Ready Player One and Pursuing the Prize

If you are a video game geek, smile when thinking of life in the 80's and 90's, or just looking for an interesting book to read, put Ready Player One by Ernest Cline* on your list (I cannot emphasize this enough, I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THE MOVIE!).

Ready Player One presents a world in which one man created technology that effectively allowed users to escape from their mundane physical realities, and enter into a world known as the OASIS (The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation).

The OASIS isn't virtual reality as we know it, it is better understood as entry into another universe. In the OASIS people can become whatever they want; Star Trek character? Sure. Elf? Of course. Robotic human being? Go for it. They can visit Middle Earth, play the lead role in Back to the Future, and even complete their high school and college education. It is a world where anything is possible.

As if the concept of the OASIS wasn't enthralling enough, at the very beginning of the book the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday, a video game programmer who had become the wealthiest human in the history of humanity, dies. Before dying he created a massive game for OASIS users to play that would enable one winner to inherit his entire fortune. This search becomes known as "Halliday's Easter Egg."

One can imagine how much buzz this game would create. If people stand in line for hours to buy a lottery ticket worth $100,000,000, what would they do to find an inheritance in excess of $240,000,000,000!? Ready Player One is a story describing just that.

The main character’s name is Wade Watts (He goes by Parzival while in the OASIS). He has no real prospects to do anything meaningful in life, so when he hears about the Halliday's Easter Egg hunt he pours his entire existence into solving the puzzle and trying to be the first to find the keys.

There are several ways to try to solve a riddle, especially one as immense as the hunt for Halliday's Easter Egg. The common method is to listen to the clues and try to figure it out by using your own intellectual powers. We might call this a Jeopardy approach, because you’re just trying to use as much brain power as possible in the hopes that you’ll stumble across the solution to the puzzle. In Ready Player One this is the approach a many of the Egg Hunters, or "Gunters," as they are called in the book, use. They listen to the clues and ask themselves, What could this mean?

Not Wade Watts. His approach is the reason I'm writing this post. He tries to solve the puzzle not only by analyzing the clues but, more importantly, he studies the man who made the clues. He reasons that if he learns to think like Halliday, solving a puzzle that Holliday created would eventually become a natural next step. For example, if I say, “I will give you $5 on the day the calendar matches the jersey number of the of NBA's greatest player ever.” Many people would immediately go looking at February 3rd (2/3), but those who know me would expect the cash on August 24th (8/24). This is what Wade Watts does with James Halliday.

Here is an example from Chapter 5:

For the past five years, I’d devoted all of my free time to learning as much as I possibly could about James Halliday. I’d exhaustively studied his life, accomplishments, and interests. Over a dozen different Halliday biographies had been published in the years since his death, and I’d read them all. Several documentary films had also been made about him, and I’d studied those, too. I’d studied every word Halliday had ever written, and I’d played every videogame he’d ever made. I took notes, writing down every detail I thought might be related to the Hunt. I kept everything in a notebook (which I’d started to call my “grail diary” after watching the third Indiana Jones film). The more I’d learned about Halliday’s life, the more I’d grown to idolize him. He was a god among geeks, a nerd über-deity on the level of Gygax, Garriott, and Gates.

And from Chapter 6:

When it came to my research, I never took any shortcuts. Over the past five years, I’d worked my way down the entire recommended gunter reading list. Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny. I read every novel by every single one of Halliday’s favorite authors. And I didn’t stop there.

This is devotion. That stuff that many Christians do in the morning that is 2 paragraphs at most should be called something else. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not devotion.

As I listened to this portion of the book (The audible version is incredible!) I was reminded of the ancient Jewish discipleship  system. If a boy was to become a disciple of a rabbi it was understood that he would commit his life to becoming just like the rabbi. A story is told of one rabbi who walked with a bit of a limp. Guess how his students began walking? If you're picturing a bunch of able-bodied teenagers limping around like old men you are on the right track.

This is how Wade Watts AKA Parzival solved the puzzle and won the prize (This is not a spoiler, it's clear that he was the winner even in the introduction). Not simply because he was smart, but because his devotion to his rabbi, if you will, led him to think, breathe, and act as Halliday would. Therefore, he became the kind of person that could solve the puzzle, because he developed the same kind of mind as the man he was devoted to.

What would life look like if one committed themselves to study Jesus in much the same way? In our day many Christians will label this kind of devotion as extreme and unnecessary; perhaps even dangerous. But the apostle Paul would call it normal. Here’s what he says about his own pursuit of rabbi Jesus:

“Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” — Philippians‬ ‭3:8-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬ (italics and emphasis added)

In like manner the Old Testament also recommends this kind of devotion:

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” — Joshua‬ ‭1:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Even in the Bible devotion has a prize at the end. This may sound heretical to some; after all, shouldn’t we just love God because he is God? Yes, but loving God does something to you. It slowly makes you like him. That's the prize!

As Wade Watts tells us about his obsessive dive into the life of James Halliday he says this, "For the first time, I knew what it was to be a natural at something. To have a gift." In other words, he discovered himself as he was pursuing someone else.

Doesn't the same thing happen with Jesus?

Make Jesus your obsession for one week the way Wade Watts made James Halliday his obsession. See if you don't begin to discover that life has become more rich, beautiful and abundant. And, if you don't mind, tell me about your experience.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section. Book recommendations are also welcome.

*NOTE: This post contains affiliate links to the books referenced. Should you choose to use these links, I may earn affiliate commissions at no additional cost to you. Thank you for reading; I appreciate your support!