Northrop Frye and the Story Structure of the Single-Player Shooter

SINCE THEIR APPEARANCE IN THE EARLY 1990s, shooters have become some of the most popular video games available: the science-fictional shooter Halo: Combat Evolved from Bungie Studios, for example, was the killer application for the Xbox console, and has sold about five million copies since its relea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:English studies in Canada 2011-06, Vol.37 (2), p.137-152
Main Author: Leeson, David M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action game
Analysis
Canadian literature
Computer action games
Frye, Northrop
Literary criticism
Literary critics
Romance fiction
Romance literature
Romances (Fiction)
Science fiction & fantasy
Story grammar
Video games
Writers
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Summary:SINCE THEIR APPEARANCE IN THE EARLY 1990s, shooters have become some of the most popular video games available: the science-fictional shooter Halo: Combat Evolved from Bungie Studios, for example, was the killer application for the Xbox console, and has sold about five million copies since its release in 2001. [...]players will spend as much time watching and listening to the story of Max Payne as they do playing the game. According to Frye, "it is natural for the romance 'to begin its series of adventures with some kind of break in consciousness, one which often involves actual forgetfulness of the previous state. [...]the player-character's path in a single-player shooter is often so narrow and linear compared with the wide-open battlefields of multiplayer shooters that some players refer to single-player games as "corridor shooters."
ISSN:0317-0802
1913-4835
1913-4835
DOI:10.1353/esc.2011.0032