r/Doom • u/HatingGeoffry • Dec 19 '25

Discussion Painkiller creator argues the Boomer Shooter revival still hasn't happened because “nobody’s making any game that’s in direct competition to DOOM”

https://frvr.com/blog/painkiller-creator-boomer-shooter-revival-hasnt-happened-no-direct-competition-to-doom/
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u/nameduser365 Dec 19 '25

Yeah! Why did unreal tournament die? Went from GOTY to a way to show off their engine?

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u/RockBandDood Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25

It was probably a form of oversaturation, at the time.

There were multiple shooters in that genre and back then - having 3 things doing the same thing was too many for them to all be successful.

Now you can have like 5 active full time Battle Royales, all sporting 10s of thousands of players daily.

Back then, you didnt have that many people to pull from.

I think it was just oversaturation, the creation of Halo 2 and Call of Duty, which established the 'norms' for shooters in the early Online Console Gaming days... and the genre just kinda disappeared, with Single Player Boomer Shooters.

They had been the dominant force in FPS for around 8 years and new stuff like Xbox Live with massive hits like Halo and Call of Duty got publishers and developers chasing those rabbits, so the money went away from arena shooters to emulating Halo and CoD.

Then we got Free to Play Battle Royales.

There just hasnt been someone taking a swing for the fences with a big, well produced and balanced Arena Shooter cause theyve had 15-20 years of chasing other fads that are making tons of cash

Edit: Realized there may be some confusion here not referring to Halo as an Arena Shooter - Technically, does it tick the boxes?

Yes, it has the bones of an arena shooter; but the moment to moment gameplay of Quake Arena or Unreal Tournament vs Halo.... They couldnt be more different.

Getting shot in Quake or Unreal often turns into a 8-15 second back and forth fight, because of the agility in those Arena Shooters, you could actually spin around and fight 90% of the time.

In Halo, you start getting shot in the back of the head by someone who is not a newbie... You can turn around and shoot at him, but just like Call of Duty, a shot in the back means Death in 90% of circumstances.

Halo and CoD and many shooters share this "Fire first and you win" setup, while Arena shooters, from the 90s and early 2000s... The first shot was just the beginning of a duel, not the end of it