Decipher the final secret of Ready Player One

Ready Player Oneif you haven’t heard of it, is a video game film directed by one of the most famous “magicians” of the 7th art – Steven Spielberg. The film takes place in the year 2045, a time when almost everyone participates in a virtual world called OASIS. OASIS is not simply a game, but also a virtual reality environment where users can do everything they want. The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, left in the game an “Easter Egg” that, if anyone finds it, becomes the owner of this virtual world (a fortune equivalent to countless billions of dollars).
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“Easter Egg” is a term that first appeared in the gaming industry. Its folk origins date back to Western Easter, when adults often hide brightly painted eggs for children to find on this holiday. When appearing in the game, it is alluded to the little secrets hidden by the game’s designer, in order to create a more enjoyable experience for gamers when solved.

Wing: There are spoilers below.

To find this Easter Egg in OASIS, our protagonist must solve 3 puzzles related to the life of James Halliday. In it, in the 3rd puzzle, the last puzzle, is nothing else, but about Adventure – the first game in which an Easter Egg appeared in the world.

To find this “egg”, Adventure players must find a secret room, pick up a seemingly useless item (shown as a dot in the game), and bring it to an imaginary location. as irrelevant. Upon doing this, a wall in the game will disappear, and the player can enter a room where the name of the game maker is displayed: Robinett. The protagonist of Ready Player One did exactly that, to get the third key to the Easter Egg.
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So, why did Robinett decide to include the words: “this game was designed by Robinett” in his work? If he didn’t do that, no one would know that he was the author of Adventure? Actually…that’s right. In 1979, when the game industry was still in its infancy, designers were still being treated by game companies as workers, not creators of their brainchild. . Regular players only know which company’s game this is (here is Atari), but do not know who made it. Robinett decided to “protest”, in a way no one had thought of at the time.

“When I found out that I was designing a game for a company run by people who would force me to be some unknown guy even though I made the game myself, it drove me crazy. ” _Robinett replied in a 2016 interview_”It was a game of power, and after failing to resist, feeling unhappy about having to work under people with a lot of money, I had a secret idea of ​​hiding my name inside the game.”
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This Robinett secret was found by a 15-year-old gamer a long time ago, when he had left Atari. Since then, it has become so popular that every game of this period must have more or less some hidden mystery.
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Coming back to Ready Player One, this is a movie about how an author, an artist, relates to his work. Halliday’s OASIS was something he wanted to share with every player in the world, but that wasn’t enough. He created a maze of puzzles, so that players who solved it would understand more about his own life, how he succeeded, and how he failed. Halliday is not “anonymous” like Robinett, he is very famous. But in fact, he is only famous for making OASIS, and no one understands what he really is. Therefore, it can be said that Halliday’s thoughts when creating the Easter Egg puzzle, are exactly the same as what Robinett used to think, when hiding his name in the game he created.

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