The combination has been a winning one, providing a very entertaining read for anyone that might be interested in MMOs and their ability to provide us with our own alter-egos. We decided to pool our resources and work together.' Says Spaight: 'We had similar projects, but different media. At the time, Spaight was working on a film project called Real People, Virtual Worlds, while Cooper had just started work on Alter Ego. Spaight and his co-author Cooper first met while attending an Everquest Fan Fair in Chicago. It's what they call '.both an entertainment and a serious look at a phenomenon that is shaping the future of human interaction.' Robbie Cooper (the photographer) and Tracy Spaight (the writer) have done a wonderful job of merging photography and words to provide readers with an intriguing experience. Those are just three examples of the extraordinary personal stories that are told in Alter Ego.

31 Year old Jason Rowe, whose physical disabilities disappear in the virtual world through the help of some special equipment.Lui Da is a power leveler from China who is quick to point out that he's not a bot, and that he levels by the rules.Richard Bartle / Richard the Arch-Wizard worked and played in MUDs (yes, his avatar photo is textual).It's the unusual or out of the ordinary stories that make this book stand out: It's not the every-day stories that really capture the reader's attention, those stories serve as a reminder of what we all have in common. While the subject matter of this book is universal, after all, we all have a real-self and an 'alter-ego' or two, but it does seem to represent a good sampling of the people behind the keyboards of MMORPGs. The text on the right gives that player a chance to tell us a little bit about themselves as gamers and something about their characters. The left hand side contains information about who the player is: their name, where they live, the game they're playing, and information of that nature. The images are also accompanied by text that tells a little bit about the lives of the gamers and their MMO experiences.Įvery time you turn the page in Alter Ego, you are faced with a new real-life photo on the left, and an in-game screenshot of their character on the right. The book is called Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators, and that's probably an appropriate title for a book that examines a cross-section of the approximately 10 million MMO players around the world and the characters that they play online.Īlter Ego is primarily a book of photography, comparing images of real people with their avatars. Shift your angle a little bit though, and suddenly you're looking at a pair of Undead from World of Warcraft. At first glance, it looks like a pair of 30-somethings holding hands on a street in South Korea.

Really, it's the picture on the cover that catches the eye. Now, an odd-sized book in and of itself isn't really that strange. It's a bit of an odd-looking book a little bit wider than a paperback novel, and half again as long. The other day, a new book arrived at the office.

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