Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

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chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

quote:

The system verified that I was on the chat room�s access list and allowed me to enter. My view of the classroom shrank from the limits of my peripheral vision to a small thumbnail window in the lower right of my display, allowing me to monitor what was in front of my avatar. The rest of my field of vision was now filled with the interior of Aech�s chat room. My avatar appeared just inside the �entrance,� a door at the top of a carpeted staircase. The door didn�t lead anywhere. It didn�t even open. This was because the Basement and its contents didn�t exist as a part of the OASIS. Chat rooms were stand-alone simulations�temporary virtual spaces that avatars could access from anywhere in OASIS. My avatar wasn�t actually �in� the chat room. It only appeared that way. Wade3/Parzival was still sitting in my World History classroom with his eyes closed. Logging into a chat room was a little like being in two places at once.

The Basement is done up to look like a 1980s rec room: wood-paneled walls covered in vintage movie and comic book posters, an old RCA television with a Betamax VCR, Laserdisc player, and vintage video game consoles hooked up, 80s arcade games, bookshelves lined with back issues of pop culture magazines and RPG supplements, and a stereo currently playing "The Wild Boys".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M43wsiNBwmo

Wade's friend Aech (pronounced like the letter H) is a high level gunter who's made a lot of virtual money in PvP tournaments, and is even more famous than Art3mis because Wade just gets to hang out with celebrities like that. Normally the Basement is only available to fellow elites, but Aech and Wade share similar obsessions over Anorak's Almanac and everything in it so Wade is allowed in despite being 27 levels lower than Aech. Because Wade's not in school, the avatars here run the gamut from vampires and dark elves to cyborgs and Vulcans.

Aech's avatar is a tall, handsome white guy with brown hair. As before, the movie has gone...a little different.

This is actually kind of a lovely thing on Spielberg's part. I won't spoil it, but you may already be able to guess why changing Aech's avatar from a normal handsome white guy to an orc might come off as a bad move.

quote:

As I walked over, he glanced up from the Intellivision game he was playing. His distinctive Cheshire grin stretched from ear to ear. �Z!� he shouted. �What is up, amigo?� He stretched out his right hand and gave me five as I dropped onto the couch opposite him. Aech had started calling me �Z� shortly after I met him. He liked to give people single-letter nicknames. Aech pronounced his own avatar�s name just like the letter �H.�

�What up, Humperdinck?� I said. This was a game we played. I always called him by some random H name, like Harry, Hubert, Henry, or Hogan. I was making guesses at his real first name, which, he�d once confided to me, began with the letter �H.�

I'm going to be leaving out more dialogue than usual in this chapter because I cannot loving stand it. Aech and Wade have a friendly rivalry where they're always trying to one-up each other on trivia, which means this chapter alone would be lethal for any kind of 80s shout-out drinking game you wanted to play. It's like watching two clones of the Comic Book Guy ribbing each other. I'll include samples, and please note that the whole loving chapter reads like this.

quote:

�So what did you do after you bailed last night?� he asked, tossing me the other Intellivision controller. We�d hung out here in his chat room for a few hours the previous evening, watching old Japanese monster movies.

�Nada,� I said. �Went home and brushed up on a few classic coin-ops.�

�Unnecessary.�

�Yeah. But I was in the mood.� I didn�t ask him what he�d done the night before, and he didn�t volunteer any details. I knew he�d probably gone to Gygax, or somewhere equally awesome, to speedrun through a few quests and rack up some XPs. He just didn�t want to rub it in. Aech could afford to spend a fair amount of time off-world, following up leads and searching for the Copper Key. But he never lorded this over me, or ridiculed me for not having enough dough to teleport anywhere. And he never insulted me by offering to loan me a few credits. It was an unspoken rule among gunters: If you were a solo, you didn�t want or need help, from anyone. Gunters who wanted help joined a clan, and Aech and I both agreed that clans were for suck-asses and poseurs. We�d both vowed to remain solos for life. We still occasionally had discussions about the egg, but these conversations were always guarded, and we were careful to avoid talking about specifics.

After I beat Aech at three rounds of Tron: Deadly Discs, he threw down his Intellivision controller in disgust and grabbed a magazine off the floor. It was an old issue of Starlog. I recognized Rutger Hauer on the cover, in a Ladyhawke promotional photo.

quote:

�Starlog, eh?� I said, nodding my approval.

