Fellow cohoster, jessfromonline, had spoken about how Atomic Heart lost a demographic of trans girls and it kinda got me thinking about how quickly that game left the sphere, it feels like. Then it kinda got me thinking about other games as well.

At the time I originally wrote about this on cohost (March 13th, 2023, to be precise), Atomic Hearts had been out for about three weeks. In that timeframe up to it I had seen a lot of content, from stuff talking about the hot communism robots to the problems with the game.

Aside from brief activity on the gaming subreddits I follow, Jess' post is literally the only thing I've seen about the game since then, for real. I don't use twitter anymore so that might skew the view for me a little, but, it certainly feels odd to say the least.

As an update on the above portion: Not only have I never seen anything spoken about Atomic Heart, I think everyone straight up forgot it existed. Like, actually. Hogwarts Legacy (as detailed below) got mentioned more than it, and that was mockingly!

On the plus side, this means I can totally make my own hot communism robots for my writings. With blackjack. and hookers.

Hogwarts Legacy meanwhile, released earlier than that. It had longer activity going on but I only see it in small spurts now. The only mentions I've seen of Hogwarts Legacy since its release at the beginning of 2023 to the end of 2023 is people dunking on it for failing to get nominated at The Game Awards 2023. So, that's the extent of how much of a mark that left on society.

Literally the only thing I see people still bring up consistently and constantly is Elden Ring, and it's been almost a year now. And it just got an announcement for DLC and I'm sure people will start blowing up with that again.
And of course as an addenum: Baldur's Gate 3 is joining Elden Ring in being consistently talked about.

So if there's anything to take away from this: There's a difference between thinking something will stick in the mainstream, and actually witnessing that happen. If you lose the audience, both intentionally sought-after and unintentional, it's game over for you.
You'll end up either as a game with the only claim to fame being having hot communism robots that didn't even win over the girls who want their faces to be crushed by hot authoritarian robot ass, or just being a mid game that people saddled up all their bets on as being memorable.