Valve Makes "Boomer Shooter" An Official Genre On Steam
Valve Makes "Boomer Shooter" An Official Genre On Steam
bearly anyone who's a boomer is playing these games or probs has ever played them short of seeing their kids boot it up. if anything these would be gen x shooters. People don't seem to even know wtf a boomer is. boomer for gen z seems to = anyone over 40 lmao.
I had a good laugh when I noticed this tag on steam yesterday.
I think the reality is, "boomer" as a term is here to stay and a moving target: as gen x ages into 40+, they'll become boomers. One day when gen Z becomes old, they'll be called boomers. At least here, there's a fun double meaning to the term. For me, I came into the Doom franchise at Doom 2, at an age where what I played was still very much influenced by my parents and friends' parents. So yes, Gen X were the primary player base, but it's not unfair to say the boomers often paid for the game and maybe sat down to a round or two of it. And given that, it might have been one of the last games they were able to sit down and enjoy. I don't know if anyone else experienced something similar, but my dad in the last 20 years of his life or so really locked in on the 1997 MTG: Shandalar game, and despite several computer upgrades along the way was never interested in any of the newer MTG digital offerings, preferring the cards and UI and experience he was familiar with. And while similar with Doom that game was played by many Gen X and Millenials, I think those demographics mostly continued to follow the franchise through newer releases: but maybe not the boomers.
I wish this wasn’t the case. I’m im my 50s, my dad is in his 70s, we have a standing get together every week to play COD zombies. People sometimes look at me like I’m crazy when I bring it up, but we have so much fun. He’s played FPS probably more than I have. So many fathers and sons have lost their connections over the years, but as long as we can both pick up a controller, we are fucking some zombies up.
Boomer became an insult for anyone vaguely older then zoomer. Millennials are also called boomers if they are out of touch as well. Then boomer just meant old. More importantly Boomer ends with er and so is more fun to say as Boomer Shooter over GenX shooter or old shooter of classic shooter.
But this comment has big Boomer energy according to zoomers
Yeah, boomer is shorthand for old person now. And these are games for old people. Because we're old now.
I'm not sure if the name stems from the Baby Boomers or, like, "BOOM! Headshot!" Because Doom and even Wolfenstein were the games of my very millennial youth, and didn't exist for most of most Boomer's life time.
That said, my dad (who is a boomer) played the shit out of Doom and Heretic. But stopped when Quake came out and everything started centering around aiming with the mouse. He always used the mouse to move. 🤢
Well, you can't do a headshot in Doom because there's no vertical look. So it's either a reference to older people (ok boomer) or the ridiculous explode-y weapons you get and the general feeling of blasting through hordes of baddies. I'm guessing it's the older people term, since modern shooters look nothing like Doom.
True I think there was a big gap somewhere in the years between when o.g. 2.5d retro shooters like Doom, Blood, and Hexen players got used to moving with mouse look, and the people who played shooters like Quake, UT and counterstrike back in 2000-2005 where we aimed with the mouse and strafe run with the left and right keyboard buttons.
A few other hidden gems back in the day that I never got around to playing until years later after their prime time was probably Descent, System Shock and also AvP.
Those were the days alright
It's because they're the boomers of the shooter world.
It comes from a few years ago. Some team making a boomer shooter weren't sure what genre they wanted to advertise it as, since just plain "first person shooter" is saturated. One of them saw the original DOOM described on twitter as "some kinda boomer-ass shooter" and thought it was hilarious, so they went with it.
Lol I thought the genre was called boomer shooter because you have an arsenal of guns that go boom while circle strafing and holding the mouse button.
Same, I guess I'm a boomer.
I thought it was called "Boomer Shooter" because it let you shoot conservative old people.
It's a perfectly cromulent genre
What was wrong with calling them doom clones? That’s what they were called until gen z made OK boomer a meme
If you call the whole genre doom clones then that means Doom is a doom clone. Kind of like the problem with 'Souls-like' games. Also calling them clones somewhat diminishes the accomplishments and inmovations of the devs within the genre.
Because Amid Evil, Cultic, etc. aren't cloning Doom.
Doesn't sound as catchy I guess?
I love these sort of games, Painkiller is my fav
I hope you've seen the Zero Punctuation episode on Painkiller. It was the second positive review he ever gave, and caused the sales of the game to skyrocket temporarily.
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On a semi-related note: Is there a commonly agreed upon term for games like 'Vampire Survivors' yet and does it have its own tag on Steam?
So far, I've only found 'Action Roguelike', but that one has a lot of games that are, well, action based Roguelikes, like 'Binding of Isaac' and 'Risk of Rain'.
Bullet Heaven.
I've heard it called Reverse Bullet Hell
Horde something I think? Horde shooter is fps wave style games, so top down horde... Thing.
Looks like bullet hell rogue-like, though I haven't played it to know for sure. Search for those two genres together.
a commonly agreed upon term
God, I wish. No, there's like a dozen. Off the top of my head, I've heard
Survivorlike
Arena Survival
Bullet Survival
Reverse Bullet Hell
Bullet Heaven
Bullet Shooter
Survival Shooter
Autoshooter
Horde Shooter
Horders
Anti-tower defenceIf any one of them gained prominance, we could have a steam tag, but nobody will agree, so here we are
Yeah, it's kinda telling when I explicitly ask if there's a commonly used term yet and I get like a dozen of different answers.
survivors-like
Bullet heaven is what I’ve heard as an antithesis of bullet hell. You’re the source of the bullets.
Reverse bullet hell
I call them Horders
For Steam, not yet. Thy might eventually go the "Open World Survival Crafting" route and combine the popular tags to one, but for now they are Bullet Hell + Action Roguelike.
Bullet hell maybe?
Boomer shooter sounds like a game where you have both guns and grenades.
They would be better called GenX shooters. Cheesy aaaand accurate!
That's really disappointing. Boomers did not make or play doom clones.
Yeah but “Xennial Shooter” doesn’t have the same ring to it
How about "Doom-like"? That makes the most sense to me...
Why try calling it that? They've been just fine with thier category the last 30 years, why change it now?
Weird. Considering us folk born in the early 80s got lumped with millennial. I was playing all the doom and doom clones in the library in middleschool.
Yup, I'm a later 80s millennial, but I'm the youngest of four and my oldest sibling is at the top end of gen x, so I played lots of 80s and 90s games because that's what we had available (first consoles were an Atari and NES).
I played Doom as a kid and I played gzdoom as late as college with friends, it's great fun! In fact, if someone mentions "Doom" in a conversation, I think of OG Doom, not 2016 Doom.
I call anyone younger than me a "coomer" and any unnecessarily complicated rougue fps is a "coomer shooter". Does your game have a timer to purposely slow you down? Coomer game. I feel like the word "coomer" really captures the lifestyle and essence of today's unintelligent and entitled kids.