He's 28 years old. FB Whitey nearly ruined himself in high school by spending too much time playing computer games. When I asked him if playing Dope Wars made him want to throw his life in the air and become a real drug dealer, he told me flatly that it had not given him the urge to do so. Although I prefer bouncing between the boroughs of NYC, buying heroin in the Bronx and selling it in Manhattan, Fatboy informed me that there are versions of Dope Wars that allow you to become a dealer in London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Indianapolis, Derby, and his hometown, Sydney. Some versions show detailed maps of the cities in question, honoring their streets, airports, and districts.
Cities are the dead-center beauty of virtual and real drug dealing.
The danger, the taboo, the fear, is derived from the city's character, not the drugs. Drug dealing and drug dealers respond to a city's authority, and not the inverse. A city wants to assimilate this power for itself. The work wants its truth and untruth to be grasped. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory Dope Wars is the artful reflection and reduction of this world into a world of its own, in which all parts are jumbled and reassigned.