�Yep. Downloaded every single issue from the Hatchery�s archive. Still working my way through �em. I was just reading this great piece on Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.�

�Made for TV. Released in 1985,� I recited. Star Wars trivia was one of my specialties. �Total garbage. A real low point in the history of the Wars.�

�Says you, assface. It has some great moments.�

�No,� I said, shaking my head. �It doesn�t. It�s even worse than that first Ewok flick, Caravan of Courage. They shoulda called it Caravan of Suck.�

Aech rolled his eyes and went back to reading. He wasn�t going to take the bait. I eyed the magazine�s cover. �Hey, can I have a look at that when you�re done?� He grinned.

�Why? So you can read the article on Ladyhawke?�

�Maybe.�

�Man, you just love that crapburger, don�t you?�

�Blow me, Aech.�

�How many times have you seen that sapfest? I know you�ve made me sit through it at least twice.� He was baiting me now. He knew Ladyhawke was one of my guilty pleasures, and that I�d seen it over two dozen times.

�I was doing you a favor by making you watch it, noob,� I said. I shoved a new cartridge into the Intellivision console and started up a single-player game of Astrosmash. �You�ll thank me one day. Wait and see. Ladyhawke is canon.�

�Canon� was the term we used to classify any movie, book, game, song, or TV show of which Halliday was known to have been a fan.

�Surely, you must be joking,� Aech said.

�No, I am not joking. And don�t call me Shirley.�

He lowered the magazine and leaned forward. �There is no way Halliday was a fan of Ladyhawke. I guarantee it.�

�Where�s your proof, dipshit?� I asked.

�The man had taste. That�s all the proof I need.�

�Then please explain to me why he owned Ladyhawke on both VHS and LaserDisc?� A list of all the films in Halliday�s collection at the time of his death was included in the appendices of Anorak�s Almanac. We both had the list memorized.

�The guy was a billionaire! He owned millions of movies, most of which he probably never even watched! He had DVDs of Howard the Duck and Krull, too. That doesn�t mean he liked them, asshat. And it sure as hell doesn�t make them canon.�

�It�s not really up for debate, Homer,� I said. �Ladyhawke is an eighties classic.�

�It�s loving lame, is what it is! The swords look like they were made out of tinfoil. And that soundtrack is epically lame. Full of synthesizers and poo poo. By the motherfucking Alan Parsons Project! Lame-o-rama! Beyond lame! Highlander II lame!

So yeah, this whole chapter is like this from start to finish. Keep in mind that these are the characters we're supposed to root for and think are awesome.

This arguing over a Rutger Hauer fantasy movie goes on for another loving page (including Aech making an empty threat of banning Wade for calling Ewoks "Endorians") before another gunter shows up, I-r0k. I-r0k somehow manages to be even lamer and more poorly written than Aech and Parzival, an obnoxious poseur who walks around with a plasma rifle at all times and harasses everyone. He and Aech share virtual classes together, which is probably the only reason he's even allowed in the Basement.

quote:

�Are you cocks arguing about Star Wars again?� he said, descending the steps and walking over to join the crowd around us. �That poo poo is so played out, yo.�

I turned to Aech. �If you want to ban someone, why don�t you start with this clown?� I hit Reset on the Intellivision and started another game.

�Shut your hole, Penis-ville!� I-r0k replied, using his favorite mispronunciation of my avatar�s name. �He doesn�t ban me �cause he knows I�m elite! Ain�t that right, Aech?�

�No,� Aech said, rolling his eyes. �That ain�t right. You�re about as elite as my great-grandmother. And she�s dead.�

�Screw you, Aech! And your dead grandma!�

�Gee, I-r0k,� I muttered. �You always manage to elevate the intelligence level of the conversation. The whole room just lights up the moment you arrive.�

Any room with these three people in it would be immediately improved by completely destroying it.

Wade quickly challenges I-r0k's knowledge, and I-r0k decides to test him by daring him to name a game that he pulls out of his inventory. Wade instantly identifies it as Swordquest: Earthworld from 1982, then follows up by challenging I-r0k to name the other three games in the series. When he can't, Wade smugly begins zipping through a bunch of trivia about them and he and Aech bounce questions off one another. The only really important part of this is that Halliday apparently modeled the Hunt after the contest Atari held to help sell the game (which ended prematurely when the last game was canceled in the video game crash of 1983).

quote:

�Fine. You win,� I-r0k said. �But you both obviously need to get a life.�

Is it bad that I agree with I-r0k?

quote:

�And you,� I said, �obviously need to find a new hobby. Because you clearly lack the intelligence and commitment to be a gunter.�

�No doubt,� Aech said. �Try doing some research for a change, I-r0k. I mean, did you ever hear of Wikipedia? It�s free, douchebag.�

I-r0k turned and walked over to the long boxes of comic books stacked on the other side of the room, as if he�d lost interest in the discussion. �Whatever,� he said over his shoulder. �If I didn�t spend so much time offline, getting laid, I�d probably know just as much worthless poo poo as you two do.�

With perfect dramatic timing, the 3-minute warning bell rings and all three have to log out and return to school. I'll include that chapter here as well, because I can summarize it fairly quickly.

quote:

My avatar�s eyes slid open, and I was back in my World History classroom. The seats around me were now filled with other students, and our teacher, Mr. Avenovich, was materializing at the front of the classroom. Mr. A�s avatar looked like a portly, bearded college professor. He sported an infectious grin, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. When he spoke, he somehow always managed to sound like he was reading a passage from Dickens. I liked him. He was a good teacher.

