Title: The Training of Virtual Tattoos: Hosts Inscribed by Exteriorized Minds

Abstract:

Perhaps postmodern bodies have “already disappeared,” and “the mind is on its way to being exteriorized again,” as Kroker and Kroker suggest. If so, what of the potential for postmodern play with bodies' virtual counterparts?

Virtual worlds now offer complex character/avatar creation, allowing exteriorized minds to inscribe their virtual hosts' height, skin, hairstyle, profession, even tattoos, scars, and clothing. Gamers begin co-authoring their potential literature before their prologues begin. This play may not produce rhizomatic minds, but it teach stem grafting, training gamers in postmodernist worldviews as much as Got Game suggests they are being trained for the corporation.