The Dom no I totally agree it's a shitty anime unless you are twelve but I do agree that the idea was creative it just had shitty characters and a plot that goes absolutely nowhere
As someone who went to school at a high school that was 25-30% Asian, yeah, Daito & Shoto were definitely written by someone who’d never actually known any Asians.
I know it's been 4 years, but I'd like to share a headcanon I have formed; Daito and Shoto are jsut Americans who either discovered that they are 1%-5% Japanese and decide it was their whole thing OR a set of brothers who are weebos who decided that their online personalities should be mirrored of their favorite anime
Well it was hidden by a genius who created an entire basically single handedly. However with the huge amount of resources the Sixers had it probably would of been hacked eventually.
@@daedula7457 in the real world "genius" gets overpowered by sheer numbers in a matter of months if the genius doesn't continue putting in new efforts and update the security measures.
@@daedula7457 Why try to hack contest when it might get you disqualified? Cheating isn't allowed (Other then full walkthroughs of game layouts that is.) Remember that this is not just a contest but the contents of Halliday's last will and testament. People in this world treated him like unto a God so who would risk the wrath of the entire world just for quick gain? Look at how much people hat the Sixers, you really want that kinda flack coming at you 24/7?
I liked it, because I enjoyed all the references and such, but the Characters were so bad.🤦♀️ The end was basically ripped out of nowhere and felt like "and now kiss". There was no chemistry and the characters were so awkward. It was like they never talked to someone else.
A good summary of Wade that I've used to describe him when talking about this book is he feels like a very real character and I've definitely met people like him but by no means should this character have ever been the hero of a story
NICKname The problem with Wade imo is that the book doesn't seem self-aware about what a horrible person Wade is. If the story was about exploring why he is the way he is and how he gets better, he'd be a great protagonist, but the book seems to justify his bad decisions rather then examining them. For the kind of fun adventure story that RPO was trying to be, yes, it should have had a more charismatic main character that you want to follow along with.
I was kind of figuring that Wade was a guy who watched too many movies and read too many books and as such only really knew reality from that. So, to me it made sense why he was acting the way he was acting. You know he was imitating behavior like John Cusack with the boombox. However, I will grant that he never grows out of this at least in the book's narrative. So, yeah I understood why he acted the way he did, but there should have been more of an arc for him.
Bianca Mayer well, think about it the book is from his perspective. People usually justify their actions no matter how terrible. So its realistic for a guy like him to be the protagonist of this type of story.
Tamia Cook It's not just his internal monolog, everything he does pays of at the end. It's possible to have a first person narrative were the main character is aware of their own flaws or learns from them. None of the other characters even call Wade out on his obsessiveness - Artemis still gets together with him at the end, and a program saying "oh btw don't forget about the real world" after Wade has done nothing but forget about the real world the entire novel, and got money and a girlfriend because of is an incredibly hollow attempt at a theme.
NICKname The problem is that wade is a horrible person, sees woman as throphies and objects, only cares about himself and has a prepotent, narcissistic and egocentric attitude but he never learns how to be a better person, he never corrects his mistakes and is never punished for his actions or attitude. He never learns anything and is rewarded by said behavior. That’s the big problem. And he does not feel like a real character. He is just a Gary Stu self insert guy who knows everything, can do everything and is perfect.
Eve isn't a total reset. You don't lose your ISK and you don't lose your player or your skill-points. It is only the ship you're flying in at the time that you lose due to your mistake, and the "thousands of dollars" lost only really applies to certain people who do spend real-world money on the game in large amounts.
@@batnacks and the implants of your clone. and the ships of your fleetmates, if you're an FC and thus responsible for that (and usually also responsible for covering their losses). and the ships and stations of your corpmates (and the systems controlled by your corp/alliance), if you're a CEO. the longer you play and the further you get, the more you're putting on the line each and every (and all) time you play and the more it will take to recoup the losses (but if you know how to play well, then the more effectively and quickly you can recoup those losses). oh, and sometimes you lose people. and illusions. I've been a witness to our CEO and basically the whole corp realizing that somewhat of a years-long "icon" that they revered is kind of an asshole, during the months after our corp joined his alliance and flew in his ops in a war. the ops were insanely cool and complex and thought out, with literally half a dozen to a dozen separate but synchronized fleets across dozen of systems, and it was incredible to watch/listen to/be part of (even as a lowly peasant), but... yeah, the guy turned out to be a bit of a narcissistic asshole. probably at least partially comes with/is required for being such an effective leader of such alliance and operation(s), but I could still feel and hear the disillusioned disappointment of all the high ranks about their years-long "role-model" turning out to be how he was in practice. and I as well have lost some people who I've come to consider friends... by stupid mistakes I did... and it's still the only game ever where that stung (and still stings) the way it did, and does, even years later. i de-facto quit the game after that, because i wanted to play... but I wanted to play *WITH THEM* . And I still do, and still hope that one day I'll return and mend those friendships because... I love the game, but I... love those people, and playing without them, either alone, or with some other people... just isn't... what it should/could be, what I want/need it to be...
The book shows that certain places are labelled " no pvp" or "no pvp " Ludus was the first, since it focused on education not combat [ Also, i cant tell if this was a meme answer or genuine. Thank you for listening to my tedtalk]
To be fair, people don't hate sao for its premise, but for its execution (no pun intended). It starts out interesting with the death penalty seeming real enough the first episodes but then that goes away after a while and it just turns into a Kirito's harem anime.
Majime dude it was a harem anime by episode 3 when he forgot about the girl that made him actually think about the other players in the game and instead went around collecting other girls for his pokemon collection
also I might be misremembering, but from my memory it didn't have a death penalty upon release, but only when people were getting trapped in it by the insane developer. So the death penalty wouldn't have had any effect on the sellability of the game, again, before the literal inescapable death trap thing.
BurningOleander Yeah, funny what 500+ hours of sustained consciousness will do to a person. In case anyone is interested, that's a reference to SAO Abridged.
SAO abridged is amazing and everyone who's seen SAO (and loved it, hated it, or anything in between) should go watch it. The first arc of the anime is already complete.
"I felt like Captain America in that part of the Avengers. I understood that reference." And you pretty much described the main criticism of the book. That it and the movies popularity mainly come from. 'It's referencing stuff i know and love from my past.' While I can't speak for the book the early online movie reviews make that seem like it is the case. Many critical reviewers have pointed out the references are no longer tied to the plot like in the book and a lot of early audience reactions can basically be summed up as "This movie is amazing because it made me feel like a child again to see all of my favorite characters from my childhood up on the big screen fighting." Who needs story and character when nostalgia is so much more lucrative.
"No video game has ever allowed only one life before in the history of gaming!" Actually a lot of small, cheap 80s games (and big budget 80s games) included this function, so that might just be a tie in to the whole 80s thing.
@@AMcAFaves To be fair, Roguelikes are usually pretty low commitment. And on top of that, you can try again over and over, usually without repercussions. It's not like you gotta re-buy the game every time you fail.
Some of the references weren't even accurate. At one point Wade mentions the yellow brick road that leads to Oz, despite Oz being the world that the road resides in, and the road itself actually leading to the emerald city. Then there's his terminator reference, "scanning across the crowd like the T-1000", the scene(s) he's referring to is Arnold's T-800 scanning for clothes, the T-1000 just used the liquid metal to replicate clothes.
So... they wrote in a perfect 80s obsessed arrogant prick? Most people online who claim to be huge 80s fans have no actual idea of the correct context or wording of a lot of the references they throw about. To this day, Vader's line from Empire Strikes Back is quoted wrong by 80% of people quoting it. I bet if you asked a superfan of Terminator which T model said that line, they would claim it's the T-1000. If you asked people whether Oz was real or a dream, 99% of them will say "oh, it was just a dream" where the original book confirms Oz was a real place. If the book wrote Wade making wrong references, then it has a perfect representation of your average 80s superfan.
@@NeroCM the thing about Oz and whether it is a dream is different though. Now, mind you, I’ve neither read the book nor seen the movie, but going by what you said it’s only confirmed that Oz is real in the book; therefore, a fan of the movie would have no way of knowing that.with the rest of your given examples, it’s a simple matter of misremembering the movie itself.
@@jordinagel1184 The point wasn't strictly about remembering quotes correctly, it's about how the mainstream consciousness doesn't remember the facts but just the memes on those facts. Self-proclaimed fans with no idea of the true context of what they're quoting. As a side note: Oz is confirmed as real in the book and as dream in the movie, but that was most likely because at the time the movie came out there was still a strong push to make children movies always contain the message of "dreaming adventure is all well and good, but eventually you have to wake up and come back to the real world".
Tbh, as unnecessarily evil as the big bad was, I was still symapthetic for the Sixers as a whole. They say that they get 1 million dollars a year (which I assume is still alot in this time) along with getting food and housing paid for them. I just assumed that most if not all were down on their luck men and women using their knowledge of 80's pop culture to pay their bills. Even a college graduate programer can't get more than a tech support job, so I wouldnt jugde someone for taking a sixer job.
Quite a few of the sixers were there because they were 'owned' by the company. They owed money they could not pay... and the company snagged them and forced them to play. They did not have to know any 80s trivia because the specialist in the company would tell them specifically what to do. It was honestly a horror show of a job.
I don't think people were angry with the Iron Giant stuff because it was "out of character" (or at least that's not why I'm annoyed by it). It's because it shows that the film values the knowledge of existing texts (i.e. that The Iron Giant is a film people like) over actually understanding why people like those texts so much, what makes them so enduring. Ready Player One (the film at least, I haven't read the book) doesn't care about crafting a compelling narrative with these existing characters and texts like The Lego Movie did, it only cares if you recognise them, then quickly moves on to the next pile of references. As a result the whole thing feels shallow and empty. I could go on for a while, like about how this film has literally no reason to exist, but I should probably stop at this point because this is getting pretty long for a UA-cam comment.
