Reality Check

As a gamer myself, I know how addicting many games can be.  100+ hours can easily be sunk into any good RPG, and often a person won't just put it down once they beat it once.  Now lets magnify this by somewhere around 3 or 4 orders of magnitude for how much time Wade has sunk into the OASIS.  I bring this up because the ending has him saying he "had absolutely no desire to log back into the OASIS" (372).  I find this somewhat far-fetched.  Not only is this a game that he has devoted every waking moment to for the past 6 or so years, but also he grew up and then later went to school in the OASIS.  It seems to me that Wade himself knows the OASIS much better than he knows real life, and changing over so drastically so quickly to not wanting to go back into the OASIS seems unnatural.  A mediocre analogy, but the best I can think of is like a soldier coming back from war.  The peace and quiet of the homefront is unnatural to the soldier that has been at war for a long time, because he or she is so accustomed to the culture and climate of war.  Wade is more used to the culture and climate, so to speak, of the OASIS than the waking world.  On top of this, the reason he doesn't want to log back into the OASIS is because he finally has another real person he wants to live for - Samantha - otherwise known as Art3mis, a girl who, like Wade, basically lived in the OASIS.  As good as the message that Cline is putting forward, that humans should not try to escape the world, but rather make it the best world possible, is a good one, but for Wade to have no desire to go back to the OASIS seems unrealistic.

Willy Wonka, Halliday, or Neither?

The big take away from this book is the theme of reality and how it is better than a faux reality (OASIS). I believe a good way to describe this book and the message is found on the front cover of my paperback: “Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.” This story is very much similar (a little too similar to) Roald Dahl’s Charley and the Chocolate Factory. The Chocolate Factory is the OASIS. Charlie is Wade. Willy Wonka is Halliday. The message is the same. The real world is far better than a virtual utopia. Charlie understands that his deepest desire (to get the golden ticket and receive Willy Wonka’s fortune and factory) was actually flawed, for his real desire was to help and be with his family. The same goes with Wade, he was obsessed throughout the novel with trying to get Halliday’s Easter Egg, however, in the end, he learned that it is not the money and OASIS that is important, but life, family, community, love, and human joy. Video games will bring a rush of happiness and entertainment. However, it will die away. Joy can be everlasting if constantly sought after.

Reality

So it is now the end of Ready Player One. I had a lot of fun reading Ready Player One. Wade is a different person than when he started his adventure. Wade has realized that his world is a distopian, and has hope to change it. When Wade first meets Art3mis he says he wants to leave the earth with video games. I don't think that Wade would do that now that he is at the end of the book. Wade now has hope for reality. Life is not just necessities to continue to play video games, but is an experience in its own right. Finding out the appearance of his friends is also important. Anonymity is a key component of separating the OASIS from the internet, meaning not being you is as important as the world not being earth. Art3mis, Aech and Wade all alter their appearance. Art3mis to erase a birthmark, Aech to escape sexism and racism, and Wade to hide his obesity (which he only confronts when it gets to the point that it would prevent him from playing video games). While avatars allow people to put their best foot forward by covering up flaws they also remove the humanity of people, making them less real by making them too perfect. As Wade mentions in the quote in the quiz today there is nothing simulated that is quite as good as real people.

Blog ver. 2

Wade took the break up with Art3mis hard. Break ups are hard I guess... not like I am speaking from experience though -_-; (What does that face even mean?). Wade figured out the gate eventually. I have seen Blade Runner but I did not think of the answer before Wade did. It is too bad that his friendship with Aech flagged while Wade was busy dating Art3mis. Wade got a robotic Spiderman mecha named Leopold. That is awesome. I have to watch subs of supaida-man now. I wonder if in 30 years (my guess on when this world takes place) how much of the 80s lore will still be around? This close to the end of the book I have answers. Last time I mostly asked questions. Now we have more answers. So Wade lost some weight. Good for him. Wade can’t use the OASIS if he doesn’t fit in the haptic suit. Best kind of motivator for him.  He can’t use the haptic suit now anyways because it is confiscated. Wade doesn’t need the Omni Treadmill. Instead of going in debt he could be a little more frugal. The way that IOI treats its debtors is like sharecroppers, having so many fees that the employees go further into the debt they want to pay off so they never leave.  I think the shampoo that gets rid of all hair is creepy, but since he never leaves his hotel room I guess it doesn’t matter how bad he looks. It depresses him every time he looks in the mirror though. Wade’s War Door and multi-part system for removing all contact with the real world is paranoid, but “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you” [Nirvana]. IOI found Wade anyway, but they do not seem to know that he is Wade. We are nearing the end of the book. So exciting!     

