Not to say I hate the genre, I actually love me some Dusk or Turbo Overkill, but why, oh why are they called Boomer Shooters?
These games clearly took inspiration from 90s FPS games, which 👌, but they were played mostly by Gen Xers and Millenials, not Boomers. When games like Duke Nukem 3D or Quake were out, Boomers were what? 30 to 50 years old? I’m sure some of them played FPS games, but there is no way they were the majority.
Whenever I see the term Boomer Shooter, my mind goes to games like Shootout! for Magnavox Odyssey. Can’t we call them something else, like Retro FPSes or something?
Anyway, rant over. Thank you for your time.
It’s not meant to be taken literally. Language evolves and boomer no longer exclusively refers to baby boomers, it’s just a general Gen-Z term for older people.
I know, but just let me have my old man yells at cloud moment.
Ok boomer
sorry
No, you’re not. But I like you anyway.
Not a boomer, confirmed.
That’s OK, because older people use the term Gen-Z for idiots of all ages.
But we’re not o… ah nevermind.
“Whatevers” in GenX.
I’m a younger millennial.
I’m out of my 20s. My back hurts. You’re wrong :DWe may be young at heart (emotionally), but we are old at heart (physically)
Which is hilarious, because Zoomers are turning 30 now and when I was actually young people over 30 were just one large group of walking corpses. I am curious to see how long Gen Z will keep this “we are the young ones” shtick up. Gen Alpha is where the actual young people are.
Depends on your definition of gen z, and the oldest of gen alpha has barely started getting into highschool. As a zoomer though we are on our way out.
Boomer is a state of mind, love, and this post is a shining example of boomerism.
I’d say closer to the xennial “forgotten generation” type. The playtesters of all of your favorite franchises didn’t fall behind as far as you think.
You seem like an intelligent and discerning person, so I’m sure you’ll appreciate that the only possible response to this is “ok boomer”
Dammit! Upvoted with great begrudgement.
Ok Boomer.
Lol try being a Roguelike fan.
You correctly tell people that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a Roguelike and they look at you like you’ve grown a second head.
Sometimes this stuff happens, and there’s basically nothing you can do about it.
Major part of it is that some people differentiate hard between rogue-likes and lites, and others simply do not, and the two will never get along with each other. The thing being that if there are any type of permanent upgrade/unlock systems that makes the game easier the more you play, it is not like rogue, where instead of grinding for more max hp or dodge percentage, you “grind” knowledge and experience as a player.
Which means that there are very, very few actual roguelikes because upgrade systems are just so cool ™ and every game obviously needs one. Or three.
Does that make pixel dungeon an actual roguelike? Never played the original rogue.
I believe it is a roguelike, yeah. Probably my favorite one too.
I hate how difficult it is to find games I like when it used to be so trivial.
2010: “I want to play another game like rogue”
“Ok try these 10 games which are all excellent, and then there’s these 50 which stretch the definition but rhyme with it if you like”
2020: “I want to play a game like rogue”
“Here’s a 3d looter shooter with multiplayer and 9 currencies for upgrades between short runs”
I feel like a lot of people haven’t ever played Rogue and so struggle understand what Roguelike actually means. Fair call, it’s a very old game with essentially no graphics, but to understand the genre properly everyone needs to give it a go at least once in my opinion.
Side note; love me the whole Mystery Dungeon franchise. I still need to pick up the Shiren the Wanderer series.
I love the term. For me it’s not just a shooter in an older style but also a shooter that goes BOOM. Much better than boring cover shooters.
Oh, they’re definitely better, no question. But by that definition, wouldn’t that make them Boom Shooters?
Na, because the newer shooters still go boom. But boomer shooters are just boomer. And everybody’s waiting for the coming of the boomest shooter.
I kind of enjoy this take lol
We’ve already seen the boomest shooter. Our savior hath already come and gone and left us behind to witness his passing. His name was Ultrakill.
