Ready Player One tells the story of Wade Watts's search for James Halliday's hidden Easter egg. The story takes place in the year 2045, and the real world is an absolutely abysmal place to be. Consequently, everybody spends most of their waking moments inside of a super-realistic virtual reality called OASIS in order to escape the misery that is real life. Once inside OASIS, Wade Watts becomes "Parzival," and he's an egg hunter, or "gunter." His goal is to find the Easter egg because it will make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. In order to find the Easter egg, Wade must first find the three keys that unlock three gates. Each key and gate requires Wade to dig deep into his knowledge of the 1980s and James Halliday himself. Wade is not the only hunter looking for Halliday's egg. It's a competition, and Wade's main rival is the company IOI. IOI employs an army of "Sixers" to hunt down the egg because whoever finds the egg will be granted complete control over OASIS. Along the way, Wade receives help from other hunters like "Art3mis," "Aech," "Daito," and "Shoto," and the story is as much about their helping each other as it is about a search for massive wealth.