Of course, we didn�t know who Mr. Avenovich really was or where he lived. We didn�t know his real name, or even if �he� was really a man. For all we knew, he could have been a small Inuit woman living in Anchorage, Alaska, who had adopted this appearance and voice to make her students more receptive to her lessons. But for some reason, I suspected that Mr. Avenovich�s avatar looked and sounded just like the person operating it.

The virtual schools are basically the best schools ever. The kids are programmed to be unable to leave their seats or talk to each other so there's no real disciplinary issues, and the virtual environment allows them to have "field trips" literally anywhere, from King Tut's tomb to the inside of a heart.

Wade eats his lunch by eating a real world protein bar while his avatar sits on a grassy field. Like he said before, travel costs virtual money through either teleportation or purchasing an in-game ship (the school parking lot is full of TIE Fighters, X-Wings, Vipers, UFOs, and Space Shuttles). While the more privileged kids (or ones with friends to hitch a ride with) spend their lunch breaks shopping, flying around, hitting up a virtual club, or questing, Wade lacks the friends or funds to really get out.

There are thousands of planets in OASIS, growing from only a few hundred at launch. Some were painstakingly hand-crafted while others were randomly generated, but they run every single fictional environment possible. Along with generic environments like a zombie apocalypse or cyberpunk city, OASIS absorbed just about every existing MMORPG world like Warcraft and Everquest after launch and has licensed tons of IPs: Firefly, Star Wars and Star Trek, the Metaverse from Snow Crash, Middle Earth, The Matrix, etc. You name it, it probably exists.

OASIS is divided into 27 cube-shaped sectors in a Rubik's Cube shape, each 10 light hours long. I previously mentioned that this gives a ridiculous distance of more than 33 billion kilometers to travel from one side to the other, hence teleportation services. Along with selling in-game items, GSS makes most of its money from selling spacecraft fuel and teleportation fees.

quote:

Traveling around inside the OASIS wasn�t just costly�it was also dangerous. Each sector was divided up into many different zones that varied in size and shape. Some zones were so large that they encompassed several planets, while others covered only a few kilometers on the surface of a single world. Each zone had a unique combination of rules and parameters. Magic would function in some zones and not in others. The same was true of technology. If you flew your technology-based starship into a zone where technology didn�t function, your engines would fail the moment you crossed the zone border. Then you�d have to hire some silly gray-bearded sorcerer with a spell-powered space barge to tow your rear end back into a technology zone.

Dual zones permitted the use of both magic and technology, and null zones didn�t allow either. There were pacifist zones where no player-versus-player combat was allowed, and player-versus-player zones where it was every avatar for themselves.

You had to be careful whenever you entered a new zone or sector. You had to be prepared.

Ludus, the school planet, is perfectly boring and ordinary. It's permanently daytime and filled with nothing but thousands of schools, all copied from the same template and separated by seed-generated parks, forests, and rivers. Because Wade can't afford to leave Ludus, he's stuck hitching rides with Aech to be dropped off in low-level zones and kill kobolds and goblins for a few credits that go right back to teleportation fees back to school. All of his equipment came from item drops, and he's painstakingly made it to level 3 after years in OASIS. This is a huge embarrassment as a gunter, but he can't risk going out too much because if he gets expelled due to poor attendance he'll have his school OASIS rig confiscated.

He also can't find a job outside of school, as the Great Recession is in its third decade and even fast food restaurants have a two-year waiting list. And yet....everything keeps going? There's enough government-subsidized food for Wade to grow fat despite climbing a 22-story junk tower twice a day, the schools can provide huge amounts of OASIS rigs for free to students with perfectly average GPAs, and there's a multinational conglomerate that can pay for a whole virtual army with expensive technology, despite the economy being so in the shitter and power so expensive that even automobile travel out of town is too costly for most people.

