Episode 5 – Several Discreet Openings

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This week we’re talking Wade’s Rig. And folks — it is a hell of a rig. We’ll also discuss the seemingly booming post-apocalyptic economy that makes all this gunting possible, venture into the immersive world of text adventure games, and visit several game rooms, bowling alleys and pizza joints. It’s all very classic.

All this plus… Well, if you’re read chapter 19, you know what we have to talk about.

This episode covers chapters 19 thru 24 of Ready Player One. For next time, read thru chapter 29, page 282 in our edition.

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6 Replies to “Episode 5 – Several Discreet Openings”

  1. I have to confess, the “Zork NPC’s” sentence was one of the few nostalgia references that I enjoyed, because I knew all of the NPC’s to which he was referring, including the grue, which is arguably the only good inside joke/running gag of the Zork series. (There’s no fighting the grue, it just eats you.)

  2. Re: the ongoing problem with Wade screwing around and doing all this other shit that has nothing to do with the plotline while IOI is working on it day and night. I read this as Cline’s stab at people who play online games like World of Warcraft or Everquest with the end goal of beating the newest, freshest content and treating it like serious business while they do so. I got it as he was trying to make the point that IOI is there to play to win, whereas Wade and the other Gunters are there to have fun and enjoy the content of The Oasis at their own pace, so they get enjoyment out of what they’re doing that the Gunters don’t, so they’re unlikely to come up with the solution on their own because they lack imagination.

    However, like most of his analogies, this quickly falls apart, because in those games, the organized guilds tend to be the ones at the top of the curve, and the ones twiddling their fingers and puttering around like Wade has been doing fall behind. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if this was EQ or WoW, IOI would have found the egg before the second chapter was over and Wade wouldn’t have even heard about it yet puttering around in newbie zones and tutorials.

  3. That recreation between Wade and Sorento was the hardest I’ve laughed at a podcast and probabky won’t be outdone for a long time. Love the show guys!

  4. The scoreboard stuff is even more unbearable in the audiobook. The narrator just reads out a list of names and numbers. Holy crap is it mind numbing.

    1. Don’t forget that *score differences* are also usually mentioned in case we don’t understand how much more 102,000 is than 1000,000.

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