The Next Big Thing on Paper Every few years, gaming trends change, and companies do their best to predict what the next big thing is going to be. This time, at least on paper, the answer seemed clear. Extraction shooters are a subgenre and evolution of the battle royale, one of the biggest and most profitable gaming trends of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Extraction shooters sat in a marketing sweet spot of being both new and familiar, while also carrying built-in appeal for the previous trend’s audience. However, despite big budgets, industry interest, and numerous releases,...