If it helps, this is the first time I hear it ๐คทโโ๏ธ
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Boomer basically means 20+ years old nowadays as far as I can tell. Or older than zoomers.
I think they're called that because they postdate the "looter shooter" that combined Diablo-esque "action RPGs" with FPS games, like Borderlands and Destiny. "Looter" without the "shooter" is a much better name for Diablo's genre anyway, since we have far too many RPGs that are also action games and have nothing in common with Diablo.
I'm still waiting for the resurgence of the style of shooter that came just after those that inspired this wave of boomer shooter; the likes of Half-Life, Halo, 007, TimeSplitters, and so on. I don't know what subgenre will be assigned to those games when they start to come back around, but that style is also old at this point, so hopefully it doesn't also get assigned the label of "boomer shooter", because then it'll be harder for both audiences to find what they're looking for.
Back in my day, we used to call them shooters..
But we had to fight uphill, both ways...
Sorry it bugs you, but it's far better than the entirely uninteresting/unoriginal "Doom-like". I get it's standard practice at this point, but I'm happy whenever we get an actually interesting, poignant name.
So do I. But it is a term from Gen Z to piss off Gen X.
Face value no one wants to be associated with the generation that destroyed the economy.
When games like Duke Nukem 3D or Quake were out, Boomers were what? 30 to 50 years old? Iโm sure some of them played FPS games, but there is no way they were the majority.
Think about it this way, it's not that the majority of people playing those games are boomers, but the majority of games that boomers play are those games.
Also, this has caused me to look up the formal definition of Gen X vs Boomer, and I did not realize that everyone born after 1964 is considered Gen X. In my head Gen X went from ~1975-1990, everyone before that being a boomer, so assuming other people have the same conception of boomer in their head, then the majority of people able to afford gaming PCs in the mid 90s would be boomers....
They also do just go boom and have stuff like the BFG ...
There's a video on this, but that's just the name that stuck. Its not derogatory at this point, just a way to differentiate a good shooter from a game like CoD
TIL the term Boomer Shooter exists.
Maybe it works if read as "games made by boomers?" ... Yeah I have no idea how old anyone was/is. Time and I don't really get along ๐คท
Also, going along with a thing I've been seeing in these comments, I'm idly curious as to whether anyone who isn't a Boomer cares about use/misuse/abuse of the term "Boomer" ๐ค
From what I've seen, Boomer Shooters were actually often developed by Gen Xers (and played by Millennials), and both of them despise being lumped with the boomers - hence why they dislike the term :p
I guess that makes sense. I'd be upset if critters kept associating me with boomers ๐ผ I don't play those so I guess I just haven't been around the term enough to get a feel for it.
Gen-X: Whatever.
*continues to slay in Warhammer 40K: Boltgun*