I'd say that the book presents pop culture stuff with a lot of reverence, often taking several lines to mention the full details of what thing is about. It definitely though also isn't very good at crafting a narrative with them, as while it gives a lot of love to the description the references it doesn't really use the themes and stories of those things. It's mainly just behind-the-scenes details or name recognition
Regardless of whether you get the references or not, the mere fact that "Hey look, [insert 80s property] is a thing that exists!" apparently makes up such a large percent of the content in both the book and the movie just rubs me the wrong way in general. Nostalgia-pandering and references to outside media can be entertaining in small doses, but when it's 80% of the details of your story, that just makes me feel like the author was using it to try and hide the fact that he lacks the creativity to fill The Oasis with actually unique stuff. Like he can't create an exciting world that inspires the imagination on his own, so he has to use props and characters other people created instead. I mean sure, Wreck-it Ralph was largely an homage to classic videogames, but at the end of the day, the three games that received the most focus by far (Fix-it Felix, Sugar Rush, and Hero's Duty) were ones that _the movie's writers made up on their own_
That's one of the reasons I liked the Psych tv show. They made a lot of pop culture references, but it was always somehow tongue-in-cheek and also relevant to the plot. But they were always just asides. The show itself was ABOUT the mystery of the week and the interaction of the characters.
"...Rubs *me* the wrong way" "Makes *me* feel like..." Wow you're so right, those personal clarifications I made sure to use TOTALLY give off the impression that I'm stating my opinion as fact and calling the book objectively bad. I mean it's completely impossible that I was just talking about why RPO's premise in general turns me off, personally. Nope. Not only was I trying to "review a book I haven't read", it also follows that I must be insulting said book and everyone who likes it. You got me. See? I can spout passive-aggressive bullcrap too, bud. It's not hard.
When did I ever claim I did read the book? All I was doing was explaining why the premise behind it, and my impression of it based on what The Dom described, did not appeal to _my_ personal tastes. I already pointed out where I clarified that in my original comment, so I don't know what more you want from me. But hey, you're the sort of person who says "triggered" as a joke/insult outside of its appropriate psychological context, so I guess I really should know better than to try and waste my time reasoning with you.
"Art3mis is super thrilled to meet Art3mis" Sorry, but I did a double take there because I wasn't sure I'd heard you correctly. It's not a major error, just something I noticed.
andres rey Nah, that's fair. It just surprised me, is all. I thought he was about my age (25). EDIT: I want to clarify that when I say "nah, that's fair", I don't mean "nah, that's fair, 30 is REALLY OLD". I mean "okay, duly noted."
Keyser94 I know people would rather idealise the past and in the great cycle of nostalgia we are at the height of 80s and working our way through the early 90s, but I would like an occasional nod rather than a being steeped constantly in it. I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s and the real world right now is kinda shit and people are look for comforting escapism, but it gets tedious and I want to rip off their nostalgia glasses and remind them the 80s and the 90s were kind of shit too.
Nostalgia goes in 30 year cycles. It's just the way of things. many of the filmmakers of today were kids in the 80s, and they want to make things for their children and friends that reference their childhood.
Once again I'm reminded of a nostalgia-filled story centered around a VR MMO that actually had an interesting plot about an easter egg hunt and involved a "you die in the game you die for real" going on that not only made sense in context but also involved a _transgender girl_ as _the main fucking character_ bothered to explore the sociological implications of a second life style VR MMO world game and had characters that were shockingly familiar to me as real people I've actually encountered online. It's called .hack//SIGN and you should all watch it.
It's even creepier when you've read the porn poem Ernest Cline wrote and realize that Art3mis is just the embodiment of his personal fetish, and he pats himself on the back for it because it makes him so much better then guys who are into conventionally attractive women.
Brodie Crain yeah that wasn’t my favorite part of the story. I read this a couple years ago when i was younger and naive to how romance works and I still found it uncomfortable
I've had a friend who had a bad break up with a "Wade" and saw how it affected her, so I have issues with Wade style characters in media. I skipped the book because of all that I've heard about it. My love of Spielberg is the only reason I'm watching the film.
The references make it painful to listen to as an audiobook. (Not Wheton's fault. He was working with what he had!) It felt like half the book is lists of stuff. I liked the worldbuilding (and, yes, found the protagonist not particularly likeable), but I did experience most of the 80's and still found the nostalgic bits mind-numbing.
All I got from this books premise was 'This guy either saw or read SAO and thought, I can do this!' so thank you Dom, thank you for the one reference I got! Also, I know that not MEANT to be the Iron Giant but let's be fair, THATS the bloody Iron Giant!!
Minezum I know, me saying that was only partially a joke since the two seem to be unbelievably similar and The Dom made the ref as well; but if I wanted a more similarity reference I probably should have said .hack since that's about a major global disaster which if I remember was linked into the rise of this MMORPG. This came out in 2002/2003. Then again I doubt the guy who wrote this book watches anime or plays anime games but that's just my thought, maybe he does?
Can I just say that you help me with your book reviews a lot with my own writing? Thanks to you I know what to look out for with my story-telling, how to portray characters better, how to make dialouge more real, and what are absolute no-goes and things you should avoid. Seriously, your series is so helpful to me as an aspiring writer even if it's only one persons opinion and logic.
See I read this book way before the backlash was as big as it is now and while I had issues with parts, I finished it in one day and it quickly became one of my favorites. I must be the only fan of it in the world who didn't understand half the references and didn't care. It wasn't the 80s nostalgia that made me love it, it was the world building and the excitement of the quests. Anyway despite its issues and despite its enormously problematic author, I'm glad you don't hate it and didn't just trash it to pieces.
Now that I've actually finished this video, gotta say you hit the nail on the head for everything. Although I was definitely able to put the bad parts aside a lot easier than you.
Don't worry, me too I loved it without understanding all the references ^^ And I'm born in the beginnning of the 90's so 80's nostalgia don't work on me either. Did you watch the movie ?
Born early 90's as well and really like it, but i didnt finished it yet but im pretty close :D eh i dont even know the backlash... maybe i should google it, chances are its something irrelevant sjw complains or something.
i feel the same way!! i founf the world building and every single one if the key/gate quests sooo very cool. also, i really enjoyed reading all about the OASIS and Halliday
Small nitpick about the character wipe stuff: Rogue-likes (especally strict ones) do exactly what you describe, so there are plenty of examples of games that clear all your data when you die once. That said, the idea that that mechanic would work for this kind of game, market-wise, is dubious at best, so the overall point you were making about it being unrealistic is still valid.
@@Alias_Anybody Although Spelunky is pretty close to exactly that (the only exception I know of being the shortcuts, although you can't beat the full game if you use them), and it was very successful. Also EVE Online does have elements of this in an MMORPG where losing in a ship-to-ship battle will cause you to lose the entire contents of that ship, much of which does have real monetary value, and this factor is seen as one of the appealing elements of the game, granted that it's not as successful of an MMO as something like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy.
There are a lot of similarities in premise, yes. It's not an accident that "pure imagination" from Willy Wonka was in the trailer. In some ways I'd actually argue this premise fits that song better than Willy Wonka, regardless of your opinion of the respective qualities of the individual works.
People hated this book? Wow. I'll admit, it's been a few years since I read it, but I certainly didn't hate it. I don't remember Wade being much of a douchebag, honestly. I remember him kind of going crazy when Art3mis dumped him, but nothing creepy. I was younger so I might've just missed it, though. And I also didn't get most of the 80s nostalgia so I wasn't blinded by that. I think I just liked the idea and the hunt for the Easter egg. Looking back on it, I do agree with another commenter who said the story would've been better if it was told from Art3mis or Aech's perspective. I did think they were both cooler than Wade, who I remember... you know what actually scratch what I said before, I do remember him being a bit of a condescending hipster douchebag. I bet if I read it again I'd see it in an instant.
Casey Heidt the thing about it being told from their perspectives has a major issue with it. They seem cool because they where talked about from Wade's point of view. Wade thought they where cool which mad them seem cool. If it where to be from Aech's or Art3mis's perspectives they most likely wouldn't seem as cool.
So? They may not seem AS cool, but they're cool either way. And it's not even that they're cool, it's that they're interesting. Art3mis is a self-conscious young woman who throws everything into the hunt and becomes one of the best gunters ever, while Aech is a black lesbian masquerading as a white man so she'll be taken seriously. Neither of those have anything to do with how Wade sees them. They're also both, you know, not annoying self-righteous douchebags like Wade is. I don't mean to sound rude, I just fail to see how it's a "major" issue.
I don't get the hate. Didn't even know it got hate in the first place. So what if none of the characters are perfect! I had a ton of fun reading the book. , It's still one of my top ten favorites.
I hated the romance. It was creepy as hell. Probably reflects on the author’s own stupid fetishes. Also Wade was a Mary Sue, Art3mis was just an embodiment of the authors own preferences, and the only good character was (spoiler) his best friend, Aech, who was actually a girl.
Great video, very fair and wonderful explanations given for your opinions, though I must admit I did not like this book as much as you did. Wade and his stalking bugged me too much, to the point where is really tainted a book that I did enjoy to an extent, let's just say it hit a bit close to home. I just wish he'd been called out on this behaviour, could have even made some good commentary about the influence of media if the author had run with the idea that all he knew about romance came from 80's romcom's. As for Sho and Daito I think the idea was that they were so obsessed with samurai films they adopted the tropes of them into their online personalities, just like how the American kids did with American pop culture. I did like the world (both the Oasis and real worlds) and other characters such as Art3mis and Aech, kinda wish one of them had been the hero, ah well.
