Zelda has taught me the importance of play – and helped me deal with work, parenting and grief | Culture

Me I had a difficult relationship with video games as a teenager. I honestly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games I grew up with, running around dreaming of Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious adult in the early 00’s, I started wanting more of the game, and I wasn’t getting it. So most of them were not wise, or young, or violent for no reason. So few seemed to have anything to say. I began to wonder if sports could be a waste of time, as the adults in my life told me.

My response to this was to constantly review the games I played, to justify the time and attention I spent on them. I published highbrow sports magazines and wrote great blogs big heads in Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid and the classic computer game Fallout. My childhood love of Nintendo, with its flashy appearance and restrained style of presentation, used to embarrass me. Then I turned on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and I realized the nature and importance of a game that would change my life.

Wind Waker came out in 2003, just before my 15th birthday – but I didn’t play it then, because I thought it was childish. I posted this on his own drawings. Where the blocky, 3D Zelda games of my childhood, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, had gone for a more immersive experience, Wind Waker was revealed as a living piece of art. Link, the hero of the boys, had wide and narrow eyes; the monstrous beasts they fought had been transformed into visible fists. At this time, there was a change in graphics and more serious themes in games: “Bad” titles such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto were the flagships of Xbox and PlayStation. Nintendo’s strong cartoons encouraged derision from players who called themselves difficult.

So I brushed it off, with the mistaken belief that only a teenager could. But then I returned to it, when I was 17 and really in the depths of my existential crisis about video games, seriously considering leaving them together with my burgeoning work as a sports journalist to do something more important with my life. And what I found in Wind Waker was a way back to happiness. This cartoon, with its cute face and shiny sword, feels like a child’s expression of curiosity. Zelda is a game about exploration: it’s designed to reward you for what you love most. Being with this person, I was free to… play. Swinging my sword at the roots of the grass, sailing the sea in a red talking boat, chasing little pigs on the beach, setting a course for distant islands and looking for secrets. For the first time in years, I was really into sports. Not overthinking it, just enjoying it.

Wind Waker made a huge difference in my relationship with games, realizing that being a kid doesn’t mean childhood. Play is important in itself, not only permissible but necessary. It’s not something you outgrow or outsmart. Since then, I have been nurturing and appreciating my innate quality. Being happy has guided me through life: it has helped me to recognize when work and relationships have not worked for me; it has been a way to deal with my overwhelming sadness; and made me a better parent. It has made me open and curious, not afraid of new things. Happiness is not a bad thing to organize your life around.

In adulthood, especially for women, there is an ingrained sense that everything you do must be beneficial or self-serving. You read books not for fun but to learn. If you do it right, it’s designed to build strength or maintain bone strength rather than just enjoying and moving your body. Fun is not just fun, it’s a constant struggle. Everything we do is shaped by the capitalist mindset and this vague sense of entitlement.

There is still a common perception today that playing games is juvenile, a waste of time, or otherwise shameful. But it’s important – people are playful animals, one of the few that play early childhood. Saving space and time in your life and your playful heart is the way to survive a world that wants to squeeze you for everything you have.