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Utopia (1516) by Thomas More, coins the word “utopia”—the “no-place” that is a “good place”—and turns the imagery of an ideal society into an inspiring ideology that intends to facilitate political and socio-technological progression.
Video games are a twenty-first-century version of utopia. With their invented rules as well as storytelling, they have been the virtual form of Utopia that offers a transient escape to digital wonderlands from the pressures of modern life as well as the social transformation occasioned by gamification. In his novel Ready Player One (2011),
Ernest Cline depicts these two aspects of escape and social transformation.
The flourishing of video gaming has encountered fierce criticism. Jean Baudrillard worries about the control cybernetics imposes on the human mind in his book Simulacra and Simulation (1981). However, his criticism ignores that control, in the shape of digital input devices, is actually in the hands of players, and that those controllers are shaped by the utopian idealism of video game designers.
From Utopia to Ready Player One, the form of utopia changes but the utopian ideology to satisfy our desire for a better world is eternal. Through an interpretation of Ready Player One, this thesis aims to show the presence of utopian ideology in video games. Through discussions of issues brought on by cybernetics, this thesis also points out that technical transformation leads to both positive and negative outcomes and opinions. Ultimately, though, this thesis argues that the positive predominates. As gamification becomes an integral part of daily life, our quality of life improves as autonomy and individuality increase. This is the point that Ready Player One imaginatively brings home.
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