I also was meh with it. What bothered me most was the wildly varying rhythm of the action, and his obsession with Artemis... the romance was instant and childish. I guess it's realistic bc he's so young, but it looked like the author was legitimizing it...
Love your review! As an 80’s child (born in 1970), I did love all the references, played d&d and remember most of it as a female nerd. It was a much better read for me. I also like the movie even though it is in name only.
I've heard nothing but bad things about the book and movie, so I really appreciate such a thoughtful review of the book. Thanks for continuing to make such great content.
sigh...so i hate doing this but i feel its only fair...regarding the anime he mentioned (SAO) it wasnt bad because of the premise,,,it was bad because of everything else...the premise was what got everybody hooked on the show but the characters are terrible and the story is lazily executed.
Yeah the premise was interesting. However as Twilight and SAO show us, having good ideas means /nothing/ if you can't execute them properly. (And yeah, the ideas for Twilight's filler characters are actually REALLY interesting and messed up. Meyer just never capitalizes on their potential because she's too busy fapping off to the blandness of the main plot she cooked up.)
The show only gets as much crap as it does because it went mainstream... in the anime community anything that goes mainstream is automatically scrutinised much more than stuff that doesn't become popular with large audiences.
Reki Kawahara isn't a good writer. When literally anyone else takes his work away from him and reworks it the story gets better. Gun Gale Alternative is proof of this.
6:15 This is why you got to 100,000 subscribers. You go into detail why they broke up but still agree that Wade's actions to get her back were misguided and stalkerish. Most would just condemn it wholesale without the context that went before it. Same goes for every review you've done. I'm surprised when people catch you missing an un-turned stone.
Microtransactions have been a part of free to play MMOs for a long, long, long time. Generally it's seen as alright assuming it's not pay to win and the game is actually free to play. The recent hate is more about having to pay for the base game AND microtransactions over that when things should have just been included from the base price.
In the ancient roguelike gente (games like Rogue, Nethack, Angband, etc...) you have only one life and if you die is forever. It's a very different way to play in terms of risk and reward and I love it.
The book was never going to win me over, I don't think, since I have a very ambivalent relationship with 80s nostalgia and I really can't stand adolescent protagonists (they remind me of me at that age, and I was a horrible person back then). It doesn't help that every fragment of Cline's prose I've seen is cringe-inducingly bad, especially the oft-quoted passage where Wade lists out his nerd trivia cred, which is just a long, unfunny checklist of memes delivered with absolute po-faced seriousness. The back cover blurb "The grown up's Harry Potter" is pretty fucking hilarious and sad to me. Yes, because apparently being grown-up is to sit around thinking about pop culture references from 30 years ago.
Iain iwakura What does GoT have in common with Harry Potter, aside from being popular fantasy stories? RPO doesn't have anything in common with Harry Potter either, but it's not like GoT is any closer. Besides, I've heard people refer to Martin as the American Tolkien over and over, because apparently the only way to market genre fiction is to compare it to either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.
kate71342 I admit that that one makes far more sense, but it's still really noticeable that every fantasy book that becomes somewhat popular is compared to either Harry Potter or Tolkien. I can think of at least four bookseries in my room right now that have blurbs on them comparing it to either one of the two (Eragon, everything Sergej Lukianenko ever wrote has "the russian Tolkien" on the back, Rivers of London is "Harry Potter but grown up", and ASoIaF like I mentioned). I'm sure I could find a few more if I tried to look for them.
Well, "Don't Starve" is a one life game. And people enjoy that game, right? Apart from me, since I die way to fast and can't be bothered to start anew..
I wasn’t even aware of the controversy to be honest, I read this book back when it came in a Loot Crate.... I really did read the book as pretty self-aware. Yes Parzival was a creep, but I thought he was supposed to be. From what I’ve watched of 80s films.... Judd Nelson straight up stuck his face up Molly Ringwald’s skirt, and we all love The Breakfast Club!
I hated the Breakfast Club, and not for that. I just thought it was horribly overrated and preachy and melodramatic in parts. To be fair, I saw it for the first time as an adult, so maybe I saw it too late and my opinion would be different if I saw it as a teenager, especially if I was a teenager in the 80's when it came out. But I was not. Either way, it didn't even resonate with my teenage self and my experiences as a teen.
Those uncomfortable scenes in the book felt somewhat relatable because of being depressed or agitated for so long that you drown yourself in whatever gives you comfort or lessen the pain. In fact THATS what most alcoholics do.
"No one would play a game where you lose thousands of dollars in real life." AHHAAHAHAHAHHAA! Oh Dom... Oh Dom... let me introduce you to a little thing called EVE Online, look up some of the stories... and it's not losing microtransactions, because of the way the subscription model works, it's actually a REAL WORLD ECONOMY... like economists actually study it.
point being, much like EVE, a game like that wouldn't attract as many people as the Oasis ultimately does. I mean, Oasis makes even WoW at its heyday look niche.
Thank you so much for your video. I usually watch them during the commute and the video essays which are fun, accurate and so full of personality make me look forward to my commute.
You should read the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez, It's like RPO except it's not complete dog shit. No references, actual stakes, brutal violence, a lot darker, likable villains, a lot more realistic, scary af and a lot less predictable.
@jliller without Daemon I doubt RPO would've even be that popular. It came out a year earlier and proved that an independent nerdy video game based horror story can become a best seller. Also the guy who wrote it is not just a gamer he is a game developer so he doesn't just make shit up he has an idea of what a futuristic game would take.
I feel like RPO is just another in the long line of Teenage Hero In A Dystopian Future genre. I've never even heard of Daemon before you gave it a shout.
I read it about two years ago and landed right in didn't hate it, didn't love it. Though I hated and loved some specific parts, I overall just kinda liked it. I've been told, "Oh you need to appreciate the 80s references to really love the book," but the thing is I do love just about all of the nostalgia stuff and should've been an easy mark for this book. But after a while the novelty of seeing references did wear thin for me and didn't make up for what I found to be a fairly weak plot and characterization.
Once again, you described my feelings about this book flawlessly. I won't be seeing the movie until Monday, but I'm wicked excited to watch your review when it's uploaded.
I never undestood why it had to take place in a dystopia. You could have all of the major plot points in a world that is normal or even nicer than ours without all the "gaming ruined everything" implications.
Doppelrutsch it's mainly a plot device so that it would make sense why so many people would be pushed to be part of something like this. Video gaming is escapism, if the outside world is super great, the escapism isn't necessary for so many people
But there are already millions of people that play video games. Add to that Video games that are as good as the Oasis and in a world that is on average as happy as ours or even happier you would still have almost everyone caring about it.
I'd like to make one correction: Microtransactions in games are not in and of themselves evil. People get mad because they are in premium (aka games you pay upfront) games, or are otherwise implemented in dirty, greedy, money-grubbing ways, or both. The fact that the Oasis is apparently totally with optional (I would assume) and fair microtransactions actually makes it a good thing and a positive use of them.
TheNN Actually, you have to pay money for almost everything. In the beginning, Wade can't get of the starting planet because he can't afford the real money fee to move through the universe (and he has been playing for years, so there isn't even a way to grind for it), and in a later scene, he has infinite ammo and mentions how his "bullet bill" for this month is going to be higher then usual, implying you can buy infinite ammo. It's actually a plot point at the beginning that Wade can't do anything in the OASIS because he doesn't have money, explaining why he is still level 1 despite spending most of his life there. The things you can buy on the marketplace don't stop at knife skins or rare weapons with marginally better stats, but at Death Stars and a bomb that kills everyone in its blast radius without fail. And remember, you loose everything when you die. I agree with you in general, but you're wrong about the microtransactions in RPO being fair.
Dihydrogen Monoxide That is true, but that doesn't make any of the things I said less bad. Wades friends actually took him to one of the real planets once, and he couldn't afford to make the trip again on his own, so apparently, it didn't pay for itself.
Love your reviews! Most of this is great, but my favorite this time was the part around 9:30 - I have never had this problem myself either, but some friends of mine did & told me how important good friends and the right help (for either side) at the right time can be. Thank you for your common sense & empathy!!
I really appreciate the explanation of your feelings / reactions for this book "defense." -I'd never thought about it that way. Thank you so much for sharing. That was very insightful.
So James Dashner, the author of the Maze Runner Series actually wrote a trilogy known as the mortality Doctrine that feels like a much more serious and flushed out version of a similar concept to Ready Player One. Heck the world building alone is ten times better and the plot twists are really impressive, as is common practice for Dashner for anyone who's read the later Maze Runner books.
Hey I love your vids. Just recently discovered your channel and will be looking forward to new ones when u put them up. Personal I loved the book and the film, to me I can never finish a book and this was the first to be able to hold my attention in litteraly years. Thank you again!
Got this book in a loot crate a few years back tried to read it several time but couldn't get into it because of the writing style. Thank you for breaking it down for us.
I read this quite a while ago and loved it. I got all the 80s references and just thought the romance/stalking parts were really just 'this is my first relationship, I don't know how to act'. I have to say joust ws one of my most favorite games and it really made me smile that it was featured. Thanks for making your videos, I really enjoy them.
