
Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole
Soda Pop Soldier essentially takes the e-sports concept (DOTA 2, Starcraft, etc.) that offers the promise of making buckets of money by playing video games to talented gamers, and mixes it up with a heavy dose of corporatization (well, a heavier dose than it already has) and a heaping serving of teenage boy wish fulfillment.
See, gamer PerfectQuestion (yes, that’s his name) fights for ColaCorp in an online wargame called WarWorld, where other megacorporations battle each other for dominance in the real world of advertising. That’s right: somehow, these mega-companies have agreed to tie the possibility of advertising on, say, the Times Square Jumbotron to the level of success a bunch of gamers have in a virtual Modern Warfare-style war game. At the same time, the battles are broadcast successfully to millions of viewers, who even have the chance to be recruited a... Read More