It's a constant battle. You can't get enough of the hobby you love, but you also can't possibly handle everything your hobby has to offer. But conversely, nothing is as annoying as wanting more from your hobby and suddenly finding you've got it all and there's nothing left. You want the perfect pace, and any deviation is infuriating. Do you have unrealistic expectations, or is there a secret to providing fans with exactly what they want, only when they're ready for it?
Well, no contest. It's unrealistic.
There's only one way to ensure that the fine folks producing the content you love work to your schedule, and personally I haven't got the money to hire everyone responsible for the games and media I love. The truth doesn't keep us from feeling frustration, though. I was still playing through the missions in the Boarding Actions compendium when the Pariah Nexus crusade was released. I was still playing Adventures in the Forgotten Realms when Kamigawa Neon Dynasty came out (and then Streets of New Capenna just 2 months later!) We seem to be at a point in entertainment media where all of these things are asserted to be true, simultaneously:
Calling someone a "geek", at least by the time I was born, was a way of saying that they were obsessive. Personally, I was called a "nerd" in school for being into the wrong things (computers, Lego, science fiction, and fantasy), and a "geek" for being interested in these things to the exclusion of everything else (people, school, sports.) In the early 2000s, the term "geek" became less an insult than a functional classification. It made sense to call us "geeks" because a significant number of us had been called "geek" as an insult over the past several years (or decades.) We were self-identifying as geeks because, probably, that's what we expected people to think about us when they got to know us.
At some point during my life, I also became aware that there was often an expectation that a "true" geek's obsession would be expressed financially. I guess it's a natural progression, because few things in life are $0, so if you're obsessed with a thing then you must also, by necessity, spend a lot of money on it. Being a geek became synonymous with being a collector. Geeks classically love to study and classify things, so a true geek must also have an inherent need to buy physical objects, and study and classify and collect them.
The reality is a little more nuanced than that, though. First of all, my interest in how the warp nacelles function doesn't benefit or rely upon owning a replica of the USS Enterprise. Secondly, even if I want a replica of the USS Enterprise, I may not have the money to get one, and besides that there's never just one any more but 18 (several for each TV series and movie iteration, plus some theoretical extras for good measure.)
For a long time, Magic the Gathering had the formula pretty close to perfect. If you were playing or collecting MTG even casually, you got new sets once a year, with 1 or 2 expansion releases during each year to keep things fresh. As an extra curricular activity, you also got MTG stories in magazines or on the website.
With each new set lasting a full year, you had a fair amount of time to fit some play time into your schedule. If you didn't manage to play with a set, you weren't cross with Magic because you had to admit that a year ought to be plenty of time for anybody who really wanted to play. With just a few expansions each year, you could also realistically set your sights on the cards you wanted to acquire, whether to satisfy an interest in a creature type or a style of spellcasting or tactics, or theme, or whatever. You didn't feel too overwhelmed financially, and you felt you could probably get the cards you wanted. If you had a good and reliable income, and you were very clever, you could even set aside money years in advance in anticipation of that one special set that you wanted in its entirety (or as close as you could get, ignoring the very rare cards.)
Things changed for Magic the Gathering, but I'll come back to that later.
A side-effect of poorly paced and over-abundant product releases has been fan disillusionment. Most fans can't possibly afford to purchase and store, much less get any use out of, the products for their "fandom" being produced. I gather that many companies are currently banking on 2 thngs:
OFf the top of my head, I would guess that this strategy probably works, except that companies continue to claim that it's literally impossible to make a profit on anything any more. Apparently pricing special booster packs of trading cards at $1,000 somehow isn't enough to cover the cost of some pretty pictures on cardboard, and record profits somehow require Christmas lay-offs.
In other words, any given company producing the entertainment we love is obviously unwilling to moderate its own production. It's up to us geeks to do it for ourselves.
In 2021, Wizards of the Coast instantiated the Universes Beyond product line. Magic the Gathering cards were released as Universes Beyond products, and featured Godzilla, characters from Warhammer 40,000, Middle-earth, the Walking Dead, Marvel superheroes, and many many other properties. The theory, to paraphrase Mark Rosewater in his Drive to work podcast, was that a surplus of options isn't a problem for the consumer, but a feature.
And he's right.
If I have no interest in seeing Avatar the Last Airbender on my Magic cards, then I don't have to buy those cards. If I have too much interest in seeing Warhammer 40,000 on my Magic cards, then I can exercise discipline and refrain from buying any of them for fear that I'd then need to buy them all. The game and products exist whether you or I buy them or not.