This is where I was. I grew up in the 80s and knew just about every reference, but it was too much and a lot of times it felt gratuitous. I finished it, thought it was decent and put it away. I guess there’s something wrong with me since I had no issues with the whole Wade/Artemis thing
There was actually a plot-relevant reason that all the IOI avatars are named with anonymous numbers: it's so they can use their hacked Oasis rigs to let any employee play as any avatar, which is not normally allowed. Also, no, games that run on micro-transactions are not considered the devil. Games that run on *randomized loot box micro-transactions* are considered the devil. As I recall, the Oasis' mtx are not random in any way, so it's actually a perfectly reasonable monitization strategy. I can't recall if you were able to buy powerful tools or weapons, but the cosmetic stuff you could buy was the main draw. Also also, many games have implemented single-life systems. All the Diablo games, for instance, have an optional Hardcore mode, where if you die, you lose everything permanently, just like in The Oasis. Admittedly, I can't think of any popular game where the single-life mechanic was *required*, but you can do a lot in the Oasis without ever entering a combat zone, so it's not like it's a huge deal for probably the majority of players.
He (Will Wheaton) narrated the audiobook, yes. But The Dom mentioned that he thought is was funny that there was also a region of the OASIS named after Wheaton, and I think that the region he is thinking of is actually called referred to in the book as the Whedonverse (after Joss Whedon).
Brodie Crain Yes, I know. I'm just talking about the sector of the OASIS referenced in this video. The video implies there is a sector of the OASIS called the "Whetonverse" dedicated to Will Wheton. But I think he's mispronouncing it, and it's actually called the "Whedonverse", dedicated to Joss Whedon.
I think you're right. Wil Wheton does get a name drop as a political figure - I too don't remember exactly what his office was, but that was the only reference to him. The sector was Whedonverse - as in Firefly/Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse, and whatever new tiny asskicking female things fall out of his mind in the next 20+ years.
I like how the synopsis you gave at the beginning of the review sounds like it would a much better movie than we got. I enjoyed Ready Player One, the movie, but it was definitely bogged down by the plethora of references within the movie.
Yesterday I looked on the wikipedia page for Channel Awesome. Congratulations! You briefly had a paragraph about you and your show. It was poorly formatted and was slipped in between the Cinema Snob's section, but I saw it. It's gone now.
Clams Mahoney All the big players (Lindsay Ellis, Todd in the Shadows, Linkara) say for Doug Walker and Cinema Snob left recently. That's a short, not explicit reason as to why people say it's a shitshow.
Always really enjoy your book reviews, even if I haven't read the books. Do you think there's a chance of a segment where you talk about why some of your favorite books should or should not become adaptations?
Blah Blah Yeah...no. 1. Because Mary sue is a moniker strictly for female characters. Garty/Marty sue is for guys. 2. Because, from the review he kind of isn't and he's not perfect at everything, the world more often than not won't bend to his desires when he's on his own. Of course if he didn't change throughout the course of the story at all, he's just a bad character, not a Marty sue
Titilayo Aderemi-Williams Stop being dumb. Yeah the literal name is different but the spirit of the phrase is the same, and you know what I mean. Also I'm not the one who originally called him a Mary Sue, that was the original commenter. I just brought up that there's less of a chance of that happening because of the character's gender.
I'm ridiculously impressed by the list of references in the book you placed at the end. Probably shouldn't be too bored to read all of them, but was kind of fascinated to see what was all in there as I've never read the book. I laughed a bit that there were a few repeats on the list, but surprised it was only a few. With a list that extensive I would second-guess myself constantly that I forgot to put something in and/or the book referenced it so much it warranted another entry. Seems really all over the board to me, but I can definitely see the 80s roots of a lot of those references. Curious to see how you think the film compares. Also interested to hear a synopsis of the book that didn't immediately decry it for some of its questionable character traits people like to go for immediately. Thanks as always for producing great content on your channel. Always excited to see videos from you. Congrats on making it past 100k!
The Dom, in the humble opinion of this beautiful watcher, you really are kind of a class act. I've noticed this in other videos of yours too, that you always try hard to be aware of the implications of things you say, and try to see the world from other peoples perspectives. Props to you for being able to admit that you were a less than perfect human being when you were younger, and for consciously trying to be better.
I personally loved the references it made me feel like I am in on a secret when I was in on them and when I didn’t get them I looked online and got introduced to some awesome 80’s stuff. For me it was like in Harry Potter when you know all the backstories and context. I love the satisfaction that brings. It might be just me but yeah I loved the references.
As someone who play Second Life i can see how the micro transactions could work if its sorta the same system as Second Life, where people can create their own items and then sell them for in game currency but still with the option to buy in game currency for real money as well. This could allow someone to make money without spending a single real life dollar if they can make items that are good enough that people would buy them.
This book is the reason I found out a lot of things from 80s culture and many of them I enjoy, though when I first read the book I admit I was just smiling to myself and and thinking "welp, don't get that or have never heard of it before, let's see where this goes". It did help with not finding the plot twists earlier.
I really enjoyed this book, being born in 81 some of my earliest memories contain things mentioned in the book so some of it was fun to find during the read.
Ok guys I don't want to be a butt but I also REALLY DON'T CARE about Sword Art Online. It was a 3 second reference in a 22 minute video.
The Dom no I totally agree it's a shitty anime unless you are twelve but I do agree that the idea was creative it just had shitty characters and a plot that goes absolutely nowhere
You made your bed now sleep in it (but yeah what did you expect when you referenced that anime? This is UA-cam)
Oh trust me, I don’t care about SAO either. Got bored after 3 episodes
Good Dom. That shit is borderline trash and was barely better when it was called .hack. It´s granddaddy Snow Crash though!
Drew Taylor
funny enough the SAO abridge does the horror of being trapped in a game and watching people die a lot better. and its hilarious.
My favourite review of this book, from a DnD streamer I love: "I hated it, but I finished it so that people couldn't tell me 'it gets better'"
As someone who went to school at a high school that was 25-30% Asian, yeah, Daito & Shoto were definitely written by someone who’d never actually known any Asians.
I know it's been 4 years, but I'd like to share a headcanon I have formed;
Daito and Shoto are jsut Americans who either discovered that they are 1%-5% Japanese and decide it was their whole thing OR a set of brothers who are weebos who decided that their online personalities should be mirrored of their favorite anime
My biggest problem with Ready Player One is that you know that the easter egg would have been hacked in like a hour.
Untold Dead that’s probably true
Well it was hidden by a genius who created an entire basically single handedly. However with the huge amount of resources the Sixers had it probably would of been hacked eventually.
@@daedula7457 in the real world "genius" gets overpowered by sheer numbers in a matter of months if the genius doesn't continue putting in new efforts and update the security measures.
@@daedula7457 Why try to hack contest when it might get you disqualified? Cheating isn't allowed (Other then full walkthroughs of game layouts that is.) Remember that this is not just a contest but the contents of Halliday's last will and testament. People in this world treated him like unto a God so who would risk the wrath of the entire world just for quick gain? Look at how much people hat the Sixers, you really want that kinda flack coming at you 24/7?
I liked it, because I enjoyed all the references and such, but the Characters were so bad.🤦♀️
The end was basically ripped out of nowhere and felt like "and now kiss". There was no chemistry and the characters were so awkward. It was like they never talked to someone else.
A good summary of Wade that I've used to describe him when talking about this book is he feels like a very real character and I've definitely met people like him but by no means should this character have ever been the hero of a story
NICKname The problem with Wade imo is that the book doesn't seem self-aware about what a horrible person Wade is. If the story was about exploring why he is the way he is and how he gets better, he'd be a great protagonist, but the book seems to justify his bad decisions rather then examining them. For the kind of fun adventure story that RPO was trying to be, yes, it should have had a more charismatic main character that you want to follow along with.
I was kind of figuring that Wade was a guy who watched too many movies and read too many books and as such only really knew reality from that. So, to me it made sense why he was acting the way he was acting. You know he was imitating behavior like John Cusack with the boombox. However, I will grant that he never grows out of this at least in the book's narrative. So, yeah I understood why he acted the way he did, but there should have been more of an arc for him.
Bianca Mayer well, think about it the book is from his perspective. People usually justify their actions no matter how terrible. So its realistic for a guy like him to be the protagonist of this type of story.
Tamia Cook It's not just his internal monolog, everything he does pays of at the end. It's possible to have a first person narrative were the main character is aware of their own flaws or learns from them. None of the other characters even call Wade out on his obsessiveness - Artemis still gets together with him at the end, and a program saying "oh btw don't forget about the real world" after Wade has done nothing but forget about the real world the entire novel, and got money and a girlfriend because of is an incredibly hollow attempt at a theme.
NICKname
The problem is that wade is a horrible person, sees woman as throphies and objects, only cares about himself and has a prepotent, narcissistic and egocentric attitude but he never learns how to be a better person, he never corrects his mistakes and is never punished for his actions or attitude. He never learns anything and is rewarded by said behavior. That’s the big problem. And he does not feel like a real character. He is just a Gary Stu self insert guy who knows everything, can do everything and is perfect.
“One mistakes could cost you years of your life and thousands of dollars, no one would play that”
Laughs in Eve Online
To be fair in EVE it isn’t a total reset
Eve isn't a total reset. You don't lose your ISK and you don't lose your player or your skill-points. It is only the ship you're flying in at the time that you lose due to your mistake, and the "thousands of dollars" lost only really applies to certain people who do spend real-world money on the game in large amounts.
