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Ready Player One Shows the Cultural Influence of Video Games

Ready Player One Shows the Cultural Influence of Video Games

Let me dissect an interesting situation in Hollywood for you. Steven Spielberg has decided to direct Ready Player One , a new sci-fi film based around a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world where everyone spends most of their lives in a virtual reality MMO-style game. The movie will be made by Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow.

Now, Spielberg has not worked with Warner Bros. in over 14 years, but it’s this project that got him back. The last movie he made with the studio was A.I. Artificial Intelligence back in 2001, and before that he had yet ANOTHER 14 year hiatus since making The Empire of the Sun with them. In short, Spielberg doesn’t work with Warner Bros often since his big departure from them in the mid 1980s, the time of Gremlins and The Goonies . So each project he does with The WB is just a little bit special.

Which brings us to Ready Player One , the project he decided to tackle. The book, by Ernest Cline, has been the subject of quite a bit of criticism. Some say it’s rather one dimensional, showing off simple heroic characters doing simple heroic acts. Others say that it deals with modern issues of our current technological age, including the addictive nature of online games, our desire to escape to a world that is far more interesting than our own, and even things like gender issues, race relations, sexuality, and more. All of these issues are tackled through the lens of a videogame, specifically a videogame that features Mechagodzilla and Ultraman. Yes, it’s basically a nerd’s dream come true.

One of the main themes of Ready Player One is that our lives in video games reflect our lives as people. In a way, games allow us to see who we are and who we want to be. They allow us to explore identities, hopes, dreams, and actions that we simply could not partake of in the real world. Through our interaction with interactive media, we learn about ourselves and our morals. What starts as a simple game ends up as a soul searching exercise that teaches us what’s right and wrong, or at least that’s what great games like Spec Ops: The Line can do.

The idea of a virtual world that nearly everyone is connected to is not that far-fetched, either.  At World of Warcraft ’s highest point, 12 million people were playing, and services like Second Life , as faddy as they are, have served as virtual meeting spaces for several different companies, some of which only have a home or headquarters in the virtual space.

Ready Player One Shows the Cultural Influence of Video Games

Now I’m not saying that we are heading toward a cyberpunk apocalypse where everyone is going to be addicted to online gaming. However, I am saying that gaming has quite a bit of cultural influence. I mean, this movie isn’t something like the old Street Fighter movie, or even like The Wizard . It’s one of the first times that gaming is being used as an actual cultural lens. You need to have a certain amount of respect for the medium for that to happen, and far more respect for the medium to get Spielberg to do it.

What do you think? Does Ready Player One show that our culture respects video games? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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