Ready Player One Review
I love VR stuff. I've gushed in previous posts about paracosms and simulated worlds. I've read neuromancer by william gibson, snowcrash, the nexus trilogy, and now ready player one. I was obsessed with the matrix as I grew up and it even inspired me to pursue philosophy. There is just something fascinating about worlds within worlds. The feeling we get when we have to shift our perspective to different levels of reality is unique and Important, I feel, for self development. It is also conducive to developing higher order thinking skills. More about this later, but onto my synopsis and review.
RPO is about a kid named Wade growing up in a decaying world where everyone has immersed themselves in a virtual reality simulation called the OASIS that plays out like an mmorpg. The creator of the game, Halliday, grew up in the 80s and loved all sorts of video games, comic books and other media of that time period. Halliday has died and left his massive fortune to anyone who can solve a series of riddles and challenges scattered throughout the OASIS. Our main character, Wade has basically been raised by the OASIS and is a super geek when it comes to 80s pop culture lore. He struggles to solve the riddles and find Halliday's treasure while also dealing with the struggles of the real world. He's also up against a massive corporation that wants to take over the OASIS and monetize everything, changing the fundamental democratization of information ethic Halliday began. There is a clear parallel here with the net neutrality issue we routinely face today.
I love all the 80s references though a lot of stuff went over my head, the things that stuck out delighted me. MUDS, the text based games that play out like D&D are feature in some of the riddles that Wade has to solve. There are too many other pop culture references to pick out individually from star trek to the iron giant, it's endless. And that's the unique thing about this book, it doesn't pretend that our media does not affect us. The real history of our cultural influences will always be deeper and more nuanced than a contrived history in any given fictional story because we are also located at a certain time and place in our culture where we are constantly affected. When a story has all of actual human history to draw upon, it is much easier to build a coherent and varied world. So what RPO lacks in it's storytelling is made up for with its constant reference to familiar 80s lore.
Something else that stood out to me was how Wade deals with the deteriorating health of his body as he devotes most of his waking hours to the OASIS. This is a real problem for the future of gaming that people are trying to solve. Omnidirectional treadmills and haptic gloves actually exist but they are all in the early stages of development. In RPO, Wade has a massive haptic rig connected to his limbs that provides a certain amount of resistance to simulate the the physics of the real world. This gives his body a degree of exercise but he also takes time to exercise in a gym simulation, doing weight and running. He also sets up his OASIS rig to not allow him in until he has exercised a certain amount. He gets all of his meals sent to him from the outside world and the weight loss program basically won't allow him to over eat so he gets super strong and fit despite spending all of his waking life in a videogame. Once this problem of bodily neglect is solved in the real world, I will probably become so addicted to playing mmos and other things that I will be fitter than I have ever been. It's a long way off though, I'll have to keep pretending at my heroic efforts during my parkour sessions.
I have more to say about simulated worlds but not here. Those are my basic impressions of the book. I'm all in for other vr related books now.