In a way, this is a common formula for modern companies. Produce a diverse set of options for fans, and assume that enough fans will buy a few of each to justify keeping the whole product line alive.
Paizo (publishers of the Pathfinder roleplaying game) and Games Workshop (publisher of Warhammer) have been working a similar business plan for the last few decades and, at least insofar as they're both still in business, it seems to be working well for them. And I think it often works well for fans.
Even if you're an ardent Pathfinder fan, you don't need every book because not every book applies to you. Players don't need Bestiaries, game masters don't need Advanced Player Guides. Card decks aren't required, but they're really useful accessories for quick reference. Starfinder players don't need Pathfinder rulebooks. There's plenty of lore in each book, but if you want more then there are novels set in Golarion so you can find out even more. The list goes on and on, but you never feel oppressed or offended by what Paizo offers because they've been consistent in what they make available to players over the years. There's no rush, no pressure. When you're ready for more, Paizo has more. You can get the most out of each purchase, find what you enjoy and actually use, and then buy more of that.
In this model, there's no such thing as "too much" because you have "enough" after your first purchase. Once you have the rulebook (literally a single book, aside from the game master who must also buy a Bestiary and Game Mastery Guide), you're playing the game. By playing the game, you discover more product that you can buy when you're ready for it. That's the Pathfinder formula.
When I was a teen, I loved Robocop. I loved the dystopian setting, I loved the powerful but tragic hero, and I loved his little human pals.
I wanted more.
I demanded more.
And then a terrible thing happened. Robocop 2 was released, and it was the worst thing I'd ever seen. I developed the ability, then and there, to ignore the existence of enteretainment that failed to entertain. I simply decided to pretend that Robocop 2, Robocop 3, and Robocop the remake, existed. I held on to the original Robocop and let that be my sole source of Robo happiness.
Eventually, I discovered that while Robocop was alon, it wasn't entirely unique. It was a specific kind of fiction, and there were other expressions of the same storytelling traditions. I discovered Judge Dredd and Warhammer fiction as I identified what appealed to me in the lone Robocop story I acknowledged as canon, and those properties turned out to be rich sources of entertainment all their own.
The story doesn't end there, either. Eventually I was surprised by the unexpected and seemingly irrational release of a proper Robocop video game, Robocop Rogue City and it's actually good!
The lesson here, I think, is that judicious engagement is key. Just because a company produces things it calls entertainment doesn't mean you have to buy or even acknowledge it.
Independent games are another solution to imbalanced entertainment production. It's often an interactive process because, unlike big entertainment companies, independent producers are usually unable to flood the market with material. With independent games, you aren't usually overwhelmed with material, whether you like it or not. Instead, you have to either homebrew your own supplements or diversify.
Content published with an open license is particularly adept at enabling participation. With an open license, other fans can create and distribute and sell extra content for your game or fictional universe of choice. This is one of the reasons I loved the OGL, and now love the ORC license, and all the Creative Commons licenses.
It's always painfully obvious to me when an indie property isn't openly licensed. You can almost envision the "auteur" toiling away in a desperate and failed attempt to meet demand. Compare that with openly licensed entertainment, where you have websites dedicated to selling content for shared universes.
If your favourite independent "fandom" isn't too obscure to have warranted partipation, or isn't open to collaboration, then another option is to enjoy omre and different indie entertainment. I love Stardrifter and recently I've even contributed a novella to its body of work, but I can get even more great geek entertainment by branching out. Edwin McRae is a great source of geek fiction. The more I find, the greater my selection. I'm not getting all the content I want about a unified fictional universe, but I'm getting great content at a pace I'm comfortable with, and by varying degrees I can incorporate what I want into my own imagination and my games.
The geek market explosion is theoretically a good thing. But by extension, it means you have to ignore a good portion of it so you can focus on the stuff you care about. That didn't used to be how geek entertainment worked. It used to be that you enjoyed what you got, or you just didn't get anything. We don't have that problem any more. But the responsibility is ours to find and engage with the good stuff. It's a lot of work, but it's a good gig if you can get it.
I don't know how long capitalism will continue the narrative of rising costs and record growth combined with no profit. I hope the mythos sorts itself out. I have a feeling it'll have something to do with CEO paychecks getting drastically lower, or geek media getting overturned entirely for the Next Big Thing. Whatever happens, we've got a lot of choice in no small part because of the connections geeks have forged with one another, and the long-standing vibrant culture of collaboration and iteration. Focus on that, and I think geek culture will remain in a good place no matter what.