"The challenge is to find three keys, but in five years, no one has even got one key, and the big scoreboard, still empty. Some long-forgotten Gunter cracked the first clue and found the first challenge, then this portal appeared. But the challenge to find the first key was a race designed by Halliday that was so hard, no one had ever finished it. The only ones still trying are the Gunters – as in "egg hunters" – like me and Sho and Daito and my best friend Aech. Oh, and of course, the Sixers. The Sixers work for IOI – Innovative Online Industries. They're the second largest company in the world, with desires on becoming the first, which is why they're putting everything they've got into winning Halliday's contest. We call them Sixers because that's the company rule – no name, just numbers. They have a support team made up of Halliday scholars. Like me, they spend all their time studying pop culture that Halliday was obsessed with, trying to find clues to solve the contest. They're just following the orders of the head of IOI, this dickweed named Nolan Sorrento."