Who Is Ernest Cline's Ready Player One?

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One is set in 2044, after the world has been destroyed by the depletion of fossil fuels and global warming, which caused widespread social problems and economic stagnation. At the same time OASIS, a virtual reality simulator becomes extremely popular. It functions both as an video game and as a virtual society. It was created by James Halliday who, when he died, had announced in his will to the public that he had left an contest inside OASIS, and the first person to complete it would inherit the OASIS and all the money and power that came with it. Within this novel are many important lessons that can only be found through careful literary analysis.
Ernest Cline is stating is that companies like the novel’s IOI don’t see people as people, but as resources for labor and money. In the novel the company IOI uses an indentured servant program to fill their workforce and to get money back from their debtors. These indentured servants are essentially slaves to the IOI corporation as the rate at which a servant's debt is paid back is so miniscule that money will never be paid back. Along with that IOI treats their debtors like animals rounding

This is Ernest Cline saying that power and money corrupts. The figure head for IOI’s team for winning the competition is a man by the name of Nolan Sorrento who was a game programer, but was recruited by IOI to lead their hunt in the challenge. Throughout the book Sorrento is the one who authorizes the use of modified OASIS machines to cheat to get ahead in the competition and starts stockpiling personal information about other competitors to blackmail them to drop out of the competition or worse. What Ernest Cline is showing us through IOI and Sorrento is that money and power can easily corrupt the people who are not