After designing my Second Life 'avatar' - with a pumped up body, flaming red hair and the rather wonderful name Pumplesmoo Dunderdale - I flew over to the launch of AlterEgo. I have attended many book launches but never a virtual launch in a virtual world. Second Life lets us actually build that imagined place.' © Robbie Cooper / Chris Boot Philip Rosedale - Philip Linden 'As thinking beings, we can imagine a world much better than the real one. Online it doesn't matter what you look like.' © Robbie Cooper / Chris Boot Jason Rowe - Rurouni Kenshin 'The computer screen is my window to the world. If anything, my avatar has to concentrate on being me.' © Robbie Cooper / Chris Boot Harisu 'When I am acting I have to concentrate on my role. On the other, are they talking to other people or just their online persona? Do people act differently online and offline?

On the one hand participants feel more able to express themselves away from the immediate judgement of personal appearance and status. The ability to communicate more freely is often cited in the book as one of the main attraction of virtual environments. Avatars can walk, talk and shop but they can also fly, kill, and be re-born. The online world offers participants new freedoms - a chance to act away from the constraints of the real world. There can never be a clear separation of identity: does an avatar serve as a representation of the real-life person or does a player inhabit a character, performing a created role in their virtual world?Īlter Ego serves to breakdown the stereotypes of virtual gaming and explore its many contradictions. Known as 'avatars' - from the Sanskrit word for the visual forms adopted by Hindu gods - they vary greatly in shape and size, sometimes replicating real-world appearance, sometimes deliberately subverting it or pushing the boundaries of imagination.Īs our gave moves from the photos of the real-life person to their created avatar and back again we look for connections between the two but also recognise the distance that divides them. Each one has an online identity, a personally created character representing them in their virtual world.

There are now an estimated 10 million online gamers across the globe. Robbie Cooper's Alter Ego project represents a wide spectrum of the online gaming community, from casual players to obsessive gamers, from creators of worlds to virtual entrepreneurs.

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