Book #28: Ready Player One

[thistlechaser]

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

What a fun, entertaining story this was. The moral and the ending made me sad, but I don't think it would have that effect on most people.

Ready Player One was set in the near future. The world continued on as it is today, the environment is in worse shape, unemployment is worse, most people are out of work and living in poverty, fossil fuels are all used up, etc. But there's one good thing in the world -- no matter how poor you are, there's OASIS.

OASIS is a cross between Second Life and Virtual Reality. It's an online universe made up of thousand of planets (planet-sized planets, not game-planets that might be explored in a day). The planets are all made by the game designers and the players. There are themed worlds, like Star Trek, WoW, Firefly, as well as hundreds of custom worlds. Some are tech-based, some are magic-based, and some are both or neither. There are PvP and non-PvP worlds as well.

And best of all? OASIS is free to play. This means that the whole world plays it. It's the biggest and most successful "game" ever created. (The company makes money through micro transactions, selling game real estate to RL companies to set up shops, etc.) The man who invented it became the richest person in the world. Then he died.

Being a game designer with no family or friends, he left a will stating that anyone who could solve a series of in-game puzzles and easter egg hunts would get all of his money, and from there the story takes off.

Some of the reviews of this book said that there was too much description of OASIS and that it slowed the story down. For me it was opposite -- I would have happily read the whole book if it were only about OASIS and there was no plot at all. Why don't we have something so amazing in RL? Many people in the book rarely leave the game, other than to sleep and eat. People can and do have jobs in OASIS -- salespeople would never have to fly to visit companies, kids from around the world could attend the same school, etc.

Which leads to what made me sad about the book. OASIS sounded so great, I'd happily live and work in it. You could have anything as your avatar, any human, elf, vampire, werewolf, or something you make up yourself. One PoC woman used a white male human avatar, because it helped her do better business as a salesperson. Read a book, saw a movie, played a game you loved? You could live on a planet set in that theme! You can meet anyone from around the world, can go anywhere, have super powers or super tech. How does the real world compare to that?

As the book closes, repeatedly we were told that the real world is better than OASIS, that people should choose RL over it. An understandable moral, but it makes me feel bad and wrong because I'd still pick OASIS over it. It's not even a hard decision -- be in a place where I can be anything, do anything, go to any of thousands of worlds, or work my boring job and come home to the same boring apartment day after day? What if I could do my job and then go to Narnia? Pandora (from Avatar)? A "real" video game?

Anyway, I'm getting off the track. Wonderful book, great for geeks, anyone who remembers the 80s, gamers, or people who just like a fun adventure story. Highly recommended!

Comments

[bastets-place.livejournal.com]

I Think that I *have* chosen OASIS over the real world.

certainly I like it much better, there.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep. There's so much I can't do here that I could do there. It's really no contest.

[teaandfailure.livejournal.com]

I didn't think the moral was necessarily "The real world is BETTER," after all, most of the characters met there, and wouldn't have been friends if they hadn't done so, and enjoyed the same things there.

I think it was more just, "make sure you really know and spend time with your real friends, once you know who your real friends are."

Were you ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED OF THE CORPORATE WORLD? God, I was. The indentured debt call center slaves? You know AT&T would do the shit out of that if they thought for five seconds they could get away with it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

One of the last lines was what made me think that, when Wade said something like "And for the first time, I didn't feel like logging in". Combine that with what's his name, the avatar of the dead gamemaker's line about not ignoring the real world for OASIS, and I could see it going either way. I'd be okay with "make sure you really know and spend time with your real friends, once you know who your real friends are." as the moral though!

And YES. That was so scary-reasonable, the way people would never be able to make enough money to buy themselves free.

Did they explain this or was this a plot hole? Gas was so expensive that no one was driving or flying, yet the one character lived and traveled nonstop in an RV (gas guzzler!). The character did mention stopping to charge batteries, but I assumed that was for appliances and the OASIS rig to run off of. Do you think the whole RV was battery powered?

[teaandfailure.livejournal.com]

... you know, I never even stopped to think if the RV was battery powered, because I was too delighted by pretty much everything about that particular character.