How the hell does any of this stay standing?

chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Mar 14, 2018

# ? Mar 14, 2018 15:23

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# ? May 1, 2024 20:47

Wheat Loaf: Feb 13, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

Compared and contrasted with other stories which are built on references and allusions to other works, what is it that really sets RPO apart from, say, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula or Philip Jos� Farmer's Wold Newton concept?

# ? Mar 14, 2018 15:33

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Wheat Loaf posted:

Compared and contrasted with other stories which are built on references and allusions to other works, what is it that really sets RPO apart from, say, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula or Philip Jos� Farmer's Wold Newton concept?

What separates Airplane! from Epic Movie?

references can be used eloquently to explore the significance of the character or story, or to analyze the premise exported into other contexts. A good transformative work uses the past works as a template to explore new interpretations.

RPO just points at a yoda and goes "look its yoda"

# ? Mar 14, 2018 15:38

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Wheat Loaf posted:

Compared and contrasted with other stories which are built on references and allusions to other works, what is it that really sets RPO apart from, say, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula or Philip Jos� Farmer's Wold Newton concept?

Well, I'd argue that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is still crap.

What I'd say is that the biggest difference is that these other works aren't just about referencing those works. League isn't just about Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Mina, and Dr. Jekyll constantly referencing and calling back to their standalone fiction to each other. They're not just reliving their prior adventures with other characters. The point is to take these existing characters and mash them up to see how they work together in unrelated situations.

RPO is about the references. The plot itself is one that's been rehashed over and over and the book would be 1/4 its length with all the 80s references excised. It's about pointing at stuff that's popular for nerds to be into and combining it all for the sake of it. The thread title I chose, in case you haven't seen it, is an old Flash animation that's basically the same thing as RPO but 3 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:03

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

This is also a good explanation of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMBylNJQEbg

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:14

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

I did not realize how goddamn BORING the writing in RPO is. It is so...mundane. The entire thing is really just boring description loaded with nostalgia, isn't it.

Why attempt to use the English language in an interesting way when you can make millions off of reminding 40 y.o. IT guys of their preteen years? Ernest Cline surely does not know why.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:18

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

chitoryu12 posted:

Well, I'd argue that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is still crap.

What I'd say is that the biggest difference is that these other works aren't just about referencing those works. League isn't just about Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Mina, and Dr. Jekyll constantly referencing and calling back to their standalone fiction to each other. They're not just reliving their prior adventures with other characters. The point is to take these existing characters and mash them up to see how they work together in unrelated situations.

RPO is about the references. The plot itself is one that's been rehashed over and over and the book would be 1/4 its length with all the 80s references excised. It's about pointing at stuff that's popular for nerds to be into and combining it all for the sake of it. The thread title I chose, in case you haven't seen it, is an old Flash animation that's basically the same thing as RPO but 3 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

Mind you, Ultimate Showdown does end on a punchline that points out how silly the whole concept of �famous pop-culture figures gruesomely murder each other because reasons� is. I�m not sure RPO ever manages the same.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:21

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

I did not realize how goddamn BORING the writing in RPO is. It is so...mundane. The entire thing is really just boring description loaded with nostalgia, isn't it.

Why attempt to use the English language in an interesting way when you can make millions off of reminding 40 y.o. IT guys of their preteen years? Ernest Cline surely does not know why.

One of the most horrifying moments on the forums thus far for me was a couple sci-fi fans being like "What do you mean you care about the quality of the prose?"

chitoryu12 posted:

RPO is about the references. The plot itself is one that's been rehashed over and over and the book would be 1/4 its length with all the 80s references excised. It's about pointing at stuff that's popular for nerds to be into and combining it all for the sake of it. The thread title I chose, in case you haven't seen it, is an old Flash animation that's basically the same thing as RPO but 3 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

It gets even worse in Armada, where the plot ITSELF is an 80s reference and the characters in the story explicitly acknowledge that what they are doing is "just like that 80s movie"

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:24

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

my bony fealty posted:

Why attempt

yes

At least when Stranger Things made me realize "holy poo poo, the eighties is to kids now as the 1950's was to me when I watched Back to the Future", I could at least respect the craft involved.

This book poo poo just makes me feel old and makes a mockery of everything I value in art.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:28

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

yes

At least when Stranger Things made me realize "holy poo poo, the eighties is to kids now as the 1950's was to me when I watched Back to the Future", I could at least respect the craft involved.

This book poo poo just makes me feel old and makes a mockery of everything I value in art.

I think Stranger Things gets a bad rep because its referential stuff is entirely window dressing.