@@batnacks
and the implants of your clone.
and the ships of your fleetmates, if you're an FC and thus responsible for that (and usually also responsible for covering their losses).
and the ships and stations of your corpmates (and the systems controlled by your corp/alliance), if you're a CEO.
the longer you play and the further you get, the more you're putting on the line each and every (and all) time you play and the more it will take to recoup the losses (but if you know how to play well, then the more effectively and quickly you can recoup those losses).
oh, and sometimes you lose people. and illusions. I've been a witness to our CEO and basically the whole corp realizing that somewhat of a years-long "icon" that they revered is kind of an asshole, during the months after our corp joined his alliance and flew in his ops in a war. the ops were insanely cool and complex and thought out, with literally half a dozen to a dozen separate but synchronized fleets across dozen of systems, and it was incredible to watch/listen to/be part of (even as a lowly peasant), but... yeah, the guy turned out to be a bit of a narcissistic asshole.
probably at least partially comes with/is required for being such an effective leader of such alliance and operation(s), but I could still feel and hear the disillusioned disappointment of all the high ranks about their years-long "role-model" turning out to be how he was in practice.
and I as well have lost some people who I've come to consider friends... by stupid mistakes I did... and it's still the only game ever where that stung (and still stings) the way it did, and does, even years later. i de-facto quit the game after that, because i wanted to play... but I wanted to play *WITH THEM* . And I still do, and still hope that one day I'll return and mend those friendships because... I love the game, but I... love those people, and playing without them, either alone, or with some other people... just isn't... what it should/could be, what I want/need it to be...
The book shows that certain places are labelled " no pvp" or "no pvp " Ludus was the first, since it focused on education not combat
[ Also, i cant tell if this was a meme answer or genuine. Thank you for listening to my tedtalk]
.
To be fair, people don't hate sao for its premise, but for its execution (no pun intended). It starts out interesting with the death penalty seeming real enough the first episodes but then that goes away after a while and it just turns into a Kirito's harem anime.
Majime dude it was a harem anime by episode 3 when he forgot about the girl that made him actually think about the other players in the game and instead went around collecting other girls for his pokemon collection
also I might be misremembering, but from my memory it didn't have a death penalty upon release, but only when people were getting trapped in it by the insane developer. So the death penalty wouldn't have had any effect on the sellability of the game, again, before the literal inescapable death trap thing.
BurningOleander the beta didn't have the death penalty, but it activated once the full release was out I believe
BurningOleander
Yeah, funny what 500+ hours of sustained consciousness will do to a person.
In case anyone is interested, that's a reference to SAO Abridged.
SAO abridged is amazing and everyone who's seen SAO (and loved it, hated it, or anything in between) should go watch it.
The first arc of the anime is already complete.
"I felt like Captain America in that part of the Avengers. I understood that reference."
And you pretty much described the main criticism of the book. That it and the movies popularity mainly come from. 'It's referencing stuff i know and love from my past.'
While I can't speak for the book the early online movie reviews make that seem like it is the case. Many critical reviewers have pointed out the references are no longer tied to the plot like in the book and a lot of early audience reactions can basically be summed up as "This movie is amazing because it made me feel like a child again to see all of my favorite characters from my childhood up on the big screen fighting."
Who needs story and character when nostalgia is so much more lucrative.
"No video game has ever allowed only one life before in the history of gaming!" Actually a lot of small, cheap 80s games (and big budget 80s games) included this function, so that might just be a tie in to the whole 80s thing.
And also there is a whole genre that has permadeath: roguelikes.
@@AMcAFaves To be fair, Roguelikes are usually pretty low commitment. And on top of that, you can try again over and over, usually without repercussions. It's not like you gotta re-buy the game every time you fail.
Fire Emblem has permadeath too
And literally arcade games, coin munchers
Some of the references weren't even accurate. At one point Wade mentions the yellow brick road that leads to Oz, despite Oz being the world that the road resides in, and the road itself actually leading to the emerald city. Then there's his terminator reference, "scanning across the crowd like the T-1000", the scene(s) he's referring to is Arnold's T-800 scanning for clothes, the T-1000 just used the liquid metal to replicate clothes.
So... they wrote in a perfect 80s obsessed arrogant prick?
Most people online who claim to be huge 80s fans have no actual idea of the correct context or wording of a lot of the references they throw about. To this day, Vader's line from Empire Strikes Back is quoted wrong by 80% of people quoting it. I bet if you asked a superfan of Terminator which T model said that line, they would claim it's the T-1000. If you asked people whether Oz was real or a dream, 99% of them will say "oh, it was just a dream" where the original book confirms Oz was a real place.
If the book wrote Wade making wrong references, then it has a perfect representation of your average 80s superfan.
@@NeroCM the thing about Oz and whether it is a dream is different though. Now, mind you, I’ve neither read the book nor seen the movie, but going by what you said it’s only confirmed that Oz is real in the book; therefore, a fan of the movie would have no way of knowing that.with the rest of your given examples, it’s a simple matter of misremembering the movie itself.
@@jordinagel1184 The point wasn't strictly about remembering quotes correctly, it's about how the mainstream consciousness doesn't remember the facts but just the memes on those facts.
Self-proclaimed fans with no idea of the true context of what they're quoting.
As a side note: Oz is confirmed as real in the book and as dream in the movie, but that was most likely because at the time the movie came out there was still a strong push to make children movies always contain the message of "dreaming adventure is all well and good, but eventually you have to wake up and come back to the real world".
Tbh, as unnecessarily evil as the big bad was, I was still symapthetic for the Sixers as a whole.
They say that they get 1 million dollars a year (which I assume is still alot in this time) along with getting food and housing paid for them. I just assumed that most if not all were down on their luck men and women using their knowledge of 80's pop culture to pay their bills.
Even a college graduate programer can't get more than a tech support job, so I wouldnt jugde someone for taking a sixer job.
Quite a few of the sixers were there because they were 'owned' by the company. They owed money they could not pay... and the company snagged them and forced them to play. They did not have to know any 80s trivia because the specialist in the company would tell them specifically what to do. It was honestly a horror show of a job.
So what you're telling me is the bad guy is basically EA...
Makes sense
Blaine Burricks But did the bad guys make a DLC for a DLC?
No, but they were gonna make DLC for LIFE
Yeah but apparently they made hitman. *WHY DID HE NAME IT IOI*
Especially NOW
EA games, charge for everything 💵💵💵💵
I don't think people were angry with the Iron Giant stuff because it was "out of character" (or at least that's not why I'm annoyed by it). It's because it shows that the film values the knowledge of existing texts (i.e. that The Iron Giant is a film people like) over actually understanding why people like those texts so much, what makes them so enduring.
Ready Player One (the film at least, I haven't read the book) doesn't care about crafting a compelling narrative with these existing characters and texts like The Lego Movie did, it only cares if you recognise them, then quickly moves on to the next pile of references. As a result the whole thing feels shallow and empty.
I could go on for a while, like about how this film has literally no reason to exist, but I should probably stop at this point because this is getting pretty long for a UA-cam comment.
I'd say that the book presents pop culture stuff with a lot of reverence, often taking several lines to mention the full details of what thing is about. It definitely though also isn't very good at crafting a narrative with them, as while it gives a lot of love to the description the references it doesn't really use the themes and stories of those things. It's mainly just behind-the-scenes details or name recognition
Regardless of whether you get the references or not, the mere fact that "Hey look, [insert 80s property] is a thing that exists!" apparently makes up such a large percent of the content in both the book and the movie just rubs me the wrong way in general. Nostalgia-pandering and references to outside media can be entertaining in small doses, but when it's 80% of the details of your story, that just makes me feel like the author was using it to try and hide the fact that he lacks the creativity to fill The Oasis with actually unique stuff. Like he can't create an exciting world that inspires the imagination on his own, so he has to use props and characters other people created instead.
I mean sure, Wreck-it Ralph was largely an homage to classic videogames, but at the end of the day, the three games that received the most focus by far (Fix-it Felix, Sugar Rush, and Hero's Duty) were ones that _the movie's writers made up on their own_
That's one of the reasons I liked the Psych tv show. They made a lot of pop culture references, but it was always somehow tongue-in-cheek and also relevant to the plot. But they were always just asides. The show itself was ABOUT the mystery of the week and the interaction of the characters.
"...Rubs *me* the wrong way"
"Makes *me* feel like..."
Wow you're so right, those personal clarifications I made sure to use TOTALLY give off the impression that I'm stating my opinion as fact and calling the book objectively bad. I mean it's completely impossible that I was just talking about why RPO's premise in general turns me off, personally. Nope. Not only was I trying to "review a book I haven't read", it also follows that I must be insulting said book and everyone who likes it. You got me.
See? I can spout passive-aggressive bullcrap too, bud. It's not hard.
When did I ever claim I did read the book? All I was doing was explaining why the premise behind it, and my impression of it based on what The Dom described, did not appeal to _my_ personal tastes. I already pointed out where I clarified that in my original comment, so I don't know what more you want from me.
But hey, you're the sort of person who says "triggered" as a joke/insult outside of its appropriate psychological context, so I guess I really should know better than to try and waste my time reasoning with you.
I see it as realistic. Have you ever seen what goes on in VR chat?
Boshwa
Vr chat? That’s a name I haven’t heard since January 2018.
"Art3mis is super thrilled to meet Art3mis"
Sorry, but I did a double take there because I wasn't sure I'd heard you correctly. It's not a major error, just something I noticed.
I noticed it too. I was like, "Wait...what?"
Schwifty Stardust I noticed it too
The sort of error has become a running joke with the Dom me thinks.
Wait, Rush is considered an 80's nostalgia thing? In Canada, the sound of Geddy Lee squealing is our backup national anthem.
MORE THAN ZUKO IN THE LAST AIRBENDER HAHAHAHAHAHA
"HONORRRRRRRRR!"
I understood that reference!
