The field of video game studies is young and requires innovation in its approach to its object of study. Despite the large number of Japanese games and game developers, most scholars in the West approach video games from a point of view that emphasizes Western thought and that is concerned with either very recent video games or the medium as a whole. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask defies Western interpretations as its inspiration and aesthetics are steeped in a Japanese theatrical tradition that dates to the early Middle Ages, namely Noh theater. The game’s emphasis on masks and possession provides unique commentary on the experience of playing a video game while the structure of the game harkens back to traditional Noh cycles, tying in pre-modern ideas with a modern medium in order to comment on video games and the people who play them. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The process of reading a modernist poem is just as much a process of deconstructing it: the language is designed to make meaning through inefficient means, like the aforementioned fragmentation and assemblage. The reader must decode the text. This is what I want to extract as a point of entry to my videogame analysis. The process of reading is not unlike the process of playing. Instead of linguistic structures, a player must navigate a game‟s internal rule system. The pleasure for both the reader and player comes from decoding the poem and game, respectively. I am not making claims that relationships between modernist poetry and videogames are inherent or innate. Similarly, I am not providing a framework to apply one medium to the other. Instead I want to investigate how each medium uses its affordances to take advantage of its potential for creative expression. I do not consider poetry or literature to be superior to videogames, nor am I invoking the argument that videogames should imitate earlier media. My goal is to compare specific modernist poems and videogames to see how each medium makes meaning through its respective processes.