Ready Player One

Art3mis is a fairly famous avatar with a popular gunter blog. Named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting, the wilderness, and the moon, her avatar has “big, hazel eyes, rounded cheekbones, a pointy chin, and a perpetual smirk” (35). She is also awkward around other people and has a tendency to get nervous and talk too much. Wade meets Art3mis in the Tomb of Horrors, where he manages to get the Copper Key before her. When Wade breaks into IOI, he finds out that Art3mis is Samantha Evelyn Cook, a 21-year old from Canada who looks mostly like her avatar, except for a birthmark on her face.

Wade’s crush on Art3mis leads him to behave obsessively—texting and messaging her constantly, even when she tells him not to. Art3mis is both extremely competitive and private. She enjoys competing against Wade in the OASIS but is mistrustful of his attempts to get to know her better, refusing to ever reveal much information about herself. Wade’s declaration of love in the absence of having met her upsets Art3mis deeply, prompting her to stop speaking to Wade for months. She only resumes contact with Wade when the Sixers threaten her life and the integrity of the Hunt. 

Thematically, Art3mis serves a dual purpose. Echoing many films of the 1980s, she serves the role of the “dream girl,” who inspires Wade to potentially leave the OASIS behind and pursue something tangible in the real world. She also represents the utopian ideals that the gunters band together to fight for in the OASIS. When they initially discuss what they would do with Halliday’s money, Wade gives a selfish answer, whereas Art3mis expresses a desire to solve the world’s problems and help humanity as a whole. The things Art3mis values most—social programs, working for the common good, and protecting her privacy—are the same things Ogden Morrow believes in.  

Wade’s best friend Aech is a high-ranking combatant in the OASIS who is fairly famous and wealthy because of his combat skills. Aech’s avatar is a “tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian male with dark hair and brown eyes” (38). Wade often refers to Aech’s “Cheshire cat grin” and hangs out in Aech’s private chat room called The Basement. Wade and Aech share an obsession with Halliday and 1980s pop culture, frequently quizzing each other on bits of trivia and arguing over 80s movies and shows. When Wade breaks into IOI, he finds the Sixers’ file on Aech is the thinnest. Despite comprehensive surveillance on other OASIS players, their information on Aech is almost nonexistent and does not include Aech’s location or photo.

When Wade meets Aech in person, he finds out that Aech is actually an African American girl named Helen Harris. Helen “hadn’t seen or spoken to her mother since leaving home on her eighteenth birthday” (320), when her mother kicked her out for coming out as gay. Aech’s revelation does not impair her friendship with Wade, who recognizes that Aech’s real world identity does not impact their friendship. Even after Wade learns that Aech is Helen, he still refers to Aech using male pronouns in the OASIS.

Shoto is a young, Japanese man whose avatar wears samurai armor and goes everywhere in the OASIS with his brother, Daito. While Daito and Shoto are not brothers in real life, they consider themselves close enough to be family. After Daito’s death, Shoto reaches out to Wade to share details of his personal life that he previously kept secret, and gives Wade the Ultraman artifact that eventually helps Wade defeat the Sixers. Daito’s death also inspires Shoto to give up his hunt for the egg and focus instead on avenging Daito’s murder. 

Like Shoto, Daito is a young Japanese man whose avatar wears samurai armor. Daito is older than Shoto and more concerned with remaining isolated—at one point refusing to speak to Shoto for weeks after Shoto suggests they meet in person. Daito completes a quest with Wade and Shoto that leaves him with an artifact that allows him to turn into Ultraman, which he uses to save Shoto’s life while Shoto obtains the Jade Key. The Sixers murder Toshiro by throwing him out of his forty-third story apartment window. The murder spurs the other members of the High Five to band together and overcome the Sixer threat. 

Sorrento is the leader of the Sixers and representative of the Evil Empire of IOI as a whole. Wade notes that Sorrento has a PhD is Computer Science and that “prior to becoming head of operations at IOI, he’d been a high-profile game designer, overseeing the creation of several third-party RPGs that ran inside the OASIS” (133). His avatar has “blond hair and brown eyes, a hawkish nose,” (135) and he wears the standard Sixer uniform. Sorrento tries to bribe Wade into joining the Sixers after Wade finds the Copper Key. When Wade refuses, Sorrento attempts to kill him in the real world by blowing up Wade’s aunt’s trailer. Sorrento believes that most people are like cockroaches and that they can and should be controlled to keep them from making the world any worse. He does not recognize how his company’s practices could be contributing to the worsening of the world and feels that IOI taking over the OASIS and monetizing it would be good for everyone. Wade defeats Sorrento’s avatar in combat in the OASIS outside the Third Gate.

Morrow was Halliday’s business partner in creating the OASIS. Morrow and Halliday knew each other since high school, where they played in the same Dungeons and Dragons group. Morrow has “wild gray hair and a long beard [that] made him look like a cross between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus” (117). Morrow’s wife, Kira, was his high school sweetheart, with whom Halliday was also in love—a fact that ultimately leads to Morrow and Halliday not speaking for a decade due to Halliday’s jealousy. When the Sixers threaten Wade in real life and in the OASIS, Morrow steps in to protect him, Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto so that they may overcome the Sixers and win the Hunt.

Halliday is the creator of the OASIS. He dies shortly before the start of the novel, leaving a video as his last will and testament in which he explains the Hunt. Halliday is geeky and obsessed with 80s pop culture. He lived the “last fifteen years of his life in self-imposed isolation” (2). Halliday’s avatar, Anorak, is “a tall, robed wizard…dressed in his trademark black robes, with his avatar’s emblem (a large calligraphic letter “A”) embroidered on each sleeve” (5). At the conclusion of the Hunt, Halliday encourages Wade not to miss out on the good things in life, as he did.