Alter Ego game: Encyclopedia - Alter Ego game

Alter Ego (game)

Alter Ego is a personality computer game released by Activision in 1986. It was created by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. for the Commodore 64, PC (under DOS) and the Apple II. The game allows the user to make decisions for an imaginary person (being therefore their alter ego) and shows what possible consequences these decisions could have on that person. Alter Ego was available in both male and female versions.

The game is based on actual psychological knowledge and experience. The authors did their best to create a game which contains scientific material while remaining playable and enjoyable at the same time. It was a novel concept, to some degree similar to The Sims (but while Alter Ego let the player experience his or her own personality, or the consequences of changing it, The Sims allows the player to observe and explore others'—hidden—personality and interaction in situations).

The game presented the user with a tree diagram with icons at certain nodes. The icons allowed the user to choose certain "experiences" or situations to explore. Each of the icons showed what kind of experience it held by its picture (e.g. a heart denoted an emotional event). After making a choice in each node, the user was moved back to the tree with that node marked as completed. In this manner, the user could experience his or her alter ego's entire life and examine what impact their decisions had.

See also:

• Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alter Ego game", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki