Humble Bundle had a Boomer Shooter Bundle, and games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun proudly wear the label by choice. Maybe it's time to give in and accept the '90s-style retr
Q&A
Find all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights:
— What do we want from Fallout 5?
— What’s your favorite PC Gamer magazine cover?
— How many save files do you keep per game?
Humble Bundle had a Boomer Shooter Bundle (opens in new tab), and games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (opens in new tab) proudly wear the label by choice. Maybe it’s time to give in and accept the ’90s-style retro FPS subgenre is going to be stuck with a silly label because it sounds funny. (And it does sound funny, no argument here.) Or maybe it’s time to get prescriptive. At the risk of resembling the kind of person who argues run-based permadeath games aren’t roguelikes unless they’re full ASCII, here’s a chance to make your case for an alternative.
What should boomer shooters be called?
Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.
Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Sure, Boomer Shooters, why not? No, it is not a great name, I will grant you that. But do you know what else is not great: basically every genre name that has ever stuck around. We have a subgenre of RPGs, CRPGs, where the C stands for computer. It excludes a whole bunch of RPGs that are also on a computer.
And massively multiplayer online game may have made sense back when the internet was new and this was all very exciting, but the implied sense of wonder just feels quaint nowadays. As for MOBAs, where do you even start? Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas? That’s just all PvP games. Sorry, Quake is a MOBA now. I don’t make the rules.
So yeah, whatever, we collectively gave a genre a silly name. But maybe that’s better than pretending there’s any actual logic to this.
(Image credit: id Software)
Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: What’s next, Gen Z RPGs? Millennial MMOs?
I know we all enjoy a good rhyme, but «boomer shooter» misinterprets history and creates confusion about who actually played these games. As someone who spends most of each day thinking about how to describe games with words, you can imagine how this gets under my skin. My dad is an actual baby boomer, someone born between the end of WWII and 1964. If you were 32 or younger when Doom released in 1993, you’re not a boomer. It’s that simple. I’ll gladly call them retro shooters, ’90s FPSes, or anything else that isn’t mildly ageist.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: In the same way millennial became shorthand for ‘young avocado fans’, boomer has become a catch-all term for ‘shit that’s old’. Conveniently this means we’ll be able to keep using it even once the actual boomers are all dead. It’s a practical evolution. With that in mind, it seems fair to call these things boomer shooters. It’s also fun to say, and a pun to boot, which puts it leagues ahead of nearly every other genre.
