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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.

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  • 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?

    • 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

      • Makes sense. And I have heard those terms before. I guess i just need to update my internal definition. All this time I thought boomer shooter meant "slow FPS for old folks who can't keep up in Valorant anymore". Which is a group I probably belong to myself, to be honest.

        • Oh no boomer shooter means very fast FPS, it just has old-school mechanics like health packs, a large loadout, arena-style gameplay, stuff like that. Things that were considered outdated when games like Battlefield and COD rolled around in the mid 2000s. Like you're not supposed to take cover in DOOM, but you are in Battlefield.

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