Tag: Ready Player One

UPDATED! Ernest Cline, Author of Ready Player One, Will Attend a Virtual Book Tour Event for His Sequel Novel, Ready Player Two, in Bigscreen Today (Saturday, December 5th, 2020)

Ernest Cline, the author of the phenomenally successful virtual-reality-based science fiction novel, Ready Player One, will be visiting Bigscreen (the social VR app which allows you to share movie viewing experiences with others; more here on my blog), chatting with Darshan Shankar (Bigscreen’s founder and CEO), and taking questions from a virtual audience.

According to the official blogpost announcing the event:

The Q&A with Cline and Darshan Shankar, the CEO and Founder of Bigscreen, will be streamed in Bigscreen on December 5th at 5:00 p.m. Pacific (8:00 p.m. Eastern). The event is open to audiences worldwide for free, and requires the Bigscreen application (www.bigscreenvr.com) and a supported virtual reality headset.

The cover of Ernest Cline’s eagerly-awaited sequel to Ready Player One

Bigscreen supports all major VR headsets, including the Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Bigscreen is available as a free download from the Oculus Store (PC, Quest) or via Steam. (Please note that although the Ernest Cline event today is free, you must purchase tickers to see some premium movie content on Bigscreen.)

For more information on Bigscreen, visit their website, or follow them on social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit. You can also join the Bigscreen Community Discord server, with over 15,000 members.

UPDATE Dec. 6th, 2020: I, unfortunately, was unable to attend this event, but someone who did informed me that it was pre-recorded, and there was no Q&A session from a virtual audience. Please accept my apologies for the error!

Sansar Pick of the Day – Ready Player One: Aech’s Basement, a Brand New Experience by Sansar Studios

According to today’s New York Times, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is officially the number one movie in the world. (I have yet to go see it, but I did listen to the audiobook version of Ernest Cline’s science fiction novel last year, so I know the story line.) Anecdotal reports are coming in on Reddit of people going out and buying virtual reality hardware after seeing the movie, which is what some people were hoping.

ready-player-one

Linden Lab announced on Friday that they had set up a second Ready Player One experience in Sansar, in addition to Aech’s Garage, which was announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. This new experience is called Ready Player One: Aech’s Basement, and it recreates the 1980s-era suburban basement rec room simulation which Aech built in the OASIS, and which served as a meeting room for the main characters in the book.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I can tell you that visiting Aech’s Basement was like taking a step into a time machine! The same wood paneling on the walls, the same old-fashioned red telephone with an actual dial sitting on the bar…it’s uncanny! I almost tripped over the Hot Wheels tracks laid out on the floor!

The experience is full of many nods to 1980s pop culture, and there are several spots where you can click a play button to hear Aech talk about some of them. It’s almost like Aech is giving you a personal tour!

The basement is rather dimly lit, so these pictures are not the greatest. You really do owe it to youself to come visit Aech’s Basement and experience it for yourself! It’s so well done!

Aech's Basement 1 2 Apr 2018
Check out the cassette tape collection behind the sofa!

Aech's Basement 2 2 Apr 2018
A view of the bar past the mirror

Aech's Basement 3 2 Apr 2018
Dungeons and Dragons!

Visiting Aech’s Basement was like taking a trip back in time to my own teenage rec room, and I enjoyed this experience tremendously. Job well done, Sansar Studios!

NOTE: You can install the Sansar software client, if you don’t already have it, at https://www.sansar.com/download. And then you can visit Aech’s Basement by selecting it from the Sansar Atlas (it’s one of the four Sansar experiences profiled in rotation along the top of the Atlas page), or just by searching for “Aech” in the Sansar Atlas, or simply by clicking this link: Ready Player One: Aech’s Basement.

Ready Player One: Early Reviews from SXSW Are Raves

ready-player-one

The early reviews are in from the SXSW Film Festival, and it looks like Steven Spielberg’s latest film, an adaptation of Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One, is going to be a hit.

IndieWire: ‘Ready Player One’ Review: Steven Spielberg Delivers Astonishing Sci-Fi Spectacle and Relentless Nostalgia — SXSW 2018

CNN: ‘Ready Player One’ premiere gets cheers, despite technical difficulties

The Verge: Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One improves immensely on the book

Rolling Stone: SXSW 2018: Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’ Premieres, Fanboys Go Nuts

And which virtual world has the official Ready Player One movie tie-in? Why, that would be Sansar! (I bet that Philip Rosedale and his staff at High Fidelity are gnashing their teeth.) Aech’s Garage is a lovingly created, beautifully lit, and painstakingly detailed experience crafted by Linden Lab’s Sansar Studios, Intel, HTC Vive, and Warner Brothers, full of Easter eggs referencing 1980s pop culture. It should be a jaw-dropping introduction to VR to many people.

What will be interesting to watch is how Linden Lab plans to leverage interest in the Ready Player One movie into potential user engagement with Sansar in general, and the Aech’s Garage experience in particular. What have they got planned? They haven’t said, yet. (I’m willing to bet they have a second experience hidden away somewhere. They surely wouldn’t let this golden opportunity pass them by.)

This is a very similar situation to the CSI: New York TV show tie-in to Second Life back in October 2007. There was a recent poll of users in the ever-active Second Life Friends group on Facebook, asking how they discovered SL, and a surprising number of people mentioned that TV episode as their introduction to Second Life. Likewise, the Ready Player One movie may become many people’s first exposure to Sansar.

(Then again, I remember that the Second Life tie-in from CSI: NY had some degree of game-playing and interactivity to it, instead of just wandering around admiring the beautiful scenery. Although the situation is getting better (HoverDerby is a stellar example), the lack of interactivity in most Sansar experiences is a big problem in keeping new users engaged and coming back for return visits.)

So obviously, Linden Lab is hoping that the movie will be a success, and will drive people to try out Sansar. We’ll see what happens when the movie opens on March 29th, 2018.