Ionic Wrath is the latest addition to my long and fun series of baby boomer shooters that I recently ticked off. The two of us were bound to cross paths – me, a 36-year-old side hustler chattering for gaming sites in the ’90s; Ion Fury, a simple hallway shooter running on Duke Nukem 3D’s old game engine. I play, I laugh, and I roll bomb sprites on little robot heads on robot spider legs. Then I started thinking.
Anyway, why do we call them “boomer shooters”? They explicitly recall the past, sure, but when id Software and 3D Realms put out the first wave of 3D shooters, did you really have to enjoy games like Dusk, Graven or Amid Evil on a zero basis? Given that any “baby boomer” is demeaning, however affectionate, do these titles really deserve such a light, novel status?
You can hear me saying “no” to myself when you read those rhetorical/non-rhetorical questions, but I’ll say it. I remember 96 dollars when Fredos was 10p or something. Perhaps the more interesting question is why developers, publishers, and reviewers all use the term. I think it has something to do with long tail economics.
In the days of Doom, Quake, and others, there was a cultural monomedia. We all read the same magazines, watch the same few TV channels, and the few radio stations available. If a product is mentioned in a single medium, we’ve all heard it. Knowing the vast audience it broadcasts to, it’s not often that a single medium wanders into the weeds and tells us something about a niche.
Let’s use this metaphor to keep the brand alive and consider Nirvana’s unlikely superstar status in the early ’90s. Smells Like Teen Spirit is the groundbreaking moment, gathering buzz from broadcast requests and tons of MTV airtime that puts three sociopathic Washington out of place for global audiences. This meant that the band was invited to a plethora of interviews, where they mentioned The Meat Puppets and Melvins, wore Daniel Johnston T-shirts, wrote “FUHGAWZ” (an intentional misspelling of Fugazi) on their shoes, and introduced the kids to a Series Underground Bands they’ve never heard of. MTV would never take the initiative to recommend Daniel Johnston to you—too niche, thank you so much—but thanks to bigger shows that put them in the spotlight, the outsider artist has met a single-media audience.
Then there is the Internet, the diversity of voices, channels, opinions and services. Products no longer need to gain mainstream exposure to find their people because we now know how to find them. Music genres that used to feel incredibly vague (do the “grunge” acts Nirvana and Alice in Chains sound alike?) are now ridiculously specific. Crab core. smallest house. Simpson waves. After this happened, 27 people on the Internet who wanted to listen to this incredibly specific musical movement could easily find the entire culture. It can all be put on a subreddit or a Spotify playlist.
The same goes for games. Do you want to market your new game as a “retro-style 3D shooter with classic id-style level design and frenetic gunplay” and hope for the best in an age where only 30 games are released on Steam a day, or Would you like to? Calling it a “Boomer Shooter” as others inevitably do?
Doing so will make your game appear in Upcoming Games videos that focus only on content creators in that genre. It was mentioned in a small but dedicated subreddit of the genre. Simply simplify what your product is and you can be sure it finds its audience. As a result, developers tend to use derogatory genre labels, such as walking sims, boomer shooters, and more problematic descriptions like Eurojank.
But that doesn’t lessen the feeling when I see the term “boomer shooter” and imagine my partner’s dad wearing a “Caution: Heavy Drinker” t-shirt, with a pint in each hand, at Thorganby Oktoberfest twist up. That’s not fair to games like Dusk, Ion Fury, Graven, Prodeus, and Bolter.
Because whether you sniff at Facebook, brag about knowing what a floppy disk is, and argue with GPS or other baby boomer holdovers, the truth is that our media is now mature and legendary enough to evoke a certain style of The nostalgic feel of 3D graphics is something to celebrate. We are in a similar position to film, which uses stylistic elements to look back on itself, as the artist did in 2011. Or in the music industry, recording to tape and deliberately making the drums sound a little bad is a valid creative option to evoke the ’70s in the name. Right, tame the impala?
It may not seem that way, but the reappearance of sprites shooting at us with angry cups shows that we’ve deepened the orderliness of our gaming culture. It might be the fake 90s now. It looks like a basic effect, in a way that we feel is pretty, rather than using a visual language that goes straight back to the very beginning of the game. There are now subtle shades in so-called “retro”. As a creator, you don’t have to limit yourself to 2D planes and 8-bit visuals to let people know you’re conjuring a moment in history right now.
Games like this have another benefit – they’re really, really, really fun. Thank you, I know – it’s insightful criticism like this that gets me the job. But actually, though. they are. It also reminds us a little bit about the journey shooters of the past 20 years or so.
When I got into the gaming industry, shooters were Hollywood’s A-listers. Olympic 100m sprint final. The main event that captivates magazine covers, where you inevitably see the latest leaps in state-of-the-art graphics, best stories, and wildest voices. During the few years there, every new major FPS release was declared a new “best game ever.”
But for shooters, things get complicated. Half-Life tells a true story in real time, with no cutscenes. Deus Ex looks like a shooter, but has various RPG elements and non-linear level design. Over time, making a new “best game ever” became a more expensive project, and as we entered the 2000s, many shooters tried to tell a story and forgot to make the shooting better. Or ditch the narrative altogether and make a multiplayer shooter. By the 2010s, no one could really compete with CoD, even if that wasn’t great in itself. The shooter became too clunky, full of expectations and budgets, with development teams working across five studios around the world trying to be everything at once.
So how does Dusk manage to surpass a game like this without five talented developer studios, multiplayer modes, co-op zombies, loot boxes or movie stars at the VO booth? Experience by cutting back until there’s not an ounce of fat left. Boomer shooters are diminished in effect, and yes, they encourage us to laugh at what we considered “badass” or spectacular in 1996, and that’s definitely part of their fun. But their intact elements often have diamond strength.
They remind us of clever level design, good weapon feedback, and the magical alchemy of art assets that create atmosphere and sound design… well, that’s enough. This is the type we’ve been looking for. All the other stuff was added over time and they were basically a big misunderstanding. Creators add them because they can, because rapid advances in technology allow it, but we’re just excited about new bits because they’re new. Not because they make shooters a better game.
Really, really, it doesn’t take someone old enough to find themselves transformed into oblivion NPCs in public freak videos to recognize this. Boomer shooters are suitable for young gamers as well as nostalgic players. Because they’re really just no-fat shooters.
