Oh I know. I was just, like, suuuuuuper mad at you for defeating me at my original complaint so I wanted to make another to justify my existence.
But N0o0o0o0o you had to, once again, be smarter than me and now I’m questioning my existence again.
If anything, adding modern stuff waters down my main complaint with the book. It felt too self-congratulatory about being born when the author was born. Having being into nerd culture as the criteria for being the curator of nerdland is a lot better than loving the exact things that the author loves as being the criteria.
Wade Watts?
But the entire point was that Holliday was obsessed with the 80s because that’s when things were best in his life. He wasn’t just “a nerd” (stuff like Family Ties isn’t ‘nerdy’ it was just comfortingly familiar), he was a nerd disconcertingly obsessed with the relics of his youth and making everyone else jump through the hoops of his past in order to win his legacy. Changing that to general “video games, sci-fi and anime” misses the focus.
It was one big tripped out power play which makes it very fitting that Holliday gave his big speech and presentation dressed as his AD&D character and posed like the figure on the (revised cover) Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Gunters are fixated on the 80s, but most of the Oasis is not Gunters. That scene from the movie trailer is probably showing a race that includes all kinds of people, from 80s Gunters to 2018 Overwatch nerds to whatever is cool at that time. The climatic battle in the book included non-Gunters with avatars and equipment presumably from every genre of nerd culture.
I think that’s a better book than the one I read. I may have been reading too uncritically, but to me the book presented Wade’s knowledge of random cultural stuff as actually making him worthy and good. Making Holliday a villain fixes a lot of the issues LHod’s link talks about (freezing the culture in the 80’s is monstrous! of course it is, he’s the villain) (knowing the right cultural fluff doesn’t make you moral and worthy! Of course, he’s the villain). I just don’t think that most people’s reading has Holliday as a villain and Wade as just a lucky guy, given most of the criticism I’ve read is about how terrible Wade is as a hero, and most of the praise I’ve read is about how fun it is.
The big battle against the Sixers at the end involved a bunch of different people so it remains to be seen if Tracer was a one-off from that battle or indicative of stuff that we’ll see throughout the movie. Or how well the movie follows the book in the first place.
If I remember right, the big “Everyone in the OASIS” battle was really almost everyone in their space ships, not running around on the surface but, again, creative liberties when making the movie and all that. But with Tracer being the only obvious non-era property in the trailer, it felt less like “potpourri of nerd stuff form the last five decades” and more “Blizzard says here’s a check if we can put their character in our movie”.
I’m sorry, but what?
The book presented Wade’s knowledge of the 80’s as something that was good in order to try and solve the puzzles of the Hunt. It didn’t make him better as a person.
No, in the book, the battle was on the surface of the planet. With millions of people, huge dinosaur robots, flying ships, etc.
I’ll take your word for it and my mistake then. My mistaken memory was that it was primarily people in ships because they were trying to blast through the Sixers’ shield.
“Villain” feels a bit strong but my impression was that Halliday (whoops, had been spelling it wrong) was obviously sort of screwed up. Despite his wealth, his best days were in his youth with Ogden and then Kira (who he loves and she winds up with Ogden) and all his 80s obsession seems to be keyed off of that. Plus, just from having played my share of RPGs, the singular-minded “I have the best idea and you’re going to be forced to love it” DM archetype was all too familiar. I suppose that when you’re giving away a planetary fortune, you can afford to make people jump through the hoops of your ego.
How much time would he have needed?
Little of what Wade did was unique. Aside from the game of Pac-Man, everyone in his “team” had to do the same things he did (win the same games, recite the same lines, solve the same puzzles) and, partway through, they’re all doing it first as he slips in place on the board. The Sixers were cheating by having people switch off in accounts but they had at least some people who could play a perfect game of and then other random no-namers were appearing on the leader board. He used walkthroughs and guides in several places. In traditional story-telling form, he learns the value of friendship, yadda-yadda as he needed a hint to get to the white Zork house and received an assist from his “team” when they’re all at Ogden’s home. Obviously he’s going to be the winner because it’s a geeky wish fulfillment fantasy book but I think people are overinflating the “Bestest Wunderkid” aspect.
Of course, even as 80s trivia experts, they weren’t going in blind: Halliday had them working out of his Journal. Which goes back to my suggestion that Halliday was somewhat deranged; who spends a lifetime pontificating on how wonderful everything was when you were a kid and scribes it all down over hundreds or thousands of pages? But the Journal told them what games to practice, what shows to watch, etc. Knowing about Family Ties was perhaps important, knowing about Falcon Crest much less so. Wade wasn’t a better person for knowing stuff. He was as “worthy” as a winning contestant on Jeopardy is, I suppose, but it wasn’t a reflection of moral fiber. Artemis gives him shit because she wants to go all Mother Theresa with the winnings and Wade wants to build a spaceship. Sure, the spaceship is nominally to preserve the human race but let’s be honest here and admit that it’s largely because spaceships are cool.
My opinion is still that it’s just a “fun book”, probably doesn’t hold up well to repeated reading and is a self indulgent nostalgia trip for a select demographic. It’s not a deeply layered and nuanced look at… whatever. But I think a lot of the criticism is better explained in the book than people give it credit for.
For those who weren’t fans of the book (and maybe some who were), you might get a kick out of the podcast 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back. Mike Nelson & Conor Lastowka of Rifftrax take an 8 episode walk through Ready Player One, and just released the first episode of their second season, addressing Armada.
Wade was a smart fat nerd who rarely left the OASIS. He had no friends outside it, hadn’t so much as knowingly talked to a girl (real or virtual) in the five years since the contest began, and after finding the copper key never once left his apartment (until the Sixers broke down his door).
As far as perfect: Wade was second to find the Tomb of Horrors, after Art3mis. Wouldn’t have found Zork world without Aetch (who found it after Art3mis). Hadn’t practiced Tempest nor did he know the hack to win the game (again, Art3mis). Just about every other challenge was solved by pulling walkthroughs off the net prior or during the challenge once he knew what it was, or just luck. And remember that he went to Planet Arcaide by mistake, looking for what turned out to be Planet Zork, and it took several attempts to play a perfect game of Pac Man, even knowing the patterns.
More unrealistic was Art3mis, who was a full-time college student, online celeb, actively social and solved every puzzle but the last before anyone else and had every answer (and the foresight to keep the answers on hardcopy despite being born well into the digital age).
Oh, look, someone who actually read the book and comprehended it commenting on it. How novel of an idea… 
With her own fashion line!