Devastation with Detachment: The Instability of Video Game Immersion in 'Ready Player One' David Alexander 10th Grade

Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline in 2011, is set in a massively multiplayer online simulation game called the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation (OASIS), created by James Halliday in partnership with Ogden Morrow and Gregarious Gaming Systems (GSS). In his will, James Halliday left an Easter Egg, an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software, included as a joke or a bonus. In the case of the OASIS, The Egg grants whoever finds it ownership of GSS, the OASIS, and billions of dollars. Wade, an eighteen-year-old, has made it his life’s mission to find Halliday’s Easter Egg and win the grand prize, even if it at the cost of his personal health and relationships in the real world. From Wade’s growth out of an OASIS obsessed sloth to the personal stories and relational conflicts of James Halliday and Ogden Morrow, Ernest Cline shows how hazardous ignoring the real world in favor of videogames is.

At the beginning of Ready Player One, Wade has given up almost all hope in the human race as a whole. He lives to find Halliday’s Easter Egg and consequently is completely obsessed with 80’s culture, movies, games, and a small book by Halliday called Anorak’s Almanac. He lives by video...