I’ve had a hard time deciding what I wanted to academically obsess over for the up coming weeks and have decided that I need to play Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Z.O.T). This is a game that I have easily played over 20 complete times and probably even more partial times. It is a game that I shut out the rest of the world and play from beginning to end in one go because I love it so much. Everything from the music to why I started playing it to the story line I love. And it’s because of that intense love that I chose to look at racial and gender implications in the game. To elaborate on that, since I’ve started to learn about mis-portrayals of everything from relationships and characterizing of race and gender/sex roles in popular culture I look at the wrong in things without seeing the beauty and when it’s something I already like I acknowledge it to myself but never talk about it with others, which is something I don’t think is right on my part. So because I already have a deep since of beauty for the game I’ve decided to look at some of the issues and talk about them through this public blog (which is really freaky to me).
So, how do I plan to do this? Well I thought I might start off with finding and reading some articles and what not on race and genders in video games along with some on overall impacts that video games can have on people and I will find out about popularity, sub-culture. Since I have played the game so much after each of my reading that I find useful I will vaguely make connections between the text and the game. Once I felt I have an abundance of knowledge I will partake on my final quest of playing the game and paying close attention to the dialogue and portrayals of characters and document my findings while keeping my love for the game.