Villains Too Stupid To Win Ep.19 - IOI (Ready Player One)

You're telling me a company wants to to take control of a popular media franchise only to instantly destroy it with advertisements and microtransactions? That's not realistic at all.

“Arresting the CEO for his obvious crimes. That’s how you know this world is fictional.” Lol. Very true.

I mean. Corporations reusing old content, is actually most realistic part of this movie.

The sad part is how realistic IOI's behaviors and stupidity are when compared to real-world media companies.

Now, there's one crime CEOs get punished for, ripping off other rich people. That shit's not tolerated.

The IOI sleeper cell theory has always been my head canon for this movie. It explains how their egg hunters behave throughout in a very consistent way. They carry unnecessary coins into races then wreck themselves to power up the non-IOI participants, don't really try to make any progress on finding the keys, wilfully ignore the clues provided to them, make sure to give the good guys clues by visibly ruling out things that would be the wrong path... It's pretty clear they don't want Sorrento to win and they're intentionally sabotaging his efforts. Oh and worth pointing out the real world parallels between IOI's intended take-over of the OASIS and MySpace's take-over by News Corp... Sorrento = Rupert? They even got an Aussie to play the role and everything.

Still hoping for the day Media Zealot does a new series about Villains and Sci-Fi civs that are actually smart enough to win/exist. I genuinely can't think of that many.

A company ruining a franchise and their profits is unrealistic, well allow me to introduce you to EA.

Aside from the movie being total trash compared to the book, that first challenge definitely pissed me off! Whoever wrote this script knows nothing about gamers! Players discover far, far more obscurely hidden secrets in games in no amount of time. Driving backwards would have been cracked in a few short hours. And they could have at least cleaned it up by saying the game is coded that the backwards driving only works if you watched that Haliday clip within the last few hours, or something along those lines.

The worst part about this whole thing is that, realistically, there is no way IOI should've lost, in the book it makes more sense, but in the movie they would've had the first key the moment the hunt started

Sorrento's arrest at the end made more sense in the book because he was just the head of IOI's Ovology department, not the CEO of the whole company, and early in the book the higher-ups leaved very clear that they would trow him under the bus the moment he wasn't useful anymore... the movie does some of the character stuff better but the worldbuilding in the book makes more sense to an extend

The true winner of this whole thing is the fanfiction author whose story got canonized. That there is a holy grail for a fan

I love it when non gamers have to create a game in their story or write gamer characters in their story. Its like we are a different species to them

Movie 'driving backwards is so tricky' meanwhile speedrunners 'alright I've got to put objects on these three pixels and cap my fps to get the right memory leak, and then I point my camera a specific direction while swapping weapons as fast a possible to do spawn manipulation, and if I hit jump on the correct frame I'll get teleported to the end. Hooray, I did it 0.01 seconds faster that time, new PB!'

In defense of the sixes, considering they would no longer be needed once the Oasis is claimed, they have a ligit reason not to succeed.

Ironically, if IOI took ever OASIS and made it so annoying that it lost mass appeal, then Humanity might be better off. It would force them off their escapist fantasy world and to confront the rot taking hold of the real world.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how stupid the Covenant are as a civilization and villains. I don’t hate their stupidity as it was well written on purpose but I would love Media Zealot to roast them and the prophets. The best example would be the replacement of the elites for brutes, like that was a big gamble that the brutes didn’t consider the same fate could happen to them.

IOI is hardly unrealistic. Look at how Embracer group bought the valuable Arkham IP, filled it with monetization, and destroyed it. Real video game companies love adding monetization while cannibalizing what made a game franchise actually profitable.

It's a good day when Media Zealot uploads.

I will say both the Alliance and the Horde in WoW deserve a take on Civilizations too Stupid to Win. Fatal flaws including "the Warchief position being barely anything besides a guarantee of rebellion", "both Horde and Alliance refusing to effectively use strategy, technology, or magic, to solve their issues", "the SI:7 being useful only to their enemies", and so much more.