Boomers were young in the 60s and 70s, Half-Life is not even a part of Gen X gaming... is the title engagement bait?
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
82 points (91.0% liked)
PC Gaming
12931 readers
782 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"Boomer shooter" is a genre of video game. As far as I know, the term is unrelated to "Baby boomer," the name of the generation.
Edit: Okay apparently it is related. Some debate exists over the etymology. I imagined it was from "boomstick" (a gun), but some people are are claiming it's from the dusk development team and a reference to a meme I'd never heard of about calling people boomers who aren't, or maybe it's from earlier and nobody can trace the etymology at all.
Boomer is just old slang for person who is older than the speaker or someone who is out of touch
I've never heard boomer used this way
"ok boomer"
Right -- but this is in reference to baby boomers. It's used to indicate the person is going to die in a couple decades and so their opinion doesn't matter. If it's used on someone other than a boomer it's probably an exaggeration or intentional misidentification meant to make the phrase even more provocative.
Hate to have to overexplain, but yeah, ok boomer is absolutely derived from baby boomer.
I hear you, but as you just said it can be adapted to be used as an exaggeration, generally to indicate the person is out of touch in opinion.
A similar pattern with our speech is how terms for mental disability (eg idiot or some of the modern terms recently deemed a bit more hateful) were adapted in our language to become insults.
The main difference is that I just don't see young people referring to each other as boomers very often. but i could be out of touch.
When I was in highschool a couple years ago that is how we used it. Its not a popular term anymore though. I hear some people using it self deprecatingly though
OK boomer
This meant something specific. It wasn't just "you are old and out of touch."
Sure, it meant "you are saying something old and out of touch" to actual young people, before the olds (millennials) heard it.
'Baby boomer' and then in 2024 the sequel: 'Baby Boomer 2: 35 Years Too Soon' coined this genre. Thank you kimulator, I wanna have sex with your dead grandmother 👍
Kimulator?
No, that's just what kids have taken to calling a very specific genre of shooter. Nevermind that everything that makes a Boomer Shooter such actually came from Millenials pop culture. 🤦♂️
The games in the genre like Doom came out in the '90s, but it wasn't just young people playing it, more like uncles generation, I suppose that's why they were still boomers. I feel the audience got younger (taking the millenial generation) when Quake really focused on the multiplayer scene beyond some Mac and Linux modding and LAN parties. That was Quake 3 I think ? The one on Dreamcast. e: and obviously also the Counter-Strike era that came just after. Boomer shooters are the ones before that.
The idea of my baby boomer father playing any shooter on planet earth is so absurd, I've decided this name is purely for trolling purposes, and I stop reading at any mention of it.
My baby boomer father only plays RTS, and he is still plays the original DOTA to this day.
Duke Nukem makes sense. Half-Life does not. Half-Life stars a nerdy scientist who just wants to live, and the game is carried by its story.
I think the title is just alluding to the genre change provided by the mod and referencing how the game has a lot of explosions.
No video game newer than Pong makes any sense with the word Boomer in front.
Because the younger boomers who were in their 30s to 40s between the 90s and early 00s weren't allowed to play video games? It's not the game that's born in the boomer generation, it's the audience it's popular with.
Yeah I'm an older millennial and HL came out when I was in high school.
Pong, reimagined as a boomer shooter!
I am not going to get into the discussion around the "boomer shooter" name, but surely HL1 would be considered part of the Gen X experience.
The youngest millennials were in their early teens in 1998. The last members of Gen X were finishing up secondary school in 1998.
I say this as a relatively early to mid generation millennial born in the late 80s.
The whole generational cohort approach can be very limiting. IMO late cohort Gen X and early-mid cohort Millenials have a lot in common.
Only the slowest of the last of gen xers were still in school in 1998 :P
Gen X got the console wars, the best arcade years, golden era of DOS games. Late 90s and 00s are millennials territory.
Born in 78/79/80 life.
"Boomerier," surely
Jesus, it's like anyone older than a gen Z is a boomer now
The term boomer shooter has been around for a couple decades to designate shooters from the '90s like Doom, it's not a "now" thing. The genre has stayed popular and a shooter doesn't need to be from the '90s to be a boomer shooter, either.
As a Gen X who Doom'd after hours on the work LAN I ran, i am constantly offeded at being called a Boomer :)
I dont know a Boomer who plays more then Solitaire.
I am showing my age here, but it seems that boomer in context of slang means old person if you are in your 20s or earlier.
It's been "anyone older than me that I don't like" for a lot of the perpetually online, for a while now.
I've actually never liked the centered weapons. Left or right, depending on your dominant hand, has always felt better.
Can we get a mod where we all just chill out. Like an animal crossing style where we all just hang out.
I would love a management/tycoon game where you build out black mesa and have to take care of your scientists and guards.
I'm sure someone can reskin fallout shelter to look like half life lol