Gaming is the biggest platform in media. It makes the most money every year compared to movies, books, television, streaming services, etc. It’s only natural that VR has become a bigger and bigger medium for gaming every year. It’s actually astounding how far it has progressed in such a short time. So there a few questions worth asking: Could we ever see the OASIS from Ready Player One? How would it affect our society? Are there any moral or ethical dilemmas if it existed the way it does in the book/movie?

The first question, at least I believe, is easily answered. VR has come so far in just half a decade that it wouldn’t surprise me if something like the OASIS existed in the next 10–20 years. Technology like omnidirectional treadmills already exists. They’re incredibly expensive, but VR experiences can come pretty close to what we see in Ready Player One. The problem of accessibility becomes an issue, especially in terms of cost. In the book, Halliday makes the OASIS free to everyone. Even if the game was free in real life, the amount of money that it would take to maintain the servers would be massive. It wouldn’t sustain itself if it was free. Affording the equipment to experience it would be less than ideal for the majority of society. Even subtracting the price it would take to get the equipment, the servers for the OASIS require a ton of upkeep funds. There would have to be a counter to this issue.

The next question comes down to the effects of society’s functionality. We see some concrete examples of the absurdity of the OASIS in real-life scenarios, especially with Wade’s explanation in the opening of the movie e.g., a man almost killing himself for dying on Planet Doom, or a mother nearly causing her house to burn down. But, just for discussion, let’s analyze some of the positives. First, there would be pretty much no reason to play any other game again; all of it would be in the OASIS. Pong, Pac-Man, DOOM, Halo, or any other game you could think of is there. In fact, everything that we know as digital would be there. The OASIS has no bounds. Expanding on this idea, schools and businesses that operate online could also be included in the OASIS. The all-in-one concept would improve the functionality of society. On the other side of the spectrum though, severe addiction and obsession with living in this digital world could deter productivity. As a gamer, I don’t know if I would want to leave most of the time because of how much I could experience in the OASIS. It could become dangerously addicting, making a negative impact as a whole.

The ethicality of the OASIS somewhat ties into the previous question. Again, we can see the obsession people have with it from both the movie and the book. It clearly distracts from reality, in both positive and negative ways. The amount of time that people spend in the OASIS isn’t too different from people spending time in games that we have now, but the stark difference is how something like the OASIS is a focal platform for schools and businesses. The overarching problem would reside in people not spending nearly any time in the real world. But I don’t need to beat you more over the head anymore with “the reality is the only thing that’s real.” The movie does that enough already. The grander ethical issue is the corporate sway in the OASIS. I’d say it’d be even more prevalent in our world. Microtransactions in video games are currently a huge issue. If the OASIS was free, hypothetically speaking, there would have to be some way to monetize it. Having consumers pay for items, vehicles, cosmetics, etc. would have to be the primary method. It’s akin to in-app purchases for something like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans. Sometimes free-to-play isn’t truly free. There’s a considerable backlash against microtransactions. This would be a huge ethical dilemma for proper monetization.

There’s a lot of complications and nuisances to the possibility of the OASIS, but even with those in mind, I have no doubt we’ll see something with the fidelity and immersion of the OASIS in the very near future. It may not be a fully online gaming experience, but it may be close. We will just have to wait and see.