I MUST REGAIN MY HONOOOOOOOOOOR!
"WHAT'S THAT! I THINK IT'S YOUR HONOR!!!!"
Wait, you're 30?! Damn, I thought you were younger than that.
Caitlin Rix yes, and apparently he is kinda sensitive about it.
andres rey Nah, that's fair. It just surprised me, is all. I thought he was about my age (25).
EDIT: I want to clarify that when I say "nah, that's fair", I don't mean "nah, that's fair, 30 is REALLY OLD". I mean "okay, duly noted."
You didn't know that. Maybe it was a while ago he said that.
I didn't, no. I haven't watched every single Dom vid, though, so he might have said in one of the vids I haven't watched.
That's fair could also mean that's beautiful :P
But seriously though I also thought that he was younger - he is still young in my book though!
Nostalgia is wonderful but I feel like we're drowning in 80s and 90s nostalgia.
Keyser94 I know people would rather idealise the past and in the great cycle of nostalgia we are at the height of 80s and working our way through the early 90s, but I would like an occasional nod rather than a being steeped constantly in it. I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s and the real world right now is kinda shit and people are look for comforting escapism, but it gets tedious and I want to rip off their nostalgia glasses and remind them the 80s and the 90s were kind of shit too.
Nostalgia goes in 30 year cycles. It's just the way of things. many of the filmmakers of today were kids in the 80s, and they want to make things for their children and friends that reference their childhood.
@@selkiestorm3232 I was a teenager in the 80s and I've been sick of the media's obsession with 80s nostalgia for about 10 years.
@@selkiestorm3232 What was shit about the 90s? 🤔
Once again I'm reminded of a nostalgia-filled story centered around a VR MMO that actually had an interesting plot about an easter egg hunt and involved a "you die in the game you die for real" going on that not only made sense in context but also involved a _transgender girl_ as _the main fucking character_ bothered to explore the sociological implications of a second life style VR MMO world game and had characters that were shockingly familiar to me as real people I've actually encountered online.
It's called .hack//SIGN and you should all watch it.
Finnaly someone else admits that the romance is not only bad. BUT FUCKING CREEPY!
Brodie Crain and the movie SOMEHOW made it WORSE
I heard the movie made it better by making it not creepy.
I'll see for myself when I see the movie.
It's even creepier when you've read the porn poem Ernest Cline wrote and realize that Art3mis is just the embodiment of his personal fetish, and he pats himself on the back for it because it makes him so much better then guys who are into conventionally attractive women.
Brodie Crain yeah that wasn’t my favorite part of the story. I read this a couple years ago when i was younger and naive to how romance works and I still found it uncomfortable
Cae Gray No now it's just shallow and tacked on. A kinda improvement I guess.
I've had a friend who had a bad break up with a "Wade" and saw how it affected her, so I have issues with Wade style characters in media. I skipped the book because of all that I've heard about it. My love of Spielberg is the only reason I'm watching the film.
The references make it painful to listen to as an audiobook. (Not Wheton's fault. He was working with what he had!) It felt like half the book is lists of stuff. I liked the worldbuilding (and, yes, found the protagonist not particularly likeable), but I did experience most of the 80's and still found the nostalgic bits mind-numbing.
All I got from this books premise was 'This guy either saw or read SAO and thought, I can do this!' so thank you Dom, thank you for the one reference I got! Also, I know that not MEANT to be the Iron Giant but let's be fair, THATS the bloody Iron Giant!!
Minezum I know, me saying that was only partially a joke since the two seem to be unbelievably similar and The Dom made the ref as well; but if I wanted a more similarity reference I probably should have said .hack since that's about a major global disaster which if I remember was linked into the rise of this MMORPG. This came out in 2002/2003. Then again I doubt the guy who wrote this book watches anime or plays anime games but that's just my thought, maybe he does?
AshesSakura There were multiple references to anime in the book, so it's safe to assume he watches anime.
Finn ·-· 80’s anime
Ready Player one came first. Hell, SAO ripped it off blind.
What year did SAO come out?
By all means Dom keep gloating
Can I just say that you help me with your book reviews a lot with my own writing? Thanks to you I know what to look out for with my story-telling, how to portray characters better, how to make dialouge more real, and what are absolute no-goes and things you should avoid. Seriously, your series is so helpful to me as an aspiring writer even if it's only one persons opinion and logic.
See I read this book way before the backlash was as big as it is now and while I had issues with parts, I finished it in one day and it quickly became one of my favorites. I must be the only fan of it in the world who didn't understand half the references and didn't care. It wasn't the 80s nostalgia that made me love it, it was the world building and the excitement of the quests.
Anyway despite its issues and despite its enormously problematic author, I'm glad you don't hate it and didn't just trash it to pieces.
Now that I've actually finished this video, gotta say you hit the nail on the head for everything. Although I was definitely able to put the bad parts aside a lot easier than you.
Honestly, which surprises me given it's the one thing that seems to garner the most praise, I found the world building pretty weak.
Don't worry, me too I loved it without understanding all the references ^^ And I'm born in the beginnning of the 90's so 80's nostalgia don't work on me either.
Did you watch the movie ?
Born early 90's as well and really like it, but i didnt finished it yet but im pretty close :D eh i dont even know the backlash... maybe i should google it, chances are its something irrelevant sjw complains or something.
i feel the same way!! i founf the world building and every single one if the key/gate quests sooo very cool. also, i really enjoyed reading all about the OASIS and Halliday
Small nitpick about the character wipe stuff:
Rogue-likes (especally strict ones) do exactly what you describe, so there are plenty of examples of games that clear all your data when you die once.
That said, the idea that that mechanic would work for this kind of game, market-wise, is dubious at best, so the overall point you were making about it being unrealistic is still valid.
Full Rogue-likes are basically a niche within a niche, so yeah, no way that would have taken over.
@@Alias_Anybody Although Spelunky is pretty close to exactly that (the only exception I know of being the shortcuts, although you can't beat the full game if you use them), and it was very successful. Also EVE Online does have elements of this in an MMORPG where losing in a ship-to-ship battle will cause you to lose the entire contents of that ship, much of which does have real monetary value, and this factor is seen as one of the appealing elements of the game, granted that it's not as successful of an MMO as something like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy.
So... it's basically Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but with a virtual universe at stake instead of a candy company.
Okay then.
There are a lot of similarities in premise, yes. It's not an accident that "pure imagination" from Willy Wonka was in the trailer. In some ways I'd actually argue this premise fits that song better than Willy Wonka, regardless of your opinion of the respective qualities of the individual works.
Yep. The blurb does literally describe it as Willy Wonka meets the matrix.
Don't forget it's not only single-death and full of microtransactions, but it's also full PvP with full looting.
People hated this book? Wow. I'll admit, it's been a few years since I read it, but I certainly didn't hate it.
I don't remember Wade being much of a douchebag, honestly. I remember him kind of going crazy when Art3mis dumped him, but nothing creepy. I was younger so I might've just missed it, though. And I also didn't get most of the 80s nostalgia so I wasn't blinded by that. I think I just liked the idea and the hunt for the Easter egg.
Looking back on it, I do agree with another commenter who said the story would've been better if it was told from Art3mis or Aech's perspective. I did think they were both cooler than Wade, who I remember... you know what actually scratch what I said before, I do remember him being a bit of a condescending hipster douchebag. I bet if I read it again I'd see it in an instant.
Casey Heidt the thing about it being told from their perspectives has a major issue with it. They seem cool because they where talked about from Wade's point of view. Wade thought they where cool which mad them seem cool. If it where to be from Aech's or Art3mis's perspectives they most likely wouldn't seem as cool.
So? They may not seem AS cool, but they're cool either way. And it's not even that they're cool, it's that they're interesting. Art3mis is a self-conscious young woman who throws everything into the hunt and becomes one of the best gunters ever, while Aech is a black lesbian masquerading as a white man so she'll be taken seriously. Neither of those have anything to do with how Wade sees them. They're also both, you know, not annoying self-righteous douchebags like Wade is. I don't mean to sound rude, I just fail to see how it's a "major" issue.
I hate this book with a burning passion and have done so long before I know there was a movie. But to each their own.
I don't get the hate. Didn't even know it got hate in the first place. So what if none of the characters are perfect! I had a ton of fun reading the book. , It's still one of my top ten favorites.
Ok? 👍🏾
I hated the romance. It was creepy as hell. Probably reflects on the author’s own stupid fetishes.
Also Wade was a Mary Sue, Art3mis was just an embodiment of the authors own preferences, and the only good character was (spoiler) his best friend, Aech, who was actually a girl.
Art3mis was based on the writers wife.
wait i know im like 2 years late but i dnfed this book ur telling me aech was a girl??? what why? huh...
Great video, very fair and wonderful explanations given for your opinions, though I must admit I did not like this book as much as you did.
Wade and his stalking bugged me too much, to the point where is really tainted a book that I did enjoy to an extent, let's just say it hit a bit close to home. I just wish he'd been called out on this behaviour, could have even made some good commentary about the influence of media if the author had run with the idea that all he knew about romance came from 80's romcom's.
As for Sho and Daito I think the idea was that they were so obsessed with samurai films they adopted the tropes of them into their online personalities, just like how the American kids did with American pop culture.
I did like the world (both the Oasis and real worlds) and other characters such as Art3mis and Aech, kinda wish one of them had been the hero, ah well.
Can you do a Lost in Adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox?
I also was meh with it. What bothered me most was the wildly varying rhythm of the action, and his obsession with Artemis... the romance was instant and childish. I guess it's realistic bc he's so young, but it looked like the author was legitimizing it...
