Watch the First Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Adaptation of ‘Ready Player One’ (techcrunch.com)

I think the best explanation is that you missed rest of the chapters! :)

Just mentally filter out every reference to the 80's and enjoy it for the VR story that it is.

Also, it has one of the worst opening chapters of any book I've every read. Skip the first chapter (or skim it), and then continue - it's a good story.

Minus the opening chapter, and the 80's references it's actually a fun book.

Nothing. It's basically, like, a decently told story, nothing special about it, and it resonated with some people who, I think, like to 'get the reference'.

I'm not sure what's so appealing about the novel. I did finish it though, it's not a very good book. It's fine. It hits the same nostalgia spots as something like Mr. Robot and Stranger Things, both overrated shows imo. The only positive thing i can say about this is that it's built to be a movie. It offers nothing beyond visuals, but thankfully it looks like Spielberg got that part oh so right.

I read the entire book, and I didn't like it that much either. I guess it's just a subjective thing. I did, however, think it would make a much better movie than book.

It was terrible. Just an endless avalanche of 80s pop culture references loosely strung together with a horribly cliche plot and characters.

The references weren't even interesting either. It'll just be something like, "Then, I traveled to planet Bueller, where I played through the plot of Ferris Bueller's Day Off--", and then a page and a half literally describing various scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That's it. It adds nothing. Unless the idea of scenes from 80s movies and TV shows and video games that you are familiar with being described back to you is inherently amusing, you will probably find that this gets old very fast.

Then again - this might translate much better to the screen, in a way it didn't to the page, because A) film is a much better medium, I think, to delight the audience with familiarity than writing, and B) from the trailer it looks like the film will expand beyond just 80s pop culture, and intermix the references a little better than "I went to planet Star Wars and here are some scenes from Star Wars I played through". With Spielberg at the helm, I have pretty high hopes. Just don't expect, if you like the movie, to read the book and like it even more. If the film succeeds, this will be one of those very rare instances in which it's better than the material it's adapted from.

If you want to read a good novel about VR, pick up Snow Crash instead.

As a counterpoint, I wasn't really a child of the eighties but was familiar with a lot of the things in the book--wasn't hardcore into them because I was a young adult at the time. It wasn't a brilliantly written. But I found it more of "I'll just read one more chapter" than most things I've read for a while. Nostalgia I guess. Maybe I'm more of a sucker for that sort of thing than many. I did like it though.

Isn't it a Young Adult book? That might explain why it didn't work for you. A lot of adult readers have commented (here and elsewhere) that they found it to be poorly written.

Right, it is basically Willy Wonka but without the charm or wit.

thought it was terribly written, and I'm a fan of 80s stuff

If you are a fan of 80ies nerd culture and you want to read a well written but not very deep science fiction book, it is a quite entertaining read.

Read the book. It's a light and fun assembly of 80's references (for a plot-based reason!) packaged inside a VR capture-the-flag adventure. My son read it a few weeks ago and enjoyed it while getting none of the references... we had a fun weekend chasing down arcades with video games from the book (Joust features at a key early plot point).

Could the film be better than the book? Hmmm... Can you think of any VR movie that's better than the book it's based on? I can't either.

I'm not optimistic about the movie, but what I like about the trailer is how they seemed to have licensed a fair bit of 80's nostalgia (I loved seeing the Iron Giant in there, the Delorean from BTTF, Freddy Kruger getting blasted) which is really the important trick for adapting this book. (i.e. I really hope they licensed Ultraman.)

IMHO, use the time to read a better book. Try Graham Greene if you haven't already. Or Aldous Huxley.

If you want a contemporary sci-fi page-turner, 'The Martian' was much better.

I would be VERY surprised if the movie delivered as much as the book, given the necessity for intellectual property rights in film.

Marketing.

I've never read the book.. the trailer did absolutely nothing to tell you what the movie's about. It just looked like a bunch of pop references strung together with something to do with VR in a dystopian future. I don't think I've ever seen such a bad trailer for a high budget film..