Valve Makes "Boomer Shooter" An Official Genre On Steam

The most Gen X move is to get overlooked, so this feels right to me.

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.

Technically, they’re all millennial shooters, because the entire genre was only invented in the 90s and mostly played by teenagers.

In fact, boomers started a whole episode of “satanic panic” about them after it turned out that the Columbine shooters loved to play DOOM.

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.

Yeah, boomer is shorthand for old person now. And these are games for old people. Because we're old now.

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

I think it's just because they're old. I've got told "ok boomer" for complaining about lines of source code longer than 80 characters.

My boomer relatives skipped over DOOM and Wolfenstein and got into Duke Nukem.

It's because they're the boomers of the shooter world.

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.

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.

Same, I guess I'm a boomer.

I thought it was called "Boomer Shooter" because it let you shoot conservative old people.

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.

https://youtu.be/qk7DlYcQ0uM?si=TeUzlBlIj53dwM93

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.

I call them arcade style games.

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 defence

If any one of them gained prominance, we could have a steam tag, but nobody will agree, so here we are

Looks like bullet hell rogue-like, though I haven't played it to know for sure. Search for those two genres together.

Reverse bullet hell

I call them Horders

survivors-like

Bullet heaven is what I’ve heard as an antithesis of bullet hell. You’re the source of the bullets.

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?

Because most are quake clones, not doom clones

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?

Yeah but “Xennial Shooter” doesn’t have the same ring to it

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.

Yes. Did you read any of the comments before you posted yours? Lol

Most boomer comment on Lemmy