It would make sense though, although that character was also probably reasonably well-off financially, and was possibly just traveling for redacted because spoilers? So it might have been gas and that character could afford it.

As for explaining the debt slaves, that's a good point - I was going to say student loans, but one of the awesome things about the Oasis was that pretty much anyone could go to school for free, which was awesome, so that wouldn't be a problem.

I had forgotten it ended like that! I'm still going to give the benefit of the doubt though - the reason he didn't want to log in was because he was with his real friends in person, and they do a really good job of showing that all the really close relationships in the book, friends, blood brothers (I LOVED the two Japanese kids), romantic... were all formed online. And the reason the creator of Oasis was a recluse wasn't because he spent all his time online, but because he didn't spend time with his real friends once redacted for spoilers.

Of course I may be justifying it because like you, I am not so much on board with a moral of "get offline and go outside, kid." ESPECIALLY IF ONLINE WERE REALLY THAT AWESOME.

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

I've never been a gamer, so I don't know that it would float my boat, but it sounds interesting nonetheless.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I think gamers would enjoy it most of all, but if you're geeky about movies and books and such, it might be something you could like too. :) (But then, there are so many great books out there, no use trying to force one to work for you!)

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Interesting that the moral the author pushes is "real world is better." After watching Sword Art Online, a group of friends and I had lengthy discussions on the subjective vs objective nature of human existence (particularly, happiness). Being MMO gamers of varying degrees, some definitely having been addicts in FFXI days, it made some interesting talks. Does it matter, spending most of your time in a game, if that makes you happy? If you derive sufficient self worth from a virtual world and aren't a burden on the rest of society, does that make your life less meaningful than someone who goes to work, comes home and plops in front of the TV so they don't have to speak to their family for the next 6 hours (can you tell it was Father's Day yesterday)?


also - just got an email about a certain greek letter and a game I have high hopes for. Now if I can just figure out what my damn SE login is...

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the beta restarted this weekend, but I can't seem to log in. It's not the end of the world, since I'm back to semi-okay with WoW again, but I do wonder why (and worry slightly that I posted too much). Strangely, I can't find my email with the beta codes, so I can't track the issue down at all.

Does it matter, spending most of your time in a game, if that makes you happy? If you derive sufficient self worth from a virtual world and aren't a burden on the rest of society, does that make your life less meaningful than someone who goes to work, comes home and plops in front of the TV so they don't have to speak to their family for the next 6 hours (can you tell it was Father's Day yesterday)?

Those are good questions. The work I do on WoW (and it is work) gives me a sense of satisfaction, even though I know the product of that work (gold) is not real. Does it matter that it's not real? I go back and forth on that. On one hand, I could be using the time to do something real. On the other, the feeling of satisfaction would be similar, so... I don't know.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Hopefully y'all don't mind me adding my two cents here.

I joked once that if I spent as much time learning actually carpentry as I did skilling it in FF14, I'd be able to make actual furniture. ;)

But seriously, I think it's a matter of answering a couple questions. One is that if you look back on all the time you spend gaming, did you enjoy it, or did you wish that you'd spent the time on something else? If it's the former, then I don't see how that's different from any other way people spend their recreational time (TV, building model trains, going fishing, reading, etc.) It's not better or worse in the grand scheme of things than other people's hobbies; it's the one that works for you, and so it's the best one for you specifically.

The other is if logging in is something you want to do, or something you feel you *have* to do. I got in a bad place recently with FFXI and some of the new expansion content where I was trying to do as much of something as I possibly could (there are tags, so you can only do it a limited number of times, but I was determined to use my tags as efficiently as possible), and it got to the point where all I could think about in-game was logging in and spending the tags, or trying to complete a couple of quests by harvesting/mining goods. And it stopped being fun. Once I felt like I couldn't do anything in-game aside from spending tags and harvesting, I realized I just didn't want to log in at all. So I backed off. It's not that important to my overall enjoyment of the game, and if I don't get to mentally check off a completed quest or I don't have x number of points to buy stuff I may not actually use, that's okay. I tried Salvage for the very first time last week (yes, that Salvage that's been around since ToAU days) with a few friends and had a great time. The level cap raise to 99 means that what used to be a super-intense, highly-structured event is now just wacky naked fun times. ;p We don't care about gear; we're just there to relax.

