Wade Watts
Wade is the main protagonist of the story – he is a serial gamer who has superuser abilities that allow him to see things other players cannot. He discovers the first operational ONI (OASIS Neural Interface) headset, but this is met with resistance by his friends who are worried about what the headset is capable of doing.
Samantha Cook
Samantha is Wade’s girlfriend and she is also a gamer whose avatar name is Art3mis. However, unlike Wade, she keeps parts of her life real and outside of the game, which often comes into conflict with her tech-obsessed boyfriend. She eventually breaks up with him after he refuses to listen to her concerns over the dangers of the new OASIS technology.
Art3mis
Art3mis is Samantha Cook's avatar; in the game she is Wade’s best friend, having met on the online world and then becoming fast friends in reality. She is concerned for all the gamers hacking out of the 12hr limit on OASIS as this has been shown to cause Synaptic Overload Syndrome. Her relationship with Wade is fractured for the majority of the novel because of this disagreement.
