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I completely agree with the generational… “faux pas” in the naming. But it SOUNDS good… boomer shooter… I’ve also heard retroFPS. I wasn’t a fan when these originally came out. I was too busy with more “complex” hoity-toity puzzlers and “deep” rpg’s… Now that I’m almost 50, I enjoy the HELL out of Boltgun. If you buy ONE game… I HIGHLY recommend it. It starts with the pedal to the metal and then hits turbo at some point (you’re too busy to notice). REALLY… give it a try.

It’s also kind of ironic to call them boomer games since they were hell bent to censor or cancel games like those or pretty much any video game in general.

The article did address this:

The internet loves roasting “boomers,” the shorthand term for the Baby Boomer generation born in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Admittedly, most boomer shooter fans are likely Gen-Xers and Millennials, but they’re still co-opting the term in a sarcastic but positive way that conveys the old-school nature of this niche genre.

It all comes down to it rolling off your tongue better.

Millennials? No way. The oldest millennials were 11 when Doom came out.

It is most definitely a Gen X game. It has all the hallmarks of mid 90s GenX culture: unapologetically rebellious, anti-establishment, edgy and violent. The developers are also all oldish GenX-ers (Adrian Carmack, John Carmack, John Romero, Dave Taylor) or young Boomers (Sandy Petersen and Tom Hall)

That’s my thought as well. The only game my boomer dad ever played on our old Windows 3.11 Acer PC was some golf game. It was my gen x future brother-in-law that introduced me to shooters like Doom and Quake.

OG doom is so awesome. It basically fathered the FPS genre and speedrunning. There’s still so much development and so much being done. Even artistically there’s a lot happening. Have you seen myhouse.wad? That’s just brilliant meta storytelling.

If you’re not going to play myhouse.wad there’s a great (albeit long) video essay on it.

John Carmack is 52. Gen X can comfortably work.

Doom is still incredible. It has it’s faults, but fantastic nonetheless. I highly recommend you try out some of the sick mods community made for it, like Heartland (it requires the Eternity Engine).

you might like xonotic

We got several. We got Toxxik, Xonotic, Diabotical and Quake Champions. The thing is, most people don’t want those games anymore. Skill ceiling is way too high, the games are fundamentally not beginner friendly, they are super punishing games that are very difficult to master. Quake didn’t even allow you to walk and strafe normally, you needed to learn to bunny hop and rocket jump to be competitive. Most people naturally don’t want it back. Those that do seem to end up sticking to Quake III and UT.

I hope that genre is the next to return. I think that people are mostly split between warfare simulators and these older shooters. On the one hand you have a heavy tactical simulation, and on the other you have a fast paced, low development overhead game that costs 25% of what the AAA warfare simulator runs. Arena shooters are in the middle, and most people that play them just jump up to warfare simulators. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it’s hard to find enough people that didn’t go one way or the other to make arena game development worth it.

Despite the fact that there was nothing to track time played in that era I am certain that I have more hours in Quake 1 than any other game, ever.

Prodeus. Fantastic game with a great dev team behind it.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin was made with the Quake engine. If you like Quake, Wrath pushes the engine to unbelievable. I’d highly recommend checking the Steam store to see if there’s a free demo to D/L. I keep going back to this one and am pretty sure you will too.

Dusk is fucking awesome, that’s where the boomer shooter revival truly began. Dusk was so good that many other devs looked at it and went “hey, we gotta make an awesome game like that as well!”. And then came Amid Evil, then Ion Fury, then Project Warlock… and the rest is history.

And now they are making successors to other classic games like Half-Life and F.E.A.R. And also retro inspired but very much original titles like Ultrakill.

I’ve heard good things about Ultrakill too.

I assume by “realism” they’re talking about setting, not that those games are simulations of what it’s like to get shot at.

I agree, those are very arcade-y, but in relative terms they do aim for realism. ARMA obviously isnt an option for people that want a fun 20 minute game and alternatives like Destiny aim for far less realism. In the range of “very realistic” to “completely absurdly impossible”, CoD and Battlefield are more to the left.

Edit: ugh, just had to think of the endless “realism” debates when battlefield V came out and people insisted women characters were breaking the “immersion”.

For sure. It’s easier and more accessible to put out titles in genres that have relatively little development overhead, while it’s also a much lower risked investment for titles with particularly unusual mechanics or gimmicks.

Competetion is also far more fierce. There are only a handful of AAA publishers and they all do the same stuff. Liveservice multiplayer looter or open world single player movie-like stuff.

An environment where games like Undertale, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Dusk, Stardew Valley and Ion Fury rein supreme encourages making a stand out game far more than an environment that is more concerned with the in game store, cinematography of cutscenes and photorealistic graphics.

Excellent observation. I mentioned that in another comment. Not only are dev costs low, but risks can be taken. An example: Blood West I’m sure you guessed with a name like that it’s a Western flavored FPS. And it is. It has more story than usual. The downside is that during the first hour of game play you will have fired all of six rounds. Also, initially your character is a marshmallow. You die a LOT! AFTER that period you start getting in to the story and have better weapons and armor starts being a thing. The game is not my favorite, however, it is a welcome break from frenetic blasting. I hope in the next incarnation they figure out a better balance at the beginning of the game.

It’s been used for a couple years now. Seems like a pretty small thing to get so worked up over.

I hear what you’re saying. Boomer doesn’t JUST mean Baby Boomer Generation. It is also used as “the old generation.” There was a meme/song that was popular for a while called “Ok Boomer…” The other thing to consider is that most of the “Boomer” shooters have grenades. They go “BOOM.” So maybe let’s not hang up on the name so much? If you don’t like it I might recommend “retroFPS.”