A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
You don’t have to know anything about Buddhism to appreciate “Majora’s Mask,” but it helps.
I model Termina and Link through Buddhist philosophy, and move towards explanations of masks and their Salesman.
Aaron Suduiko is the Founder and Chief Video Game Analyst of With a Terrible Fate. In his capacity as a philosopher of video-game storytelling, he specializes in the relationship between player and avatar, and the myriad ways in which that relationship centrally influences the stories of video games.
The heart of Suduiko's philosophy of video-game fiction is his theory of "the fictional player": according to this view, the player's role in a video game is not that of identification with the game's avatar; instead, the player plays a separate, more metaphysically foundational fictional role that makes possible events within a video game's story actual, similar to Leibniz's conception of god. Suduiko's application of this view in his analyses on With a Terrible Fate have led to novel interpretations of games such as Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Dishonored, NieR, Returnal, Xenoblade Chronicles, Bandai Namco's "Tales of" series, BioShock Infinite, Code Vein, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Ni No Kuni, and Silent Hill. The foundations of the fictional player theory may be found in the Journal of the Philosophy of Games: https://journals.uio.no/JPG/article/view/4799/5504
Suduiko graduated Harvard College in 2017 with high honors in his major, philosophy. Part of his degree included three independent studies on the storytelling of video games, advised by philosophy professors. In his senior year, he wrote an honors thesis on the ontology of video games as a storytelling object, earning high honors for the written work and highest honors for his oral defense of it.
Suduiko has shared his work on the philosophy of video-game storytelling at a variety of venues, including: Harvard’s philosophy department; PAX West, PAX East, PAX South, and PAX Aus; Harvard’s annual ARTS FIRST festival; the British Society of Aesthetics’ postgraduate conference; and SUNY Oneonta’s undergraduate philosophy conference. An article adapted from a chapter of his thesis on the ontology of video-game storytelling was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Philosophy of Games. His work on the aesthetics of quantum mechanics in BioShock Infinite was published in Cornell’s undergraduate philosophy journal, Logos. He’s advised Harvard librarians about the literary value of video games and the need to make them available as library resources.
Suduiko started analyzing video games in his senior year of high school, when he compared and contrasted the role-playing dynamics of video games and stage plays. After he started his degree in philosophy in 2014 and heard about the 3D remake of Majora’s Mask, he created With a Terrible Fate as a personal blog analyzing the philosophical and artistic value of Majora’s Mask. Since then, he’s grown With a Terrible Fate into a publication of video game analysts striving to understand the stories of video games in new, rigorous, illuminating ways.
Suduiko is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Southern California. Beyond the direct analysis of video-game stories, his main research interests center on how the structure and dynamics of video-game stories can serve as novel models for illuminating real-world issues of practical reasoning, social context, and personal identity.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
Mister Owl, how many timelines does it take to get to the center of free will and determinism?
With the background of Kaepora Gaebora, I take a first pass at sketching a Majoran thesis of free will / determinism.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
“Majora’s Mask” addresses marginalized groups in a way you might miss—and that’s the point.
"Majora's Mask" contains a thesis on how groups are marginalized by society. Here, I argue that the ease with which one can miss this game element is precisely what makes its content so impactful.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
Interlude: why games matter, and what Jane Austen has to do with it.
Many people view video games much more as toys than as serious works of art. In light of this, without dwelling on it too long, I would like to dedicate one post to an attempt to convince the cynic that video games deserve to be taken seriously as aesthetic works.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
“Even if I die… It won’t be in peace.” The dynamics of death in “Majora’s Mask.”
In this post, I explore what about "Majora's Mask" and the world of Termina makes death more imminent and haunting than any other "Zelda" title could.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
“Legend of Whom?” What to do with a “Zelda” game without Zelda.
In the game entitled "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask," Zelda does not exist. It is this anomaly and its effects that I chart in this post.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
“My sorrows are melting away into the song”: how to build a universe out of music.
In this post, I argue that music is a prime example of how "Majora" is simultaneously familiar and terrifyingly different from the rest of the "Zelda" canon: it takes the significance of sound to a whole new level in game design.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
Want to learn how to design sidequests? Play “Majora’s Mask.”
"Majora's Mask" is exceptional because it offers the most meaningful and ontologically logical sidequests possible of a game.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
Majora’s Mask should terrify you, and this is why.
We can easily write off the disturbing undercurrent of "Majora" as a result of aesthetics, but in this post, I want to offer an argument that the horror which pervades the game is much more subtle and existential than that interpretation. I submit that the ultimate reason "Majora's Mask" continues to terrify us is that, as much as we want there to exist an evil for us to conquer, there ultimately exists no evil in the game.
A Comprehensive Theory of Majora's Mask
Dawn of the First Day: Why “Majora’s Mask” is unique
The aim of my project here is to reflect on a game which, far beyond being merely the sequel to "Ocarina of Time," is, in my view, one of the most significant pieces of art in modern times. While the release date for "Majora's Mask 3D" has not been publicized at this point, my goal is to write weekly reflections on different facets of the game, in the hopes that, by the time it is released, I will have articulated just what about this game strikes me at irrevocably moving.