History Headscratchers / ReadyPlayerOne

*** But the dwelling long since abandoned could be anything, not JUST video game related. Wade went to multiple abandoned dwellings when trying to figure out possible clues, including some in films, with Wade citing the cabin from ''The Evil Dead'', all because they fit that description. The clue was vague enough that it wouldn't have been easy to find, even with the trophies mentioned. It was just as vague as the inscription above the third gate (where even Googling the words forwards or backwards would have pulled up everything except the Schoolhouse Rock lyrics). Even Googling "house, trophies", "abandoned house, trophies" or "dwelling long since abandoned, trophies" in RL dooesn't pull up anything ''Zork'' related with the exception of the usage of it in the book. And even Anorak's Almanac may have mentioned hundreds of text based adventures by title, not by descriptions of settings from the interactive fiction. The reason why Wade didn't realize it was Zork was because he played it one time a long time before the start of the story. Art3mis may have figured it out because she may have gotten to that part of the Almanac, started playing Zork and realized the description seemed to fit and she went to ''Zork'' in the OASIS on a hunch much like how Wade did with his guesses. As Kevin Flynn best put it in ''TRON'', which applies to all fiction works, "One the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy." For readers who read the novel multiple times, it's easy to know it's ''Zork'' having read the novel. Can you, fellow troper, honestly say that you knew it was ''Zork'' the first time you read it?

* On a somewhat related note to the "Public Domain" Headscrather, how are first-party titles (i.e. Mario or Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda for Nintendo, ''Halo'' for Microsoft, ''Franchise/GodOfWar'' or ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' for Sony, and so on) handled in the OASIS?

* On a somewhat related note to the "Public Domain" Headscrather, how are first-party titles (i.e. Mario or Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda for Nintendo, ''Halo'' for Microsoft, ''Franchise/GodOfWar'' or ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' for Sony, and so on) handled in the OASIS?

* On a somewhat related note to the "Public Domain" Headscrather, how are first-party titles (i.e. Mario or Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda for Nintendo, ''Halo'' for Microsoft, ''Franchise/GodOfWar'' or ''Franchise/Ratchet&Clank'' for Sony, and so on) handled in the OASIS?

** It may have to do with the fact that Rush is a very niche fanbase. The reason why it's included in the book and to such an extent is due to the fact that Cline is a fan of them (and ''Ready Player One'' isn't the only thing he's written that features Rush. In the movie ''Fanboys'', one of the characters is a die-hard fan of Rush to the point where he only listens to Rush in his van). Not many people are familiar with their work, and the only song that Hollywood ever uses repeatedly (especially in regards to video gaming) is "Tom Sawyer" (and sticking to that, the San Deigo Comic-Con teaser trailer for the film features that particular song for a film set in a video game).

** Ogden Morrow and all current and former GSS employees are forbidden from participating or interfering directly in the hunt. The few times he ''does'' interfere are not directly related (One: He destroys the Sixers targeting Art3mis and ParZival at his birthday party, and Two: provides them a safe place IRL from where to launch their attack). Even if he did bring complaint against them legally that would be in violation of the terms of the game. Halliday was plenty smart, but for all his genius the book it very clear in stating that he quite often lacked basic common sense, and the terms of the game as it relates to [=IOI=] (or more specifically, as it ''doesn't'') is one of those examples.

** One of the complaints that Art3mis has was that the Lich was always beating her at Joust, and ended up killing her. Either she sinks a lot of money into reobtaining the necessary items, or she is able to store items into either an account or private chatroom rather than the avatar (i.e. only loses inventory items.) This could be similar to a "medium-core" death system where there's a major penalty for dying but you don't lose absolutely everything.
*** First, Art3mis stated that she was nearly killed, not killed every time, and she always stocked up on healing items beforehand. Also, they do lose everything upon actual character death.

