Robbie Cooper – Alter Ego

www.robbiecooper.org
“In 2003 I was photographing the CEO of a company, when he told me that he used virtual world games to play with his children. He was divorced and had bad access to them, so he would meet them every evening in ‘Everquest‘, where they would play and chat. I asked him, what did they talk about? He told me that they discussed things like homework, school, their mother; the normal stuff of humdrum reality…”
…read the rest of the story on www.robbiecooper.org and have a look on his book Alter Ego: Avatars and their Creators, too.

“I am married to a beautiful girl and the proud father of two sons. Family is very important in my life, and my wife and I play City of Heroes together. We have a lot of fun.”
Average hours per week in-game: 17

“You can actually order pizza from within the game. Time goes by and you don’t really have that much handle on what’s been going on outside the game world. You can’t go on for too long like that. I’m getting control of things now, I’ve cut right back on it. I just try and keep things in perspective.”
Average hours per week in-game: 55

“The difference between me and my online characters is pretty obvious. I have a lot of physical disabilities in real life, but in Star Wars Galaxies I can ride an Imperial speeder bike, fight monsters, or just hang out with friends at a bar. (…) The computer screen is my window to the world. Online it doesn’t matter what you look like.”
Average hours per week in-game: 80

“I’m 40 years old and have two cats and five computers. I have been managing and developing online communities since the mid 1980s. I run a company called The Magicians that develops interactive content on the Second Life platform. Most of the time my avatar looks like my real self, but about twenty years younger. I’m jealous of some of her clothes.”
Average hours per week in-game: 70

“I’m a professor. I teach economics and public policy at the Dongguk University in Seoul. Because of my job, I don’t want people to see me playing. My colleagues would not understand. I just play at home, where only my wife and my friends know about it. My teaching duties don’t leave me much time to play but my avatar is logged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She sits in the market place, buying and selling items while I’m away at work.”
Average hours per week in-game: 8

“Think of me as a personal fitness trainer for your avatar. The first few weeks of many online games are a grind. Walk into a dungeon, find a monster, kill it, heal up, find another monster, kill it, and so on, over and over again. It’s boring. Computers are very good at automating repetitive tasks. So I figured, why not write a program that will play my character for me, so I can just skip to the fun part?”
Average hours per week in-game: 70