People hate Sword Art Online because of the protagonist's Stu-ness, not the premise itself.
Actually the premise is the only thing people like about it...
Love your review! As an 80’s child (born in 1970), I did love all the references, played d&d and remember most of it as a female nerd. It was a much better read for me. I also like the movie even though it is in name only.
I've heard nothing but bad things about the book and movie, so I really appreciate such a thoughtful review of the book. Thanks for continuing to make such great content.
sigh...so i hate doing this but i feel its only fair...regarding the anime he mentioned (SAO) it wasnt bad because of the premise,,,it was bad because of everything else...the premise was what got everybody hooked on the show but the characters are terrible and the story is lazily executed.
Yeah the premise was interesting. However as Twilight and SAO show us, having good ideas means /nothing/ if you can't execute them properly. (And yeah, the ideas for Twilight's filler characters are actually REALLY interesting and messed up. Meyer just never capitalizes on their potential because she's too busy fapping off to the blandness of the main plot she cooked up.)
Honestly the first few episodes of SAO showed so much promise and then they ruined it
Besides the "people stuck in an MMO" is a genre onto itself since dot Hack. There's certainly at least one good series from that.
The show only gets as much crap as it does because it went mainstream... in the anime community anything that goes mainstream is automatically scrutinised much more than stuff that doesn't become popular with large audiences.
Reki Kawahara isn't a good writer. When literally anyone else takes his work away from him and reworks it the story gets better. Gun Gale Alternative is proof of this.
6:15 This is why you got to 100,000 subscribers. You go into detail why they broke up but still agree that Wade's actions to get her back were misguided and stalkerish. Most would just condemn it wholesale without the context that went before it. Same goes for every review you've done. I'm surprised when people catch you missing an un-turned stone.
Microtransactions have been a part of free to play MMOs for a long, long, long time. Generally it's seen as alright assuming it's not pay to win and the game is actually free to play. The recent hate is more about having to pay for the base game AND microtransactions over that when things should have just been included from the base price.
In the ancient roguelike gente (games like Rogue, Nethack, Angband, etc...) you have only one life and if you die is forever. It's a very different way to play in terms of risk and reward and I love it.
The book was never going to win me over, I don't think, since I have a very ambivalent relationship with 80s nostalgia and I really can't stand adolescent protagonists (they remind me of me at that age, and I was a horrible person back then). It doesn't help that every fragment of Cline's prose I've seen is cringe-inducingly bad, especially the oft-quoted passage where Wade lists out his nerd trivia cred, which is just a long, unfunny checklist of memes delivered with absolute po-faced seriousness.
The back cover blurb "The grown up's Harry Potter" is pretty fucking hilarious and sad to me. Yes, because apparently being grown-up is to sit around thinking about pop culture references from 30 years ago.
Ready Player One the grown up's Harry Potter? Did these people forget about GoT?
lain iwakura GoT? Rampant rape and gore do not a mature story make.
Iain iwakura What does GoT have in common with Harry Potter, aside from being popular fantasy stories? RPO doesn't have anything in common with Harry Potter either, but it's not like GoT is any closer. Besides, I've heard people refer to Martin as the American Tolkien over and over, because apparently the only way to market genre fiction is to compare it to either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.
Bianca Mayer in defense of the Lord of the rings being compared to game of thrones, Martin listed them as inspiration
kate71342 I admit that that one makes far more sense, but it's still really noticeable that every fantasy book that becomes somewhat popular is compared to either Harry Potter or Tolkien. I can think of at least four bookseries in my room right now that have blurbs on them comparing it to either one of the two (Eragon, everything Sergej Lukianenko ever wrote has "the russian Tolkien" on the back, Rivers of London is "Harry Potter but grown up", and ASoIaF like I mentioned). I'm sure I could find a few more if I tried to look for them.
Ahhh I wonder how Terence feels about that Ravenclaw captain t-shirt... I wonder if he gave it to him...THE LORE! 😂
My biggest problem is that his name is Parzival. Any kid in the same position would have named himself "GANGSTAKILLAYOMAMA69420"
Your honesty is amazing and adds a whole other layer to the review.
I love the subtle wink when you say "Parzival's best friend is a guy called Aech."
Well, "Don't Starve" is a one life game. And people enjoy that game, right?
Apart from me, since I die way to fast and can't be bothered to start anew..
Yeah, but this is more like if you had to buy DLC to progress in the game and dying uninstalls all of it with no refund.
I wasn’t even aware of the controversy to be honest, I read this book back when it came in a Loot Crate.... I really did read the book as pretty self-aware. Yes Parzival was a creep, but I thought he was supposed to be. From what I’ve watched of 80s films.... Judd Nelson straight up stuck his face up Molly Ringwald’s skirt, and we all love The Breakfast Club!
There's a reason John Hughes films have also received a backlash over the years...
I hated the Breakfast Club, and not for that. I just thought it was horribly overrated and preachy and melodramatic in parts. To be fair, I saw it for the first time as an adult, so maybe I saw it too late and my opinion would be different if I saw it as a teenager, especially if I was a teenager in the 80's when it came out. But I was not. Either way, it didn't even resonate with my teenage self and my experiences as a teen.
Those uncomfortable scenes in the book felt somewhat relatable because of being depressed or agitated for so long that you drown yourself in whatever gives you comfort or lessen the pain. In fact THATS what most alcoholics do.
I agree.
"No one would play a game where you lose thousands of dollars in real life."
AHHAAHAHAHAHHAA!
Oh Dom... Oh Dom... let me introduce you to a little thing called EVE Online, look up some of the stories... and it's not losing microtransactions, because of the way the subscription model works, it's actually a REAL WORLD ECONOMY... like economists actually study it.
point being, much like EVE, a game like that wouldn't attract as many people as the Oasis ultimately does.
I mean, Oasis makes even WoW at its heyday look niche.
Eve isnt a total rest, please tell me a game you 100% reset to zero, thats a mmo online game
Thank you so much for your video. I usually watch them during the commute and the video essays which are fun, accurate and so full of personality make me look forward to my commute.
You should read the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez, It's like RPO except it's not complete dog shit. No references, actual stakes, brutal violence, a lot darker, likable villains, a lot more realistic, scary af and a lot less predictable.
You lost me at "no references". That was the best thing about this book.
grkpektis I'll have to give this a shot. Thanks for the recommendation.
@jliller without Daemon I doubt RPO would've even be that popular. It came out a year earlier and proved that an independent nerdy video game based horror story can become a best seller. Also the guy who wrote it is not just a gamer he is a game developer so he doesn't just make shit up he has an idea of what a futuristic game would take.
I feel like RPO is just another in the long line of Teenage Hero In A Dystopian Future genre. I've never even heard of Daemon before you gave it a shout.
ohhhhhh Daemon - realistic ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh That one hurt.
I'm sort of meh about this book but i squeeed when i noticed the notification. Thank you the dom your doing the lords work here.
I read it about two years ago and landed right in didn't hate it, didn't love it. Though I hated and loved some specific parts, I overall just kinda liked it. I've been told, "Oh you need to appreciate the 80s references to really love the book," but the thing is I do love just about all of the nostalgia stuff and should've been an easy mark for this book. But after a while the novelty of seeing references did wear thin for me and didn't make up for what I found to be a fairly weak plot and characterization.
really glad youre reviewing this!! i loved this book and ive been v excited for the movie
Once again, you described my feelings about this book flawlessly. I won't be seeing the movie until Monday, but I'm wicked excited to watch your review when it's uploaded.
I never undestood why it had to take place in a dystopia. You could have all of the major plot points in a world that is normal or even nicer than ours without all the "gaming ruined everything" implications.
Doppelrutsch it's mainly a plot device so that it would make sense why so many people would be pushed to be part of something like this. Video gaming is escapism, if the outside world is super great, the escapism isn't necessary for so many people
But there are already millions of people that play video games. Add to that Video games that are as good as the Oasis and in a world that is on average as happy as ours or even happier you would still have almost everyone caring about it.
I feel like that's just a requirement for YA novels at this point, tbh.
I'd like to make one correction:
Microtransactions in games are not in and of themselves evil. People get mad because they are in premium (aka games you pay upfront) games, or are otherwise implemented in dirty, greedy, money-grubbing ways, or both.
The fact that the Oasis is apparently totally with optional (I would assume) and fair microtransactions actually makes it a good thing and a positive use of them.
TheNN Actually, you have to pay money for almost everything. In the beginning, Wade can't get of the starting planet because he can't afford the real money fee to move through the universe (and he has been playing for years, so there isn't even a way to grind for it), and in a later scene, he has infinite ammo and mentions how his "bullet bill" for this month is going to be higher then usual, implying you can buy infinite ammo. It's actually a plot point at the beginning that Wade can't do anything in the OASIS because he doesn't have money, explaining why he is still level 1 despite spending most of his life there. The things you can buy on the marketplace don't stop at knife skins or rare weapons with marginally better stats, but at Death Stars and a bomb that kills everyone in its blast radius without fail. And remember, you loose everything when you die.
I agree with you in general, but you're wrong about the microtransactions in RPO being fair.
Ahh gotcha. Never mind then, he was totally in the right then.
isn't the oasis free to play. also can't you earn credits from doing quests once you leave the starting planets
Dihydrogen Monoxide That is true, but that doesn't make any of the things I said less bad. Wades friends actually took him to one of the real planets once, and he couldn't afford to make the trip again on his own, so apparently, it didn't pay for itself.
The cute smile at the end for "It's lunchtime!" made looking through that list of references worth it.
Love your reviews!
