I hate the term "Boomer Shooter"

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.

Blackmist,

An actual boomer shooter would be like Space Invaders.

But at least it’s got a name I suppose so if you like them you can find them and differentiate them from all your online XP bar tutorial modern bullshit.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I just think of it like boom as in explosions. Boom-boom shooty-shoot; or boomer shooter if you prefer brevity.

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s marketing doublespeak dreamed up by the totally deranged and it works

You have to remember its millennials and Gen Z experiencing this genre, not boomers.

espiritu_p,
espiritu_p avatar

well, it's maybe because actual Gen Z considers everyone a boomer who is older than 30.
In that sense a "boomer shooter" is a game that everyone can manage who isn't Gen Z

DragonTypeWyvern,

Millennials are going to be in absolute shambles if they ever find out “Okay boomer” wasn’t directly targeted at boomers.

onlooker,
@onlooker@lemmy.ml avatar

It wasn’t? This is what Wikipedia says:

“OK boomer” or “okay boomer” is a catchphrase and internet meme that has been used by members of the Millennial generation and Generation Z (born between the early 1980s and the early 2010s) to dismiss or mock attitudes typically associated with baby boomers – people born in the two decades following World War II.

Who was it targeted at then?

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

It was targeted at everyone older than the younger people saying it.

It’s used as a catch all, with the intention of getting everyone riled up. Because regardless of if you’re an actual boomer or not, now you’re getting bundled together with them.

shea,

Old=boomer sorry. That’s just the way it turned out, nothing we can do about it. Raging against new slang is just gonna make us more out of touch, and intensify the feeling of being old, so I just accept it and try to keep up. Boomer is old now, not just the Baby Boomers.

onlooker,
@onlooker@lemmy.ml avatar

Raging against new slang is just gonna make us more out of touch, and intensify the feeling of being old, so I just accept it and try to keep up.

NEVER! I choose to embrace my inner geriatric and complain about kids these days and their hippy-hop music.

barsoap,

NEVER! I choose to embrace my inner geriatric and complain about kids these days and their hippy-hop music.

Can recommend, but only when you’re subverting expectations. Young student is unloading a bunch of empty beverage crates from the elevator on the ground floor, making you wait, already looking quite self-conscious of it? Bellow, loud but not shouty, “Unbelievable, the students of today”. See them flinch and cower, “oh fuck this again”. Continue, with flawless timing, “why isn’t that beer?”.

conciselyverbose,

Because it sounds cool.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

It’s so curious, I swear I heard “boomer shooter” used to refer to another type of FPS… But then again I guess the definition has changed. What term do people use nowadays for slow FPSes that are more tactical, rather than twitch-reflex reliant, like ARMA?

bermuda, (edited )

Those are tactical shooters. If it’s a simulator like ARMA then the term “milsim” (military simulator) is also used. Good example of a non-ARMA tactical shooter would be Ready or Not, Squad, Insurgency, or S.W.A.T

survivalmachine,

Boomer is a state of mind, love, and this post is a shining example of boomerism.

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/3f09db5e-e2e1-4be4-a5d9-ba7405e03be5.webp

Transporter_Room_3,
@Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website avatar

TIL the term Boomer Shooter exists.

livus,
livus avatar

Me too and before I saw which community this was, I thought it was some subtype of US mass shooter.

4am,

Because boomers programmed them originally.

Kichae,

They were actually mostly programmed by Gen Xers.

luciole,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

Yup! John Carmack is 53.

kurcatovium,

Well, this one is a bit special case. One of a generation…

520,

John Carmack was the head programmer on the team that invented the boomer shooter.

Dangdoggo,
Dangdoggo avatar

If it helps try thinking of it as a "boomer shooter" because of the proliferation of rockets and rocket physics in classic games like Unreal and Quake

BirdEnjoyer, (edited )

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. I feel the pain.

520,

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.

RiikkaTheIcePrincess,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social avatar

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 🤷

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” 🤔

SimplyTadpole, (edited )
@SimplyTadpole@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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

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