Behind the Unusual Popularity of Ready Player One in China

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a science fiction film produced in 2018, though being debatable with its quality, achieved tremendous success in the Chinese movie market. The box office of the movie in China was even 59% higher than its domestic box office in the United States. Ready Player One did not only gain popularity in China, but it earned a reputation as well. While this movie received an average of 7.4/10 on IMDB and a 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, its average score on the most popular Chinese movie rating platform, Douban, was 8.7/10. This score implies that Chinese audiences treated the quality of this movie as tantamount to Parasite, Django Unchained, and Memento. Instead of saying that it was the science fiction element or the plot that attracted the Chinese audiences, I would argue the unusual popularity of Ready Player One was a result of the need for recognition from the mainstream culture within members of gaming culture, who have been repressed and stigmatized by the mainstream rhetoric for decades. The “rebellion against big corporation dominion” plot in the movie also coincides with a theme Chinese gamers audiences might have empathized with.

One could not separate the success of Ready Player One in the Chinese market from the repression of gamer culture in China. Such repression was a result of the conflict between people born after the 80s who were “captivated by digitalization and technological change” (Zhang, 2020) and the generation raised before the Open and Reform, but that latter defines the mainstream. Under the influence of the mainstream, games could be referred to by state-owned media as “poison” and “drugs” (BBC, 2018). More shockingly, a documentary produced by China Central Television in 2008 named “Fighting the Internet Demon” described the internet and game in a demonized way and praised a doctor who used extremely inhumane electric shocks to “cure” those who were considered addicted to videogames by their parents. Under such a larger context, the controversial paternalistic policy issued last year — the game ban against all underaged Chinese players is by no means surprising since the policy implies the same logic that government officials and the “mainstream” view firmly believe, that videogames are inherently detrimental and will cause morbid addictions regardless of the type of games. However, videogames had always been popular in China, especially among youths, so videogame lovers began to form their own cultural identities. The mainstream belief that gamers deviate from the norm and the repression against the gaming culture cultivated in disproportionately weak voices compared to their population size. In such circumstances, the gamers were eager that their cultural identity could be recognized by the mainstream, and the recognition is what Steven Spielberg’s movie provided to them.

With Ready Player One being a science fiction film that based its settings on the future, the social importance of a particular videogame, or virtual reality, was greatly emphasized. The plot was that in 2045, James Halliday, the person who created an extraordinary virtual reality videogame OASIS that became the means for many to escape from reality, deceased and decided to leave the ownership of the game to the first person who could manage to find the Easter egg hidden in his game. Finding the Easter egg requires a profound understanding of his life and what he loved: the popular culture such as games and movies that accompanied him during his childhood. After uniting the gamers to fight against the evil corporation IOI that wishes to use OASIS to make an endless profit, the protagonist, a videogame lover, acquired the Easter egg and became the new owner of the OASIS. Differ from the typical Hollywood movies in which the heroic protagonist saves the world, the protagonist in this movie defended the second reality of many people through the means of playing a videogame. In other words, the movie is implying to the gamers that they could be “the most important people in the universe” (Grady, 2018). Moreover, the videogame OASIS was portrayed in the movie as a utopia and land of fantasy, where people can find true joy and happiness. To highlight the positive nature of the game, Ready Player One made a clear contrast between the beautiful game and the wrecked reality. Based on its setting, the world has undergone a series of crises in that people “stop trying to fix problems and just try to live there,” and that is why people are looking for a way to escape from the dreadful reality and find something to replace it. The OASIS was “a place to go.” In comparison to reality, OASIS is a place where the “limits of the reality are your own imagination,” where people can do everything they want to do, become anyone they want to be, and make friends with anyone they like around the world. This contrast was shown quickly during the first five minutes of the movie, both visually and verbally, thus providing a reason for OASIS to be defended. Such portrayal of the game created a disparity between the image created by the propagandas in China, and that was a major reason the movie ignited gamers’ passion.

Apart from the mainstream repression, domination of the game market by large corporations was also a reason Chinese audiences embraced the idea that “true gamers” defeated the large corporation that only treated games as means to gain profits. In the movie, with a profound understanding of games and popular culture, the protagonist and his friend defeated a giant and well-organized corporation called IOI that tried to take over OASIS and use it as a cash cow. IOI, or Innovative Online Industries, was founded by Nolan Sorrento, who used to be James Halliday’s partner in developing OASIS. However, these two people differ in their views of the game. Halliday thinks the game should be pure and a world without limitations, while Sorrento thinks limitations should be imposed to make profits. Therefore, Sorrento left Halliday and founded IOI to attempt to take control of OASIS. According to his grand design, he will cover 80% of players’ visual fields with advertisements after he takes over. This theme coincides with Chinese gamers’ perception of the gaming industry in China. While many developers and players dream of making games of top quality, it is a financially unrealistic and dangerous move for leaders of big game companies that are dominating the market. Therefore, even though the game market in China is colossal, there are very few games that are good enough to gain any international influence. On the contrary, the market is full of low-quality games with imbecile profiting strategies, just like Sorrento’s scheme. The disappointment towards such profit-seeking strategies applied by the big companies and their wish to make quality games with artistic values turned into support of this central theme of Ready Player One, in which the true lovers of games outran the company that seeks to monopolize and ruin everything true gamers care about.

I would like to refer to the literary critic Roland Barthes’s concept of the death of the author to demonstrate what the popularity of Ready Player One in China implies about cultural globalization. Barthes argues that we should separate the author and the literary work they produced. It is the impression of the reader, instead of the intention of the author, that determines the meaning of the work (Barthes, 1967). When looking at cultural objects that send ideas across borders, we should probably apply the concept as well. The original intent for Steven Spielberg to make the movie was to discuss the idea of whether we wish to live in reality or “an escapist universe” (Radish, 2018). However, Chinese audiences focused and responded to completely different values from what Spielberg sought to express. We may conclude that during the globalization of culture, the translation of a cultural object to other countries will be highly dependent upon the social and cultural background of the perceiving end. How productions are evaluated and treated by people with different backgrounds is an important part of cultural globalization.

In conclusion, the unexpected success of Ready Player One in China reflected the need for the positive recognition of China’s gaming culture, as well as the will to rebel against big corporation domination in the game market. It also makes a fascinating example of how audiences with certain cultural backgrounds embraced foreign cultural production in a way that fits their cultural experience and reality.

References

Barthes, R., & Heath, S. (1977). Image, music, text. Fotana/Collins.

BBC. (2018, September 6). State data to be used to limit child gamers in China. BBC News. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45432863

Grady, C. (2018, March 26). The ready player one backlash, explained. Vox. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/26/17148350/ready-player-one-book-backlash-controversy-gamergate-explained

Radish, C. (2018, March 29). Steven Spielberg on Ready Player One and Nostalgia. Collider. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://collider.com/steven-spielberg-interview-ready-player-one/

Zhang, E. (2020, July 25). Do not pass go: China’s complex relationship with gaming. Medium. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://medium.com/wonk-bridge/do-not-pass-go-chinas-complex-relationship-with-gaming-c5a6ff486520