Ready Player One

Wade spends his time playing old arcade games on his computer, trying to block out the reality of his life in “the stacks”—a trailer park where the trailers are stacked on top of each other. He lives with his aunt and fourteen others in a trailer that “[reeks] of cat piss and abject poverty” (13). Wade plays games and watches movies and television from the 80s as an escape from his real life. He describes how he has been “more or less raised by the OASIS’s interactive educational programs” (15). Learning about the world from the OASIS, Wade realizes just how bad things are for humanity in his time. Wade’s mother took drugs to combat her own feelings of depression and she overdosed, leaving him with his aunt.

Wade earns money by “finding and fixing old computers and busted OASIS consoles” (19). Aunt Alice finds Wade hiding in the laundry room and demands he hand over his laptop for her to pawn. Her boyfriend threatens Wade with physical violence until he turns it over. Wade escapes out of the trailer window, descends the stacks, and heads to his hideout—a buried cargo van hidden among other broken cars and trucks. He powers up his computer and space heater, eats from a hidden stash of food, and logs into the OASIS where he attends school. 

Wade’s avatar, Parzival, appears in his school in the OASIS. His real identity is encrypted and inaccessible to anyone else, even employees of OASIS’s parent company Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS). As a senior, Wade’s only plan for the future is “to become a gull-time gunter” (29). He goes about his day, retrieving items from his locker and dealing with bullies, whom he is able to put on mute thanks to OASIS controls. Wade finds the OASIS school preferable to a real world school due to being overweight and his social ineptitude.

After arriving at his World History classroom, Wade logs into his favorite gunter forum to look for interesting news and threads “devoted to bashing the Sixers” (33). Sixers are employees of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a corporation attempting a hostile takeover of GSS. Wade explains that IOI “had but one purpose: to win Halliday’s contest and seize control of his fortune, his company, and the OASIS itself” (33). Wade also spends time reading blogs by Art3mis, a gunter whose writing style and knowledge of the Hunt impresses Wade. He receives a message from his best friend, Aech, and goes to join Aech’s private chat room.  

Aech’s chat room, the Basement, is “a highly exclusive hangout for elite gunters” (38). Wade and Aech became friends through their shared interest in the Hunt. Both are students on the school planet Ludus, but they attend different schools. Aech’s avatar is much more advanced than Wade’s, but they maintain a close friendship within the OASIS. In the Basement, Wade and Aech trade friendly barbs and test each other on knowledge of various aspects of 80s pop culture, particularly video games and films. While arguing, they are interrupted by another gunter named I-r0k.

I-r0k tries to bully Wade, quizzing him about an obscure video game. Aech and Wade rattle off trivia about the game, observing that “Halliday had drawn inspiration for his contest from the Swordquest contest” (45). Aech tells Wade that he allows I-r0k to continue joining his chat room because I-r0k’s stupidity gives him hope that the other gunters are similarly foolish. Wade and Aech log out of the chat room and go back to class. 

Wade attends classes. He doesn’t travel off Ludus for lunch or after school, though many of his classmates do. The OASIS is divided into sectors and planets, with rules that differ depending on the type of zone. Wade has leveled up his avatar to level three, still a relatively low level, by hitching rides off world with friends and completing easy tasks. To find Halliday’s egg, he knows he will “eventually have to venture out in the dangerous sectors of the OASIS” (50). Wade’s offworld adventures sometime leave him stuck to the point where he is in danger of being expelled for absences. Chapter 4 Summary: “0004”

Wade attends Advanced OASIS Studies. He doesn’t have to pay attention because he knows so much about the creation of the OASIS already. He recounts the story of Halliday’s life, describing him as “a bright boy, but socially inept” (53). At school, Halliday met Ogden Morrow, who invited him to play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. Morrow and Halliday became business partners and sold a game called Anorak’s Quest that Halliday programmed as a teenager. They established a company called Gregarious Games and became hugely successful, however Halliday’s behavior comes off “as bizarre, even by game-designer standards” (55). Morrow handles the business side of operations. Eventually the company rebrands as Gregarious Simulations Systems and publishes the OASIS, which is enormous, engrossing, and free to play. Wade describes the OASIS as “the dawn of the new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a videogame” (60). 

Wade spends his Latin class looking at Anorak’s Almanac. He admits to having watched every movie and TV show Halliday mentions, listened to all of his favorite music, read his favorite books and comics, and played all his favorite games. Wade recognizes his own obsessiveness, observing that he may “have started to go a little insane” (62). While studying the almanac, Wade finds a hidden message that reveals a clue to the location of the Copper Key, the first of three keys needed to find the Easter egg. Wade concludes that somewhere in the OASIS, Halliday recreated The Tomb of Horrors, a module for the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, and he had hidden the Copper Key there. Wade puzzles over Halliday’s riddle in Latin class, then realizes its meaning.