Most of this is great, but my favorite this time was the part around 9:30 - I have never had this problem myself either, but some friends of mine did & told me how important good friends and the right help (for either side) at the right time can be.
Thank you for your common sense & empathy!!
Can you please talk about a Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2
Those outtakes are hilarious!
I really appreciate the explanation of your feelings / reactions for this book "defense." -I'd never thought about it that way. Thank you so much for sharing. That was very insightful.
We love you the Dom. Congratulations on the 100 or now 101k subs I'm proud to be part of them.
When I lived in Stockholm I called it Sucksholm whenever I got mad about being there and now I know The Dom thinks I'm lame 😭
UltimateGeek yeah I don't give a shit about you
UltimateGeek it only seemed polite
The blooper reel at the end was adorable! You should include those more often!
Can't wait for the movie review! This was super amusing to watch. (Especially the bloopers.)
"F--- you, I'm not that old!"
That got a chuckle. To be honest I only ever thought you were a 90s kid.
So James Dashner, the author of the Maze Runner Series actually wrote a trilogy known as the mortality Doctrine that feels like a much more serious and flushed out version of a similar concept to Ready Player One. Heck the world building alone is ten times better and the plot twists are really impressive, as is common practice for Dashner for anyone who's read the later Maze Runner books.
Oh, I never checked out his other books but this sounds good... I loved the Maze Runner trilogy so I'll definetly check that out !
It is way better that the maze runner.
Roy Battilana First Mortality Doctrine book is fantastic. Second one is great. Third one, idk what happened but I just got kind of bored reading it.
If you say so. I read all of the Maze Runner books, and I only ever thought the first one was any good. The rest were snooze-fests at best
Hey I love your vids. Just recently discovered your channel and will be looking forward to new ones when u put them up.
Personal I loved the book and the film, to me I can never finish a book and this was the first to be able to hold my attention in litteraly years.
Thank you again!
Got this book in a loot crate a few years back tried to read it several time but couldn't get into it because of the writing style. Thank you for breaking it down for us.
I was actually watching one of your vids when you uploaded.
I think the reason why the microtransactions weren't a big deal is because the starting cost was $0.25.
You pretty much summed up exactly how I felt about this book. I can't wait for your video review/comparison :)
Love the subtle wink when you say "Parzival's best friend is a guy named Aech"!
wade is an accurate portrayal of a teenage guy who plays way too many video games.
A Series of Unfortunate Events season 2 is on Netflix
really? already?
Oh ? It's out ?
"RUNS
aaaaaa yess
I've already binged it O_O
Very
Fantastically
Delightful
I read this quite a while ago and loved it. I got all the 80s references and just thought the romance/stalking parts were really just 'this is my first relationship, I don't know how to act'. I have to say joust ws one of my most favorite games and it really made me smile that it was featured. Thanks for making your videos, I really enjoy them.
4:30 “Artemis is super thrilled to meet Artemis” lol
"For his part, Art3mis is super thrilled to meet Art3mis"
That's right. You thought I wouldn't be that person at 12 AM. You were wrong. So wrong.
Im with you Dom. I didn't hate it, or love it. It was fine. I also can see why people can't stand it.
This is where I was. I grew up in the 80s and knew just about every reference, but it was too much and a lot of times it felt gratuitous. I finished it, thought it was decent and put it away. I guess there’s something wrong with me since I had no issues with the whole Wade/Artemis thing
Excellent review, The Dom. You are consistently on-point with your politics as well as your literary critique.
Oh my gosh we’re the same age! And you perfectly explained how I feel about 80s nostalgia.
There was actually a plot-relevant reason that all the IOI avatars are named with anonymous numbers: it's so they can use their hacked Oasis rigs to let any employee play as any avatar, which is not normally allowed.
Also, no, games that run on micro-transactions are not considered the devil. Games that run on *randomized loot box micro-transactions* are considered the devil. As I recall, the Oasis' mtx are not random in any way, so it's actually a perfectly reasonable monitization strategy. I can't recall if you were able to buy powerful tools or weapons, but the cosmetic stuff you could buy was the main draw.
Also also, many games have implemented single-life systems. All the Diablo games, for instance, have an optional Hardcore mode, where if you die, you lose everything permanently, just like in The Oasis. Admittedly, I can't think of any popular game where the single-life mechanic was *required*, but you can do a lot in the Oasis without ever entering a combat zone, so it's not like it's a huge deal for probably the majority of players.
I'm pretty sure the sector of the OASIS was the "Whedonverse", as in Joss, not "Wheatonverse" as in Will?
He (Will Wheaton) narrated the audiobook, yes. But The Dom mentioned that he thought is was funny that there was also a region of the OASIS named after Wheaton, and I think that the region he is thinking of is actually called referred to in the book as the Whedonverse (after Joss Whedon).
Max Fagin Wheaton is still president (or vice president, I can't remember) of the internet.
Brodie Crain Yes, I know. I'm just talking about the sector of the OASIS referenced in this video. The video implies there is a sector of the OASIS called the "Whetonverse" dedicated to Will Wheton. But I think he's mispronouncing it, and it's actually called the "Whedonverse", dedicated to Joss Whedon.
I think you're right. Wil Wheton does get a name drop as a political figure - I too don't remember exactly what his office was, but that was the only reference to him. The sector was Whedonverse - as in Firefly/Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse, and whatever new tiny asskicking female things fall out of his mind in the next 20+ years.
lol @ "tiny asskicking femaile things."
Super proud of you, congrats on the 100 000 subs
I like how the synopsis you gave at the beginning of the review sounds like it would a much better movie than we got. I enjoyed Ready Player One, the movie, but it was definitely bogged down by the plethora of references within the movie.
Yesterday I looked on the wikipedia page for Channel Awesome. Congratulations! You briefly had a paragraph about you and your show. It was poorly formatted and was slipped in between the Cinema Snob's section, but I saw it. It's gone now.
He really can especially since youtube has grown so monolithic.
Even 90s Nostalgia is going to be mined too much very soon. I liked Jurassic World and I have no interest in the sequel.
Khaine's Lair just curious how CA is a shit show? I just recently realized people don’t like it
Clams Mahoney All the big players (Lindsay Ellis, Todd in the Shadows, Linkara) say for Doug Walker and Cinema Snob left recently. That's a short, not explicit reason as to why people say it's a shitshow.
Check out the #ChangeTheChannel tag on twitter.
Please, do a lost in adaptation on the Da vinci code.
Like so the Dom reads this comment!!
I'm torn between "That's kinda cruel" and "Hmm, interested to hear his take"....
Love the bloopers, that needs to be shown more lol
Always really enjoy your book reviews, even if I haven't read the books. Do you think there's a chance of a segment where you talk about why some of your favorite books should or should not become adaptations?
Nobody ever complained about Wade being a total Mary Sue?
Danilo Giuseppe Acinapura That's "Gary Stu" when referring to make, mister. Anyway, how was he a GS, besides finding that first key with ease?
Danilo Giuseppe Acinapura We are too busy calling him a creepy douchebag
People only complain about girl characters being Mary Sues, male characters get a free pass I guess
Blah Blah
Yeah...no.
1. Because Mary sue is a moniker strictly for female characters. Garty/Marty sue is for guys.
2. Because, from the review he kind of isn't and he's not perfect at everything, the world more often than not won't bend to his desires when he's on his own. Of course if he didn't change throughout the course of the story at all, he's just a bad character, not a Marty sue
Titilayo Aderemi-Williams Stop being dumb. Yeah the literal name is different but the spirit of the phrase is the same, and you know what I mean. Also I'm not the one who originally called him a Mary Sue, that was the original commenter. I just brought up that there's less of a chance of that happening because of the character's gender.
14:30
Someone's never played rougelikes.
I'm ridiculously impressed by the list of references in the book you placed at the end. Probably shouldn't be too bored to read all of them, but was kind of fascinated to see what was all in there as I've never read the book.
I laughed a bit that there were a few repeats on the list, but surprised it was only a few. With a list that extensive I would second-guess myself constantly that I forgot to put something in and/or the book referenced it so much it warranted another entry. Seems really all over the board to me, but I can definitely see the 80s roots of a lot of those references.
Curious to see how you think the film compares. Also interested to hear a synopsis of the book that didn't immediately decry it for some of its questionable character traits people like to go for immediately.
Thanks as always for producing great content on your channel. Always excited to see videos from you. Congrats on making it past 100k!
The Dom, in the humble opinion of this beautiful watcher, you really are kind of a class act. I've noticed this in other videos of yours too, that you always try hard to be aware of the implications of things you say, and try to see the world from other peoples perspectives. Props to you for being able to admit that you were a less than perfect human being when you were younger, and for consciously trying to be better.
I personally loved the references it made me feel like I am in on a secret when I was in on them and when I didn’t get them I looked online and got introduced to some awesome 80’s stuff. For me it was like in Harry Potter when you know all the backstories and context. I love the satisfaction that brings. It might be just me but yeah I loved the references.
As someone who play Second Life i can see how the micro transactions could work if its sorta the same system as Second Life, where people can create their own items and then sell them for in game currency but still with the option to buy in game currency for real money as well. This could allow someone to make money without spending a single real life dollar if they can make items that are good enough that people would buy them.
This book is the reason I found out a lot of things from 80s culture and many of them I enjoy, though when I first read the book I admit I was just smiling to myself and and thinking "welp, don't get that or have never heard of it before, let's see where this goes". It did help with not finding the plot twists earlier.
I love the bloopers, they made me laugh so hard 😂
I really enjoyed this book, being born in 81 some of my earliest memories contain things mentioned in the book so some of it was fun to find during the read.