This is Not a Game: You Don't Get a Second Life - Walter Jon Williams

Dagmar is trapped in a hotel, with rioting Jakarta burning around her. When the conventional attempts to get her out fail, she decides to request help form the Group Mind: the on-line community of gamers who participate in Alternate Reality Games: games that happen in real life, not on the computer screen or over the Internet. Dagmar writes such games, working for Charlie, a phenomenally successful owner of a software company. Dagmar's and Charlie's friendship goes way back to college, and this is when they also met Austin, the venture capitalist and BJ, now relegated to a call centre and supplementing his income with gold farming in MMORPGs. When ...  Read the complete review