Theres a new critical idea in the geek sphere I actually find kind of interesting despite the fact its troper poo poo. There is this idea that a work cannot simply be deconstructed but also reconstructed. Which is what stranger things feels like to me. Its not explicitly referencing 80s tropes as much as its taking our joined cultural memory of 80s cinema and acknowledging the tropes while creating a new narrative

# ? Mar 14, 2018 16:35

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I'm going to do one more update right off, a relatively short one. Ernest Cline decided that the best way to write would be to have two chapters back to back describing OASIS and a biography of Halliday. The plot gets put on hold for this, so I'll just knock out the rest of the exposition here.

quote:

After lunch, I headed to my favorite class, Advanced OASIS Studies. This was a senior-year elective where you learned about the history of the OASIS and its creators. Talk about an easy A.

For the past five years, I�d devoted all of my free time to learning as much as I possibly could about James Halliday. I�d exhaustively studied his life, accomplishments, and interests. Over a dozen different Halliday biographies had been published in the years since his death, and I�d read them all. Several documentary films had also been made about him, and I�d studied those, too. I�d studied every word Halliday had ever written, and I�d played every videogame he�d ever made. I took notes, writing down every detail I thought might be related to the Hunt. I kept everything in a notebook (which I�d started to call my �grail diary� after watching the third Indiana Jones film).

The more I�d learned about Halliday�s life, the more I�d grown to idolize him. He was a god among geeks, a nerd �ber-deity on the level of Gygax, Garriott, and Gates. He�d left home after high school with nothing but his wits and his imagination, and he�d used them to attain worldwide fame and amass a vast fortune. He�d created an entirely new reality that now provided an escape for most of humanity. And to top it all off, he�d turned his last will and testament into the greatest videogame contest of all time.

I spent most of my time in Advanced OASIS Studies class annoying our teacher, Mr. Ciders, by pointing out errors in our textbook and raising my hand to interject some relevant bit of Halliday trivia that I (and I alone) thought was interesting. After the first few weeks of class, Mr. Ciders had stopped calling on me unless no one else knew the answer to his question.

Today, he was reading excerpts from The Egg Man, a bestselling Halliday biography that I�d already read four times. During his lecture, I kept having to resist the urge to interrupt him and point out all of the really important details the book left out. Instead, I just made a mental note of each omission, and as Mr. Ciders began to recount the circumstances of Halliday�s childhood, I once again tried to glean whatever secrets I could from the strange way Halliday had lived his life, and from the odd clues about himself he�d chosen to leave behind.

Halliday (who was almost definitely autistic) was born June 12, 1972 in Middletown, OH. His father was an alcoholic machine operator and his mother was a bipolar waitress, so not exactly the best environment for someone with autism. He had no friends or social skills until another boy in school, Ogden Morrow, saw him reading the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook by himself in the cafeteria and invited him to game with them. Morrow and Halliday quickly became best friends and business partners.

Halliday became a game programmer at 15, creating Anorak's Quest for a TRS-80 Color Computer ("Anorak" was a nickname he was given by a British exchange student). It was only created for his D&D group, but Morrow encouraged him to start selling it. They quickly went from selling floppy disks out of ziplock bags to establishing their own game company, first in Morrow's basement and then in an office in a Columbus, OH strip mall. Gregarious Games took the gaming industry by storm, creating revolutionary works until by the end of the 1990s Halliday was viewed as possibly the greatest game developer of all time.

Morrow acted as the businessman while Halliday stuck to programming. He could charitably be called "eccentric", walking out of conversations or interviews if he got bored and laughing to himself for no apparent reason. He often locked himself away for days or weeks to work on games, and had such an obsession with the 80s that he would occasionally lash out and fire employees who didn't get his references (Morrow would then rehire them).

quote:

By their thirtieth birthdays, Halliday and Morrow were both multimillionaires. They purchased mansions on the same street. Morrow bought a Lamborghini, took several long vacations, and traveled the world. Halliday bought and restored one of the original DeLoreans used in the Back to the Future films, continued to spend nearly all of his time welded to a computer keyboard, and used his newfound wealth to amass what would eventually become the world�s largest private collection of classic videogames, Star Wars action figures, vintage lunch boxes, and comic books.

At the height of its success, Gregarious Games appeared to fall dormant. Several years elapsed during which they released no new games. Morrow made cryptic announcements, saying the company was working on an ambitious project that would move them in an entirely new direction.Rumors began to circulate that Gregarious Games was developing some sort of new computer gaming hardware and that this secret project was rapidly exhausting the company�s considerable financial resources. There were also indications that both Halliday and Morrow had invested most of their own personal fortunes in the company�s new endeavor. Word began to spread that Gregarious Games was in danger of going bankrupt.