* So this is a headscratcher from somebody who enjoyed the book, but found this to be the largest plot hole. How did OASIS get popular as an mmo with a permadeath system in place? I understand the idea of an extremely immersive mmo that has slowly replaced traditional life, but who in their right mind would devote so many hours into an mmo where if you slip up once it's game over, restart from the beginning. Could you imagine if VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft launched with such a system? Now I understand from a narrative point of view it's important to have a constant threat, but why couldn't a system like in .hack//SIGN work. Where you need to log out properly to save your level and progress, or you log back in to your last save. And if you die you revert to a previous save. It just feels like a misunderstanding to why rogue are interesting. It's a small investment usually a few hours overall, and when you die you get to experience a new game entirely with a new character and load-out. Generally it sounds like OASIS is a static environment so if you die you just have to slog through the same stuff again if you even get that far after resetting. And I don't remember reading any proper explanation in-universe to the permadeath.

* So this is a headscratcher from somebody who enjoyed the book, but found this to be the largest plot hole. How did OASIS get popular as an mmo with a permadeath system in place? I understand the idea of an extremely immersive mmo that has slowly replaced traditional life, but who in their right mind would devout so many hours into an mmo where if you slip up once it's game over, restart from the beginning. Could you imagine if VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft launched with such a system? Now I understand from a narrative point of view it's important to have a constant threat, but why couldn't a system like in .hack//SIGN work. Where you need to log out properly to save your level and progress, or you log back in to your last save. And if you die you revert to a previous save. It just feels like a misunderstanding to why rogue are interesting. It's a small investment usually a few hours overall, and when you die you get to experience a new game entirely with a new character and load-out. Generally it sounds like OASIS is a static environment so if you die you just have to slog through the same stuff again if you even get that far after resetting. And I don't remember reading any proper explanation in-universe to the permadeath.

** It may have to do with the fact that Rush is a very niche fanbase. The reason why it's included in the book and to such an extent is due to the fact that Cline is a fan of them (and ''Ready Player One'' isn't the only thing he's written that features Rush. In the movie ''Fanboys'', one of the characters is a die-hard fan of Rush to the point where he only listens to Rush in his van). Not many people are familiar with their work, and the only one that Hollywood ever uses (especially in regards to video gaming) is "Tom Sawyer" (and sticking to that, the San Deigo Comic-Con teaser trailer for the film features that particular song for a film set in a video game).

* Why did they reduce the number of RUSH references in the movie? They played such a large role in the book. Yet in the movie, all we see is one poster and one t-shirt featuring RUSH. This especially puzzles me since RUSH plays music very much pertaining to subjects in the book- while most mainstream music is nowhere near as nerdy or eccentric.

*** That was the first clue. The second one was the one with the white house from VideoGame/{{Zork}}. Anyone searching a database of info on old games for trophies + house would turn up tons of references to it, since that image is extremely iconic.

*** That was the first clue. The second one was the one with the white house from ''Zork''. Anyone searching a database of info on old games for trophies + house would turn up tons of references to it, since that image is extremely iconic. --~~~~

** Well, because no one took "to learn" from the limerick as being the translation of the Latin word "Ludus", and associated it with the planet of Ludus (plus people in 2045 probably don't learn Latin, or any other languages as often, since it'd be a VERY dead language {and since the OASIS seems to have translator programs, the language barrier doesn't seem to exist, thus many probably don't take foreign languages anymore because they see no need to when computer programs do it automatically for you}. Hell, how many people nowadays, in real life no less, can tell you the Latin word for "to learn"?). And, as Wade mentioned himself, Ludus was considered the most boring of planets in all of the OASIS. So, it makes sense that no one would ever bother to look there. In addition to that, Ludus had been around in the OASIS for a while, so no one had any reason to suspect that Halliday may have included anything on it as a part of the Egg Hunt, and probably assumed he recreated the Tomb of Horrors somewhere else (he could have programmed Ludus years before he even decided himself to include it in the Egg Hunt and then went back to add it in).

* How on earth did it take ''everyone'' so long to solve the second clue? To anyone with any familiarity with interactive fiction at all, the reference to the house and trophies (in the context of classic games) instantly makes the solution obvious. The story sort of handwaves it as Wade not being interested in the topic, but how could IOI's massive team of investigators, pouring over every possible game for clues, possibly miss a reference to one of the most iconic images in one of the most famous games of all time, for ''six months?''

