Ready Player One and "Second Life"

 Second Life 

    Ready Player One is definitely one of my favorite movies so far. It was really cool to see, just like in our avatar research, how real people created avatars to represent who they wished they were. It was clear throughout the movie, especially with Arty, how she was much more confident and secure when playing in the OASIS game. Ready Player One does a nice job in showing how consuming technology can be in everyday life. Although the OASIS was created to escape the struggles and dreariness of the real world, it became the only thing people did. In many scenes throughout the movie, the audience can see people fighting in the real-world because of the OASIS gaming platform, even actually hurting each other when the game became too real and the stakes got higher. Nolan Sorrento, the film's antagonist, even was willing to go as far as shooting Wade because of what Wade was doing in the game. I really like how, at the end of the movie, Wade, Arty, and the others decided to close the OASIS for a couple days per week. I think it is important to remember, like Halliday said, that the only thing that is truly real is the real world. Spending too much time in a fake reality, as shown throughout Ready Player One, can have a lot of negative consequences.

    Second Life is an online gaming platform that was created in 2003 by a firm called the Linden Lab. This platform was created for people to build their own gaming avatars and move throughout the realm of the game. It became so well-liked and popular that over one million people were consistently playing every day. As avatars, these people performed everyday activities such as interacting with other people, shopping, and even building property. The game even had its own currency. It became very popular because there was no goal in the game other than to socialize as whoever you wanted to be. Like Ready Player One, people could create their avatar exactly like them, or completely different, maybe how they wish they were in the real world. 


Ready Player One notes:

  • Lots of technology — VR, robot pizza deliveries

  • VR is a way to escape (a way to go anywhere without going anywhere)

    • The OASIS

  • In the OASIS, you can look and be however you want. People can make their avatars exactly how they are in real life, or they can become a different gender, height, a cartoon, etc.

  • When Halliday died, he left three keys for people to find. These keys lead to the Easter Egg. Whoever finds the easter egg gets Halliday’s stock in OASIS which is worth half a trillion dollars

  • Nolan Sorrento is the leader of the Sixers, a no–name group trying to find the easter egg

  • In the OASIS, when someone dies, they lose all their money and other people can collect it 

  • Parzival found the first key because he “went backwards really really fast” like Halliday said 

  • Parzival told the girl his real name and told her he is in love with her

    • She got upset; her goal is to stop IOI

  • Everyone is playing on either Parzival’s side or the side of the IOI. the motions they’re performing in the VR are becoming reality as people are seen fighting throughout the streets of the real world

  • Parzival’s friends sacrificed themselves so he could get to the egg

  • Sorrento is trying to hurt Arty in the real world because she has infiltrated the “war room” in IOI

    • Z (Parzival) shoots Arty so she can survive in the real world

  • The Catacylst in the game is similar to real life’s atomic bomb

  • Sorrento uses this orb and kills everyone, but Z has an extra life  

  • Halliday is similar to Mark Zuckerberg because both just want social connection

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