Then, in December 2012, Gregarious Games rebranded itself as Gregarious Simulation Systems, and under this new banner they launched their flagship product, the only product GSS would ever release: the OASIS�the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation.

The OASIS would ultimately change the way people around the world lived, worked, and communicated. It would transform entertainment, social networking, and even global politics. Even though it was initially marketed as a new kind of massively multiplayer online game, the OASIS quickly evolved into a new way of life.

OASIS is the perfect game for everyone. The graphics are detailed down to individual blades of grass and weather patterns on a planetary scale. Halliday and Morrow imagined it as the perfect escape from a boring world, where guaranteed anonymity allowed you to create whatever idealized self you wanted. As an "open-source reality", anyone could create new worlds or even make their own private planets in a sort of cyber-Mormonism. The visor uses low-power lasers to beam images directly onto the user's retinas and the haptic feedback gloves allow for realistic touch feedback. Halliday's genius programming allowed for 5 million simultaneous users on launch, which has expanded to billions by 2045.

quote:

Most online games of the day generated revenue by charging users a monthly subscription fee for access. GSS only charged a onetime sign-up fee of twenty-five cents, for which you received a lifetime OASIS account. The ads all used the same tagline: The OASIS�it�s the greatest videogame ever created, and it only costs a quarter.

At a time of drastic social and cultural upheaval, when most of the world�s population longed for an escape from reality, the OASIS provided it, in a form that was cheap, legal, safe, and not (medically proven to be) addictive. The ongoing energy crisis contributed greatly to the OASIS�s runaway popularity. The skyrocketing cost of oil made airline and automobile travel too expensive for the average citizen, and the OASIS became the only getaway most people could afford. As the era of cheap, abundant energy drew to a close, poverty and unrest began to spread like a virus. Every day, more and more people had reason to seek solace inside Halliday and Morrow�s virtual utopia.

Any business that wanted to set up shop inside the OASIS had to rent or purchase virtual real estate (which Morrow dubbed �surreal estate�) from GSS. Anticipating this, the company had set aside Sector One as the simulation�s designated business zone and began to sell and rent millions of blocks of surreal estate there. City-sized shopping malls were erected in the blink of an eye, and storefronts spread across planets like time-lapse footage of mold devouring an orange. Urban development had never been so easy.

In addition to the billions of dollars that GSS raked in selling land that didn�t actually exist, they made a killing selling virtual objects and vehicles. The OASIS became such an integral part of people�s day-to-day social lives that users were more than willing to shell out real money to buy accessories for their avatars: clothing, furniture, houses, flying cars, magic swords and machine guns. These items were nothing but ones and zeros stored on the OASIS servers, but they were also status symbols. Most items only cost a few credits, but since they cost nothing for GSS to manufacture, it was all profit. Even in the throes of an ongoing economic recession, the OASIS allowed Americans to continue engaging in their favorite pastime: shopping.

The OASIS quickly became the single most popular use for the Internet, so much so that the terms �OASIS� and �Internet� gradually became synonymous. And the incredibly easy-to-use three-dimensional OASIS OS, which GSS gave away for free, became the single most popular computer operating system in the world.

Before long, billions of people around the world were working and playing in the OASIS every day. Some of them met, fell in love, and got married without ever setting foot on the same continent. The lines of distinction between a person�s real identity and that of their avatar began to blur.

It was the dawn of new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a videogame.

chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Mar 14, 2018

# ? Mar 14, 2018 17:05

Solumin: Jan 11, 2013

I actually liked the dialogue when Wade and H were talking about Lady hawk or whatever. It felt natural, it actually had some back and forth to it. It read like typical nerd banter.

I'm pretty sure it's an example of "write what you know" and Cline just copied a conversation he ~~had with another human being~~ read online somewhere.

And look, he managed to mention Halliday's movie collection without going into excruciating detail about it! Usually he'd be listing everything that was in it.

Edit: the above was about the previous update, I took too long to respond apparently.

Of course Halliday was a "rockstar" programmer. Sounds like he was absolutely terrible to work with.

Solumin fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Mar 14, 2018

# ? Mar 14, 2018 17:08

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Solumin posted:

And look, he managed to mention that rich guy's movie collection without going into excruciating detail about it! Usually he'd be listing everything that was in it.

Oh just you wait.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 17:08

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

Mel Mudkiper posted:

One of the most horrifying moments on the forums thus far for me was a couple sci-fi fans being like "What do you mean you care about the quality of the prose?"

