Ready Player One
Oh boy. Now we get to talk about how much Ernest Cline is a hack. Ahem.
Ready Player One was a nostalgia-driven sci-fi novel published in 2011. While I don't hold much fondness for it anymore, this "neckbeard Twilight" at least made some bold predictions about VR technology that could be achieved using then-modern technology (and it's only become more clear since that a metaverse is likely mere months away as of July 2025; let's just say I'm willing to think that 2026 or even 2025 might be the "1990" of the metaverse, if the current state of things being like the year 1989 of the metaverse - just months away from the first public-use webpage ever - is anything to go by) which indeed inspired Palmer Luckey to try and make the first modern VR headset (by studying all the failed prototypes of the early 1990s) and to found what was originally known as Oculus.
As for the plot, well... Wade Watts is a turbo-nerd living with his jerkass aunt and her jerkass string of abusive boyfriends in a trailer-park-slash-ghetto-slash-slum over on the East Coast of the US somewhere.
He plays a VR game known as the "OASIS", created by Gregarious Games (basically off-brand Valve Software). Specifically, by the game's "wonderworker" developer who - upon dying of old age - distributed a video to every OASIS user at the time. The announcement? "I'm dead, please test my ARG and find my MacGuffins".
Thus began the "Easter Egg Hunt" for the developer's apparently massive fortune. Except years went by, Wade's mom died, IOI tried to get the dead dev's money but couldn't buy out or legally destroy Gregarious Games, and everybody got a big fast goose egg. That is to say, nothing.
Until one day Wade was, somehow, the only one to notice the translation pun (one that is no longer even considered valid by LLM-based translation apps, only in Google Translate as it was before 2011) of the name of the planet that is effectively the tutorial level of OASIS. Good job, Erne- I mean, Wade. Anyway, he solves the first clue first and suddenly he's super-famous and instantly becomes super rich from sponsorship deals.
Oh, and IOI wants him dead because he's a threat to their plans. That's when the Sixers start trying to get rid of him - virtually or in reality - before his character or a few people who also got lucky and were able to solve it, solves the final riddle without dying. And because of IOI's virtual reality army, there's only one opportunity to succeed or you get wiped from the leaderboard.
Ready Player One (The Movie)
People apparently liked the movie better, but personally it all feels like trash now. The many, ''many'', MANY haphazard 1980s references (I am aware of the hypocrisy, but to be fair Mr. Cline is ''selling'' his books about cheap pop culture references, not just running a fan RP free of charge) had to be replaced because Warner Bros. wasn't having OVER 9000 royalty payments in one movie. Also, the race scene is even worse because the hint for it is f-ing obvious.
Ready Player Two, or, How Wade Watts Turned Evil and Basically Became Elon "Never watched ''Schindler's List'' Before Trump" Musk
'nuff said.
Effects on Glitch Techs x RP canon
Glitch Techs x RP does feature both Gregarious Games and IOI as corporate entities, but the requisite cast of Ready Player One are nowhere to be seen... or are they?