Tom

Tom is a 16-year-old male who attends a public, co-educational school (years 9 – 13) and is in year 12. He takes the following subjects: design, graphics, maths, English, business administration computing, and computers. He and his family emigrated to New Zealand from South Africa. He lives with his mother, father, and younger brother. Currently his older brother and his wife are living in the same house also. Both his parents work full-time.

Tom spends most of his time online playing the game, ‘World of Warcraft’ (WOW). WOW is a massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG). WOW is a continuation of Warcraft I, II, III (and another one) but they were formally real time strategy games (RTS). He originally played first person shooter (FPS) games.

Tom’s bed is along one wall of his single bedroom while his desktop PC computer and his elder brother’s computer sits along the other side. He bought his computer from his elder brother, but it is one of many in the house (estimated another 5 desktops and laptops).

Tom has 45 websites (on record) that he has designed since the age of 10 or 11. He used Macromedia Dreamweaver to design the pages, though he knows HTML. He had mainly designed websites to promote ‘Counterstrike’ gamers but had also designed them to demonstrate his portfolio. He plans to have a career in website design.

Tom has unlimited time on the computer, especially as it is in his bedroom, and not monitored by his parents. However, he was banned from the internet during the course of the research because he did not hand in a school assignment in time.

Tom plays soccer weekly because he ‘has’ to.