I am an ardent SFF reader and that is baffling to me. Imagined written worlds cannot come alive without prose that meets a minimum of competency and creativity. Or without characterization that feels real in a fantastic setting. But I suppose many (most?) SFF readers aren't looking to read about well-imagined places and people, rather they seek escapism and the literary equivalent of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Many of my favorite literary works share this appeal: Proust's Combray and its inhabitants are as alien to me as any amazing planet I've read about in a sci-fi novel, but that does not stop them from being eminently relatable and having an intrinsic human quality.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 17:59

Truther Vandross: Jun 17, 2008

I started reading this the other day just so it's at least fair when I poo poo on my wife's friend for loving this book and oh my god it's worse than everyone said.

The bad part is there's a fairly interesting story there IMO, the execution is just so painstakingly awful that it's irredeemable. In better hands it could be a fairly interesting book. It's bad to the level that I'd think it was an intricate troll job if I didn't already know more about Cline.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 20:31

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

sportsgenius86 posted:

I started reading this the other day just so it's at least fair when I poo poo on my wife's friend for loving this book and oh my god it's worse than everyone said.

The bad part is there's a fairly interesting story there IMO, the execution is just so painstakingly awful that it's irredeemable. In better hands it could be a fairly interesting book. It's bad to the level that I'd think it was an intricate troll job if I didn't already know more about Cline.

Honestly, the actual game world would be a really interesting place for adventures. I want to like the idea of an MMO with a playing field 10 times larger than the solar system where you can drop into just about any fictional universe the author can think of.

Cline just does it a complete disservice. He thinks that nerdiness (and in his mind, attractiveness as a person) is about consuming and enjoying traditionally "nerdy" media while geeking out about science and numbers, and he puts his own childhood on a pedestal above all others. He doesn't put any stock into whether or not anything he's consuming is actually good. The gunters' cargo cult of the 80s isn't presented as a bizarre reversal of the progress of human civilization, but as something to aspire to as the epitome of coolness.

I will say that the book tries to present spending your entire life in an MMO and worshiping the 80s as a bad thing toward the end, but the message flies in the face of how awesome it's all presented as earlier.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 20:40

Subjunctive: Sep 12, 2006; ✨sparkle and shine✨

Let�s not let the mere word �gunter� pass by unremarked-upon.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 21:11

Admiral Bosch: Apr 19, 2007; Who is Admiral Aken Bosch, and what is that old scoundrel up to?

It has recently occurred to me that we owe it to ourselves to jack off to Stormy Daniels explicitly because Ernest Cline would definitely 100% not

# ? Mar 14, 2018 21:14

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I decided to look on Tumblr to see the current climate regarding the movie.

# ? Mar 14, 2018 21:21

Gnome de plume: Sep 5, 2006; Hell.
Fucking.
Yes.

Yeah, more and more people are spending increasing amounts of time in this immersive simulation to the detriment of their real lives but it's been *medically proven* to not be addictive, guys.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 00:39

Somebody Awful: Nov 27, 2011; BORN TO DIE
HAIG IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1917
I am trench man
410,757,864,530 SHELLS FIRED

What does OASIS do that the Metaverse didn't, anyway?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 00:46

Memento: Aug 25, 2009; Bleak Gremlin

quote:

rack up some XPs

burn it to the god drat ground

# ? Mar 15, 2018 01:31

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Memento posted:

burn it to the god drat ground

XPs and videogames

# ? Mar 15, 2018 02:41

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

This book is awful, but doing whatever it is this thread is is severely loving deranged.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 03:16

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

sector_corrector posted:

This book is awful, but doing whatever it is this thread is is severely loving deranged.

Reading it? I agree.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 03:37

Angry Salami: Jul 27, 2013; Don't trust the skull.

So traveling from planet to planet or across zones isn't instantaneous? You gotta actually get in your spaceship and spend time traveling across virtual interstellar distances? How much time are players spending just sitting in their imaginary spaceship just commuting?

Did Chris Roberts play any role in designing this world?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 03:51

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Angry Salami posted:

So traveling from planet to planet or across zones isn't instantaneous? You gotta actually get in your spaceship and spend time traveling across virtual interstellar distances? How much time are players spending just sitting in their imaginary spaceship just commuting?

Did Chris Roberts play any role in designing this world?

There�s teleportation, but it costs credits. Wade is stuck because he has no friends to hitch rides with and is too poor to afford teleports or spacecraft.

But yes, the fastest spacecraft travel at light speed so it would take at least 30 hours with the best ships to fly from end to end of OASIS.

What would the volume of OASIS be?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 04:39

Memento: Aug 25, 2009; Bleak Gremlin

30 light hours/side, a light hour is about 1.1 billion km in length, so (30*1,100,000,000km)*(30*1,100,000,000km)*(30*1,100,000,000km)=2.97e+13km³, or 29,700,000,000,000 cubic kilometers.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 04:50

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL: Feb 21, 2006; Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

I never gave much thought to the scale of computing it would take to run something like OASIS, but after reading folks talk about it it�s like A.M. from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream became carelessly apathetic instead of self-hating homicidal. Every nanoangstrom engraved with WHERE�S THE BEEF.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 05:19

roomforthetuna: Mar 22, 2005; I don't need to know anything about virii! My CUSTOM PROGRAM keeps me protected! It's not like they'll try to come in through the Internet or something!

I wrote a simulator for a universe with those dimensions, it was easy. You can even play in it. But it's single player, first-person view, and the universe is completely empty other than the player. You can play it by turning off your monitor.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 05:36

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Gnome de plume posted:

Yeah, more and more people are spending increasing amounts of time in this immersive simulation to the detriment of their real lives but it's been *medically proven* to not be addictive, guys.

give him the credit for the one piece of subtlety he's had so far, he's very much implying it's addictive there, just not through chemical means

# ? Mar 15, 2018 05:47

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

sector_corrector posted:

This book is awful, but doing whatever it is this thread is is severely loving deranged.

Welcome to The Book Barn

# ? Mar 15, 2018 06:05

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

I'm so confused.

So energy is now expensive which is why we can afford to run all these VR headsets? But not run an electric car or something to get around?

Also was there a nuclear exchange in the first paragraph?

Cline posted:

Normally, the newsfeeds didn�t interrupt everyone�s interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened. Like the outbreak of some new killer virus, or another major city vanishing in a mushroom cloud.

There's a loving nuclear war going on, and these kids are just allowed to sit around and play video games instead of being drafted to fight? Cities are going up in atomic flame and people are seriously just sitting around playing an MMO? Sure, it's been 5 years since the nukes were launched but I can't imagine the government just letting 18-year-olds play video games all day. This is the kind of poo poo that would cause martial law to be instituted, not provide an acceptable excuse for dicking around in the magic bullshit MMO!

# ? Mar 15, 2018 06:06

Lemniscate Blue: Apr 21, 2006; Here we go again.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I'm so confused.

So energy is now expensive which is why we can afford to run all these VR headsets? But not run an electric car or something to get around?

Also was there a nuclear exchange in the first paragraph?

There's a loving nuclear war going on, and these kids are just allowed to sit around and play video games instead of being drafted to fight? Cities are going up in atomic flame and people are seriously just sitting around playing an MMO? Sure, it's been 5 years since the nukes were launched but I can't imagine the government just letting 18-year-olds play video games all day. This is the kind of poo poo that would cause martial law to be instituted, not provide an acceptable excuse for dicking around in the magic bullshit MMO!

I think the implication is that nuclear terrorism is an increasingly common occurrence.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 07:18

Drunken Baker: Feb 3, 2015; VODKA STYLE DRINK

Tunicate posted:

give him the credit for the one piece of subtlety he's had so far, he's very much implying it's addictive there, just not through chemical means

Given that this is Cline we're talking about I'd wager all my XPs that this was completely unintentional.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 10:40

buteruc: Feb 12, 2009

This is the worst loving thing I've ever read, and I'm not even reading it.

Thank you for your service.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 10:43

Pastry of the Year: Apr 12, 2013

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Every nanoangstrom engraved with WHERE�S THE BEEF.

I loved this

also

https://twitter.com/leonardpierce/status/974018822121324544

:thurman:

# ? Mar 15, 2018 12:05

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Pastry of the Year posted:

I loved this

also

https://twitter.com/leonardpierce/status/974018822121324544

reminds me of a fun game for this book

keep track of how many times he describes something as "classic"

# ? Mar 15, 2018 12:22

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

chitoryu12 posted:

Trust me, it gets even stupider when OASIS boots up.

I showed the infamous excerpt to my mom (who was born in 1964) and she was aghast. She said that after living the 80s she didn't want to experience this much of it all at once.

I completely missed Ready Player One till the movie trailers hit.

I have to ask, what's the infamous excerpt that people keep referring to?

Edit: Wait is it the post above from Pastry that I literally just noticed?

Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 12:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 1, 2024 20:47

Drunken Baker: Feb 3, 2015; VODKA STYLE DRINK

Mel Mudkiper posted:

reminds me of a fun game for this book

keep track of how many times he describes something as "classic"

Double points for when he refers to something as "classic" instead of describing it.

"He started doing some classic 80s dance moves."
"They wore classic 80s clothes."

Those are the only ones I remember cemented in my brain from 372 pages. I couldn't unsee it after that.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 13:32

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

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