Product Description

Alter Ego is a cool concept book, presenting the phenomenon of the contemporary avatar-the virtual characters gamers choose and design to engage in 3D worlds online. Portraits of gamers from the United States, Europe, China, and Japan (including leading figures of the gaming world) are paired with digital images of their alter egos, graphically dramatizing the gap between fantasy and reality.

With an introduction by one of digital culture's leading observers, and a glossary of relevant terms, each of the seventy pairs of images are accompanied by detailed gamers' profiles. Sometimes hilarious and always visually exciting, Alter Ego also serves as a guide to the new world of the avatar and is a serious contribution to the debate about the future of society in the digital age.

Robbie Cooper is a photojournalist. Born in London in 1969, his essay about Somalia was awarded the United Kingdom's leading young photographer's prize in 1992 (the Ian Parry scholarship). He now works regularly for magazines including Esquire, GQ, Geo, Libration, and the The Sunday Times Magazine.

Julian Dibbell is a contributing editor of both Wired magazine and the website Feed. Author of My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (1999, described as "quite simply the best book written about the dynamics of online life"), he writes regularly for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and TIME magazine on topics such as hackers, online communities, music pirates, and the philosophical questions of the digital age. He lives in South Bend, Indiana.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287475 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

About the Author
Robbie Cooper was born in 1969 in London and studied photography at Bournemouth College of Art. He won the Ian Parry scholarship in 1992 for his work in Somalia and has been been widely published, including in Liberation, The Sunday Times Magazine, Geo, GQ and Esquire. His work has been exhibited at galleries in London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Paris.

Customer Reviews

Coffee table book for a gamer or digital culture scholar!
What fun this book is! The front cover is a "hologram" just like on the covers of some of the books I had as a kid in the seventies, where moving your head a little morphs the photo of two World of Warcraft avatars into a photo of the couple who play them. The entire book is devoted to photos of avatars alongside their players, with brief facts given about each player and avatar. A perfect coffee table book for a gamer or digital culture scholar!

Avatars...
Interesting book. Good concept. Excellent cover. It becomes a little repetitive throughout the pages though... I wish there were more interesting people in it. Many of them are very similar to each other...

Couldn't put it down
I thought it would be just a nice topical coffee table book, but it is way more compelling than I expected. The layout and form is quite unique. A precious work of art. Each pair of pages a jewel. There is a photo of each user on one side and image of their avatar on the facing page. But it's the couple of paragraphs in each of the users own words that wouldn't let me put the book down. Just amazing the various types of relationships these people have with their avatars. My favorite quote: "I used to be a satanic priest, but now I have a girlfriend."