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the best interpretations. Thus, the fundamental principle of interpretation depends upon there being a community with unified aims and common experiences, though of course the community will still also have serious disagreements about how their aims and experiences are to be unified. Nevertheless it is the community which must precede the creation of any interpretation, if it is to be a meaningful one. Disagreements within an interpretive community are fine as long as the community has a central activity that creates a core of agreement among its members.

The notion of simplicity springs out of familiarity, which in turn springs from the recurring needs of a community. If we examine the fan community of Zelda, we see that the recurring need which Zelda fans share and which anchors simplicity of interpretation for them is their need to master the games. This need unifies the Zelda community around a common cause. Because of their unity of purpose, the community naturally develops the ability to rapidly interpret game play details and clues in order to overcome puzzles and challenges. By interpreting the story line surrounding the Master Sword’s unique ability to banish evil, one will learn that the sword will be one of the key weapons to use in any final battle with Ganon. Similarly, fans use the numerous clues sprinkled throughout each game to find the many treasures and upgrades hidden within it.

Zelda Is a Communication Game!?

No single fan can reasonably be expected to find everything in one Zelda game the first time he or she plays it. New players must regularly go online or use other resources from outside the game in order to flesh out their understanding of the world which they seek to master. Indeed, the game’s designers even expect that their fans will build communities as a part of the game itself. Though what happens inside these communities is separate from what happens when actually playing the game, online communities are nevertheless a part of the design of the game. Speaking at GDC (the Game Developers Conference) in 2007, Shigeru Miyamoto made the surprising statement that he considers Zelda to be a communication game—just like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series! In his own words:

Some people view Zelda as [lacking a communicative component], but when I created it, I had a different idea in mind. Some people think that this single player game is one where you communicate only with the computer, but from the start I thought that Zelda could create a different kind of communication, centered around the game itself. And when I first showed an early prototype version of the NES version of Zelda, it did not go over well in Japan. People were confused. They didn’t know their objective. They didn’t know how to move from stage to stage. They couldn’t even solve the puzzles. And a lot of people said well look, why don’t you just make one way through the dungeon—no multiple paths. But of course I ignored them all. Rather than making it easier for players to understand, I decide to take their sword away from the very beginning. You do that then you know what you have to do. See, I did this because I wanted to challenge them to find that sword, because I knew that they would think about these problems. They would think before they go to sleep how am I going to do this? Or maybe as they’re riding to work in the morning. And at the same time, I wanted them to talk with other Zelda players and exchange information, ask each other questions, find out where to go next, exchange information—that’s what happened. This communication was not a competition; but it was a real life collaboration that helped make the game more popular.39

In other words, from the start the activity of fans has been an integral part of the Zelda experience! Naturally enough, as fans built the community that surrounds the Zelda universe, they didn’t limit their hermeneutic activities to “beating” the game itself. Instead, the fans cast a wider eye and challenged one another not only to beat the game, but to thoroughly master its material