The Legend of Zelda and the Portrayal of Women in Gaming History

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the change in the cultural depictions of female characters in video gaming history through the developments of the character Princess Zelda over the course of ten games from The Legend of Zelda Series, spanning from 1986 to 2017. The ten games were divided into three categories by the developers that managed the series, games by Shigeru Miyamoto (1986 - 1998),Takashi Tezuka (2002 - 2009), and Eiji Aonuma. (2008 - 2019), respectively. Under each developers' tunure, Princess Zelda's portrayal was altered to adapt the cultural view of women during their time. The results of this literary analysis was that Princess Zelda’s constantly evolving depiction represents two events in the gaming industry: the transition from an eastern perspective to a western perspective regarding the view of women in the gaming industry, and the changing demographics in the video game market to more female consumers.