The Magic Word

So, being a fan of RPGs, I want to tell you all a bit about the XYZZY cluster and Zork.  "XYZZY" comes from a text-only RPG known as Colossal Cave.  In it, at a certain location, the player can type in the so-called "magic word" XYZZY in order to enter a secret passage and cross a large distance in one action.  Zork, like Colossal Cave, was one of the original text-only computer games.  These games only told you what you say at any location and then you had to input what you wanted to do as the player, and so could easily get lost.  This is a lot like the world that Wade lives in, where he can see the destruction and desolation of the world, but cannot see any clear way to fix anything.  He knows what he sees, but he has no clear objective, just like the player in both Colossal Cave and Zork.  People can only learn from experience the best way to live life and to explore text-only RPGs.

Security of Identity

One fascinating theme that Ernest Cline displays throughout his novel is identity. This theme came to my attention in the most recent reading (Chapter 30). It seems that I have overlooked what Cline has done regarding an idea that has been blatant throughout the entire story. The most obvious evidence for identity is that players (like Wade) can change their appearance to almost anything they want. If you are a “300 lb. dude named Chuck who lives in his mother’s basement,” you could appear to be a beautiful, young woman named Art3mis in OASIS (170). However, we now know that not to be true. Art3mis is in fact Samantha Cook, who lives in Canada.

Now, I would like to talk about the implications that this freedom to change who you are affects world and ultimately affects the individual. Art3is “led [Wade] to believe that she was somehow hideous” (292). This lack of self image comes from her face, which includes a large port wine stain on the left half. As a result, Art3is created an avatar that does not have a port wine stain her face. What does this mean regarding identity? Players (anyone in the OASIS) have the complete liberty to take all imperfections that they were born with, and change to what they think to be perfect. They have the ability to create someone who they are not. In our world, people have all kinds of physical work done to their bodies to “change” their identity. How is this any different from the OASIS? Is Cline alluding to our culture here?

It turns out that it is what is in the inside that matters, not the outside. People judge others based on the inside more so than the outside. One can seem perfect from a distance, but when you get closer, the truth is revealed. Humans in Ready Player One are just using the OASIS as another cover to protect who they are inside. We want to feel secure about ourselves, and that means creating many walls to protect that security. Cline may be telling us that we should not worry about our psychical attributes, but concentrate on what is inside.

KABOOM!

In the most recent reading, Parzival was approached by Sorrento, the head of the Sixers and a high ranking officer in IOI.  The Sixers were willing to kill Wade with tons of collateral damage (blowing up stacks of 20+ mobile homes is a lot of collateral damage).  This was after offering Wade millions of dollars for help getting through the first gate.  Since they are willing to spend that much, and a majority of the Egg is Halliday's fortune, they are looking for something else from GSS for finding the Egg first. The population as a whole blew off the explosion of a stack of mobile homes, just as Sorrento said they would, calling it either a meth-lab explosion or some idiot trying to build a bomb.  The fact that people would push off such explosions as commonplace suggests that the world has gotten to a point where in the real world, bombs and meth labs are normal in the slums, and are just one of the many problems with the world.  The OASIS, being an escape from this world only makes it worse, because those that live in the OASIS, would completely ignore such an explosion anyways, as it does not affect their lives.  Altogether, the world has gone to hell, and as more people start focusing on the OASIS, which the Scoreboard now having points on it makes even more prevalent, people are ignoring the disaster around them.