this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Yeah I love the term. It’s funny, unique, and you know exactly what they’re talking about.
I always preferred the term "Arena Shooter" but it may have more specific meaning than any game that vaguely has elements popular in fps games of the 90s that I think "Boomer Shooter" is usually trying to communicate.
I mean… I wouldn’t really say Doom or Duke Nukem or whatever were arena shooters, though? Something like Quake 3 certainly is, but I feel like anything that vaguely has a map that you progress through instead of having a round of a fixed length / kill count in a smaller space doesn’t scream “arena shooter” to me.
Doom had multiplayer over lan that I would say fits in that definition. For me personally arena shooters are more about movement speed and how weapons/health are managed as power ups to be found and managed as a recourses. I don't consider multiplayer to be a requirement for the genre basically.
Doom multiplayer is kind of arena shooter, I’ll agree. Something like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament fits the term much better to me. Genres are pretty arbitrary, though.
I had to look it up because I thought it was about "making boom and shoot".
Also it's a bit weird because I don't know any boomer who played a shooter. Actually I don't think I know any boomer who played video games, others than mobile word games.
The only people I know who played shooters in the 90's were Gen X kids like me.
Anyway, I guess I'm a grumpy old man now but it's a bit annoying that "boomer" has become synonym with "old people" and "millennial" with young people, while Gen X are close to retirement and millennials are clearly no longer young.
You guys get to retire?