Reddit mentions of Solarversia: The Year Long Game

You said you weren't looking for fiction, but other people might come to your thread looking for those kinds of suggestions, so sorry to leave you hanging, but I'll put a few out there, because I've enjoyed this genre.

Opening Moves Aliens have taken over and ostensibly done away with war, but the main character finds out the stakes in the aliens' "Game" may be just as high.

Solarversia We've got a sort of reality show VR game where a hundred million players duke it out over the course of a year to win a big prize. It's easy to get sucked into this one as a gamer, because the author really captures this sens of video game action. There's pseudo-ai personality modeling based on social media, and even a fanatical AI doomsday cult.

Survival Quest Don't let the name turn you off here. In this trilogy the biggest MMO has become so big that prisoners are actually sentenced to server their time in VR capsules mining resources for paying non-prisoner characters. Where standard players get to choose their class and have access to outside materials like guides and wikis, the protagonist here (who's unjustly charged, of course!) gets his class selected for him, and must learn the nuances to this underplayed Shaman class, as well as figure out how to earn respect, while simultaneously earning his way out of prison. The third book just came out on the 10th, and I wouldn't have found out about it if not for writing this, so thanks! And enjoy!

I've written a similar book called Solarversia. Enjoy :-)