toward her, and offers his hand: “Care to dance?” (2014, p. 169). Their conversation underscores the argument that gamers can form substantive relationships, because at its core, the game is about communication, coalition-building, and creating mutual trust. However, Anda’s submissive posturing and the fairy tale iconography of this final scene belie the empowering message of digital citizenship that the text otherwise creates.
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Megan L. Musgrave is Assistant Professor of English in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.
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Musgrave, M.L. Gamer Girls, Gold Farmers, and Activism In Real Life . Child Lit Educ 47, 161–176 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9265-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9265-z