BotW Reading List

Hi Skittles!

I'm hard at work on the Breath of the Wild video, but it's been a while since I made an update on Patreon, so I figured I'd share some of the books and essays I've been reading as part of the research process! Part of the reason it's taken me so long to write the script is because I keep going back for more research. Sorry it's taking so long, but I promise it's coming, and it'll definitely be worth the wait! At the time of writing this post, my script is 23,133 words long, but I still have to write about the shrines, combat, story, characters, cultural context, DLC, and more, so it'll probably be more than double that when all is said and done. We're probably looking at a 4 or even 5 hour long video?? Pray for me.

Thank you all so much for your continued support, and I can't wait to give you another update in the near future! I'm also working on another shorter video that will release before the BotW video, so be on the lookout for that as well!

My reading list:

Books
Universal Principles of Design, Third Edition (Lidwell, Holden, and Butler, 2023)
The Art of Game Design, Third Edition (Schell, 2020)
Redesigning Society (Ackoff, 2003)
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004)
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx, 1932)
Walden: a fully annotated edition (Thoreau and Cramer, 2004)
Biophilia (Wilson, 1984)
Forest Euphoria (Kaishian, 2025)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild-Creating a Champion (Nintendo, 2018)

Articles
Archaeological Markers of History and Indigeneity in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Van Alst and Cory, 2024)
What factors create intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in video games? (Brodd and Passas, 2021)
Dreams of the Japanese Self in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Herfs, 2020)
I Coveted That Wind: Ganondorf, Buddhism, and Hyrule's Apocalyptic Cycle (Hermann, 2021)
A Player Engagement Process – An Exploration of Continuation Desire in Digital Games (Schoenau-Fog, 2011)
Marx and Alienation From Nature (Vogel, 1988)
Meaningful Place: A Phenomenological Approach to the Design of Spatial Experience in Open-world Games (Wang et al. 2024)
The Legend of Zelda in the Anthropocene (Canavan, 2019)

This list is not comprehensive and may grow by the time the final video comes out. It also doesn't include the countless developer interviews and critical reviews in both written and video form that I've read/watched as part of this process. It's been a huge undertaking and I'm nowhere near done, but hopefully all of this gives you an idea of why I've been taking so long! I really want this video to be as good as it possibly can be. Thank you all again for your patience, and I'll update you again soon.

<3 Skitty