Games

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”