** In addition to what others have said, the book has an offhand mention to something being out of copyright on account of it being more than forty years old, which implies that copyright terms were drastically (and retroactively) reduced at some point. That may seem incredibly implausible, but then again, in this setting the extremely copyright-hostile Cory Doctorow is the interim head of OASIS, which may have given him enough power to force such a change through.

* How on earth did it take ''everyone'' so long to solve the second clue? To anyone with any familiarity with interactive fiction at all, the reference to the house and trophies (in the context of classic games) instantly makes the solution obvious. The story sort of handwaves it as Wade not being interested in the topic, but how could IOI's massive team of investigators, pouring over every possible game for clues, possibly miss a reference to one of the most iconic images in one of the most famous games of all time, for *six months*?

* How on earth did it take ''everyone'' so long to solve the second clue? To anyone with any familiarity with interactive fiction at all, the reference to the house and trophies (in the context of classic games) instantly makes the solution obvious. The story sort of handwaves it as Wade not being interested in the topic, but how could IOI's massive team of investigators, pouring over every possible game for clues, possibly miss a reference to one of the most iconic images in one of the most famous games of all time?

* How on earth did it take ''everyone'' so long to solve the second clue? To anyone with any familiarity with interactive fiction at all, the reference to the house and treasures (in the context of classic games) instantly makes the solution obvious. The story sort of handwaves it as Wade not being interested in the topic, but how could IOI's massive team of investigators, pouring over every possible game for clues, possibly miss a reference to one of the most iconic images in one of the most famous games of all time?

** Yeah, when Parzival wins it, he mentions how long his oasis credit amount is, so probably a lot of it is in that instead of dollars.

** One of the worlds mentioned being in the OAISIS is [[WorldOfWarcraft Azeroth.]] Canonically, it went online in 2012, when VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft was still very popular. Did they wait until everyone jumped ship to buy out Blizzard? Or maybe you need an active subscription to VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft to be allowed on that particular planet, making it effectively a port?

** Arguably that doesn't actually matter via FridgeBrilliance as it means that the characters control the BASIS OF THEIR OWN CURRENCY now.

* This is more of a plea for a quote, but if the OASIS credit is "one of the world’s most stable currencies, valued higher than the dollar, pound, euro, or yen", then how much is Halliday's $240-billion fortune worth in practice?

* If Halliday ultimately viewed OASIS and his various media passions as distractions, albeit pleasant ones, why did he create a contest that would require people to plunge headfirst into those distractions, devoting years of their lives to memorizing obscure trivia and avoiding the reality Halliday claims to see as important?
** He was working on the game for years, and it seemed like he only realized that at the very end, after the rest of the contest was completed but he had enough time to record it for his successor. As for why he pushed it out, my guess is that he wanted the next controller of OASIS to love it as much as he did. Sure, it's a distraction, but it's also his greatest creation. If he just gave GSS back his controlling interest to redistribute, there's no way for him to stop a merger with IOI, which would basically destroy his baby. So he kept that as a prize for the contest, plus a fat stack of cash to sweeten the deal, but left his final revelation as a bit of life advice.

** He was working on the game for years, and it seemed like he only realized that at the very end, after the rest of the contest was completed but he had enough time to record it for his successor. As for why he pushed it out, my guess is that he wanted the next controller of OASIS to love it as much as he did. Sure, it's a distraction, but it's also his greatest creation. If he just gave GSS back his controlling interest to redistribute, there's no way for him to stop a merger with IOI, which would basically destroy his baby. So he kept that as a prize for the contest, plus a fat stack of cash to sweeten the deal, but left his final revelation as a bit of life advice.

* If Halliday ultimately viewed OASIS and his various media passions as distractions, albeit pleasant ones, why did he create a contest that would require people to plunge headfirst into those distractions, devoting years of their lives to memorizing obscure trivia and avoiding the reality Halliday claims to see as important?