So, the tl;dr summary: taking care of yourself is important, balance between "want to" and "have to" is important, not hurting other people is important, but if doing all that and you're happy with what you do, keep on truckin'.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Your two cents are welcome!

You've pinned it down well. For me, WoW is more of a time filler than anything else. Do I want to log in? Not really*. Do I have anything better to do? No. Sometimes when I log on I have fun anyway, and sometimes it really is just a time filler between the end of work and bedtime.

(*There's a strange thing about me. I feel like I "have to" log in and sell things and such, so me doing what I have to do makes me happy... even if I don't like what it is I'm doing, just the fact that I'm doing what I have to is satisfying.)

I wish I could recapture my love for it, but failing that, I'm trying to at least be casual about it. I watch TV, log off to read, whatever else I might do at the same time as playing.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

To tie back to the original post topic, I've been enjoying your book reviews and I've heard lots of good things about Ready Player One so I suspect I'll get it from the library at some point after I've worked down some of my purchased book backlog. (Purchased book backlog is approaching ludicrous status. ^^; )

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Woot! I hope you enjoy it, if you do get to it! :D

Also, it's nice to know people are enjoying the reviews! They get the fewest comments (which is totally understandable -- what are you going to say if you haven't read it?), so it's nice to know people aren't just skipping them.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

The whole reason I comment on Thistle's LJ is I want to contribute two cents, and hopefully get more than two cents back :)

Watching Sword Art Online spawned literally hours of discussion on this topic. One of my friends blames FFXI for his life being hell for 5 years - he knows it was his fault he was addicted, but he's never played another MMO. He made a lot of bad decisions - moving to another country, getting married to someone he shouldn't've (and now divorced) among other stuff. So, as he counts it, game did considerable harm vs his other options to do with free time. Me? I sorely miss the days with both FI and my other LS. If I can ever repeat that sort of experience, I will. After all - I'm a software engineer who prefers to live in a fantasy world. I don't neglect RL stuff, but given a few free hours in the evening or days off and I'd rather visit Vana'diel/Azeroth/Copacabana/Arborea/etc than go to the same ol' vacation spots. I mentioned I'm married? My wife has already claimed my second beta key.

Though I did start feeling like FFXI was work, every now and then. Part of what I love about MMOs is abnegation - I can craft or farm with my brain turned off while I watch a TV show, and as an 'intellectual laborer' in my day job, some evenings (or days, when medicated) I am brainless. But when it starts feeling like work, I took a break for a few weeks, a few months sometimes. I know it was an inconvenience to others who were teammates in the game, but the alternative was eventually ragequitting and uninstalling completely.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I am envious of your wife claiming the second beta code. My husband is a gamer and enjoys RPGs, but is not an MMO'er, so he won't be joining me in FFXI or FFXIV. On the other hand, he enjoys listening to my gaming stories and so probably knows more about FFXI than anyone who doesn't actually play the game should. ;)

[loup_noir]

I had many problems with this book. Maybe, if I were a gamer, this would have been better for me. So, not being a gamer, I was left to grumble about plot, characterization, the amazing way that the protagonist had already done everything that had to be done to solve whatever problem was there offscreen, the way for no particular reason we learn that he's suddenly opted to buy into an exercise program to make him incredibly buff when we all know he's not that kinda guy, the really obvious plot points, the way too much info dumping, the annoying message at the end, etc....

I understand that this is being made into a movie. I'm sure it'll make the big bucks.

What I did like was the obvious considerable effort the author had gone through to create his world. While the endless eighties trivia got a bit dull for me (hey, I was in my twenties and working like a dog to get my career going. Most of the TV references made me go, "Huh?" I got most of the music and many of the games, mostly because we had a few friends who worked in the coin-op game business, and yes, I also smiled at the ancient technology references.), I give the guy credit for all the research he did. It just didn't float my particular boat/hovercraft/TIE-fighter.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Understandable points! I think you hit on the big one though: Being a gamer or not seems to strongly predict if you'll like the book or not. All nongamers I know who read it hated it, all gamers I know who read it loved it.