Bird Game 3 – Online Trend or Marketing Genius?

I keep seeing reels related to Bird Game 3 (here's a compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSu1OuTQBfM).

Bird Game 3 is depicted as this old game (~2009 iirc) which used to have lots of players, and cool, engaging multiplayer mechanics, giving you this sense of "second-hand nostalgia". Some reels even claim that the servers have been closed. I rarely play games (maybe once a year), but the reels indeed convinced me to at least look into the game, especially since it is so popular.

However, it turns out Bird Game 3 never existed, and all the videos are AI-generated. There are 3 possibilities: 1. This is just a trend, and people simply keep it going for fun 2. This is a genius market validation/marketing scheme for a game that's about to drop soon 3. All of the above

Curious about your opinions. It might be that this approach is already popular, but I was not aware of it.