one thing i think about a bit with media analysis and cynicism is that you can go way too far with seeing everything as cultural trends and end up missing the actual point of a thing. it can be very easy to take a marketing preview or a vertical slice as indication of a piece falling into a specific trend as a whole.

it's probably important to recognize that marketing is specifically crafted to fit into cultural trends, so if your only exposure to something is via the marketing you may be missing a large part of the picture.

this is honestly a big part of why marketing sucks. marketing is often not actually indicative of the piece itself, despite what marketers might tell you about the ideological purpose of marketing.

this is also what makes multimedia universe projects like Marvel vapid and uninteresting. if you sublimate the need for cultural trend into the textual piece itself, you end up destroying the ability of the piece to stand upon its own merits

i am, specifically, on a kick thinking about how Fall Guys is a much better game than Fortnite, despite also containing absurd cross-media tie-ins.

it specifically works well in Fall Guys case because it's a work with strong internal consistency, where the tie-ins are specifically aesthetic goofs overtly and textually described as costuming

whereas Fortnite has been legally described as a content delivery platform (and I cannot emphasize enough how frightening that is) which uses media tie-ins as cultural trend points. it suffers the same issues as Marvel by ruining its internallity with marketing.

the point of tie-ins in Fortnite is to stay culturally relevant and be trendy.

the point of tie-ins in Fall Guys is to provide fun goofy ways to dress up like on Halloween.