When you were a child warming up with a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows after rollicking outside in the snow, sitting down to play some The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64 or 3DS, did you ever stop to think: I wonder what the unemployment rate of Clock Town is?
No? Well congratulations because that makes you a normal human being. But that didn’t stop Any Austin, a retro gaming YouTube creator, from asking that very question.
In his video, Austin scavenges the entirety of Clock Town (it really isn’t that large of an area) for every NPC he could find to ascertain whether they qualify as being employed.
As anyone who has played Majora’s Mask knows, Clock Town is a bustling city in which every NPC has their own schedule during the 3-day span that exists within the game.
Naturally, most of the characters should have jobs, right? They have the Mayor, Anju the Inn Keeper, the guards, the dancers, the construction workers, and the Postman.
Leaving the kids and retirees out, the total number of NPC’s with jobs in Clock Town is a whopping 33 people. However, it turns out that Clock Town has a surprisingly high unemployment rate if you believe the analysis Austin provides.
Hilariously, the few unemployed members of the city include a curiously determined construction worker yelling at a sign, the Great Fairy which Austin calls a “hippie who lives in a pond,” the woman in the game room with her boyfriend, the scarecrow, the Goron in the bomb shop selling Powder Kegs which Austin compares to a guy selling weed in a public restroom, the Song of Storms guy, and the old man running the observatory.
One notable character missing from the video is “???”, the hand inside the Stock Pot Inn toilet asking for paper.
Although a few of those NPC’s could go either way, the unemployed rate of Clock Town was determined by Austin as being 17.5%. In real life terms, this ties the country of Ethiopia and is more than three times higher than the US city with the highest unemployment rate, Cleveland, Ohio.
As silly as the whole idea of calculating the unemployment rate of a video game town is, it is a testament to how entertaining delving into the most random questions about beloved video games from our childhoods can be.
If you really want to go down the Majora’s Mask rabbit hole, you can check out the old episode of Game Theory in which Matt and Peanut Butter Gamer delve into the popular theory that Link is dead throughout the entirety of the game and the true story is that he must go through the five stages of grief in order to progress to the afterlife.
Whatever the truth about Majora’s Mask may be, it is always fun to toy around with theories and concepts about the games we love.
About the Author
Phillip Schneider is a Twitch Affiliate, gamer, and writer with a particular love for retro games of the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s. Favorite game ever? Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon.
This article (This YouTuber Calculated the Unemployment Rate of Clock Town) originally appeared at Phillip Schneider and may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author credit, and this copyright statement.
