Photo journalist Robbie Cooper has been hunting gamers all over the world and following the success of his Alter Egos London exhibition last year he is back to reveal further secrets of the online world.
Last year, Alter Egos created some of the most intriguing gaming related art which provided a comforting and at times poetic peek into the real lives of virtual characters. This time Cooper traveled to China and Korea in an attempt to investigate the possible influences of culture on online gaming. I wanted to build on what I had done before and get more cultural variety and more personal variety.. he told the BBC.
One of the most bizare revelations regarding the online gaming culture in China and Korea was the creation of the new profession of character caretaker; a job which involves taking care of a player's character when they are at work or asleep. Another gentleman has created software which brings your character up to a respectable skill level before you start playing, a gaming fluffer if you will, for Chinese and Korean online gamers.
All these developments surrounding online gaming have not surprised Mr. Cooper, ...we live in a virtual world anyway, he says. Democracy is virtual, politics is virtual; all this stuff and information we get in the newspaper - a lot of it is public relations stuff.
Mr. Cooper's most recent photos will be on show at a PlayStation 2 supported exhibition tour starting 9 November in Amsterdam. A full list of dates and locations, including the U.S., for the exhibition is available from the Alter Egos website which can be found by following the download/b> tab above.