I would love to see that take place, so sign me up for the Church of the Boomest Shooter. My only real concern is where do we go from boomest?
Boomestest, obviously.
Helldivers 2 wins. You get to drop orbital strikes, launch ICBM nukes, call in cluster munitions, etc.
That’s the neat part, we don’t. Can’t have the messiah coming for real. Otherwise you get splinter religions.
Now I feel like playing Messiah.
Oh come on. It’s funny. Boomer is more of a state of mind descriptor at this point. Don’t be such a boomer bro.
Get off my lawn and leave me to my prune juice.
I never even considered that the name referred to baby boomers I thought it just meant they went “boom”
I call them id-style shooters myself, but there is a bit of word play I like in the term ‘boomer shooter’. On top of referencing the age of the audience when they first arrived (albeit incorrectly), it is also a reference to the fact that the optimal strategy for these games is simply to blow things the fuck up. There is very little tactical play beyond what weapons to use for a given situation, and these games really love their explosive barrels and rocket launchers.
Guys, IT ISN’T A REFERENCE TO THE BOOMER GENERATION. It’s boomer as in shotgun-go-BOOM.
This is worse tho. You can’t just erase the bfg like this
Boomer cope
Worth noting that the boomer wojak meme started as “That 30 year old boomer”. It was never about actual Baby Boomers.
This is it, notice how Google Trends[1] shows a rise in “30 year old boomer” not long before “boomer shooter” becomes more commonplace. It’s just the whole applying “boomer” to things like being stuck in their ways or boomer-like behavior, rather than age, that took off a few years back.
[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=boomer shooter,30 year old boomer&hl=en
Ok.
Who says boomer shooter?
It feels like everybody, here are just a few examples. And if that doesn’t cut it for you, Steam has a whole-ass tag for boomer shooters.
Man, this is the first time I’ve heard that term. But then, I don’t play anything in this genre anymore, so maybe it’s just by virtue of the fact that I’m out of that space almost entirely.
There’s been a big revival of that genre over the last 10 years or so and I think Boomer Shooter was adopted as a way to differentiate it from your standard FPS. Turbo Overkill is very different from Borderlands which is very different from COD. You’ll need a way to communicate that difference if you want fans to buy your game.
That’s cool. Always neat to see things come back but with the modern understanding of game theory.
I mean it became a tag on steam it’s so common. “Retro-style FPS” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily. Boomer = Baby Boomer generation (or close to it) where the engineers making the things; so while it’s not entirely accurate of the dev demographic of the day, “the things people who are now old used to make” is the meaning. Boomer is also like “boom” because there big loud guns, big loud sfx, ridiculous explosions, etc.
Why does this have to be a point of contention? No fun allowed? What is this, Nintendo?
As for why it might be a point of contention with many millennials.
My best guess is we’ve spent years being accused of doing things by boomers who didn’t know that Gen Z was a thing and now it feels like we are being lumped in with Boomers because Gen Z can’t be bothered to learn that more than one generation camr before them.
For Gen X it may just be that they constantly feel forgotten and want to be known.
We were calling them Doom-likes before FPS became a thing, maybe it’s time to bring it back as a sub category.
Doom clones!
Appending “-like” to any genre is so unoriginal and uninteresting.
It isn’t intended to be interesting
That’s abundantly clear.
The burn you think you are deploying, to a casual categorical label and those who use it, is not very effective.
It’s an observation, not a “burn”.
If you observed it to be abundantly clear you wouldn’t have made your original comment.
Speak for yourself. I comment on obvious things all the time.
Not a bad idea, but like which DOOM?
I ask that sarcastically, but 90’s DOOM, 00’s DOOM, and 10-20s DOOM all play very differently lol
Any of them would be more accurate than Boomer shooter.
Boomer Shooter = Shooter that goes boom
Okay, then riddle me this: which shooter DOESN’T go boom?
Fortnite
Splatoon?
That’s a good one. True enough, Splatoon doesn’t go boom, it goes splat.
