The Economics of Obsession

Okay, so if Secret Invasion is happening in Phase 5 after Quantumania and they've renamed House of Harkness to Coven of Chaos, then that means that by the time we get to the Fantastic Four reboot in Phase 6, Agatha might already be babysitting Franklin like an FF94 from the '70s, readying him to take out Mephisto before we ever get to see him on screen. Boom! Oh, uh hey everyone. Sorry, I was in the middle of some fan theory crafting of the MCU. You know, come to think of it though, the 1986 Howard the Duck film could actually be the key to all of this. If Kang Wait. Oh, I'm sorry. Does it look like I'm not focused? I am focused, Zoe. Oh, maybe a little too focused, actually. You know, maybe we should talk about that. This episode is brought to you by the incredible value proposition that is the Curiosity Stream Nebula bundle, now actually at the lowest price I've ever seen it for the holidays. But, more on all of that awesomeness after the episode. In modern media, we've built a sort of desire to obsess into our entertainment.

And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with being really into something like a game, fictional world, or fandom, believe me, I am speaking from very personal experience here, it's also exactly what the companies behind some of those things want most in the world. So, today, we're going to talk about the history of how companies have got us to compulsively fixate on their products in hopes that actively thinking about what we obsess over can help us make sure that they're actually the things we want to be spending our time on. So, let's start with a question. Is there a franchise that you spend an average of an hour or more a day playing, watching, engaging with on wikis, Reddit, with friends, etc., or just generally thinking about? I definitely have one or two. Now, that may not seem like much, but when you do the math, that's roughly 1/16 of your waking life. Now, there are a lot of places that you can trace this desire to obsess behavior back to. Heck, for years in advertising alone, companies spend millions of dollars just to get us to think about them for 10 minutes or have them be worked into our daily routines. But, on the media side of things, this really started to ping the corporate radar with none other than

Star Trek and Star Wars. When these two franchises first came out, fans were desperate for more content. They loved these universes, and they wanted to interact with them so much more than a short TV run or a single movie could provide. So, they started to organize conventions, create their own fiction, dress up as their favorite characters, and discuss every minute detail they could because there just wasn't a lot out there. Of course, you talked to death the major plot arcs pretty quickly. So, all of the sudden, tinier things like Sulu's fencing style and why he would even need to fence in the far future became a topic of conversation. Then, it became cool within these circles to know the minutia, to be able to engage in these conversations. Of course, from there, it often became a form of gatekeeping. To prove you were a real fan, bad actors said you had to know the little details and minor sub plots. And while this sadly drove many people away from something that they might have otherwise loved, for those that stuck around, it became a strange form of promise. There is infinite depth to this franchise. You can spend forever here, and the community will reward you

for the time you put in. There's literally no end to how deep the rabbit hole goes. That is an alluring promise. And you know who took that and really ran with it? Who moved it from an accident to a stone cold sales technique? Comic book publishers. They realized that they could exploit this desire for obsession to lock someone into their ecosystem and then take advantage of that slowly, step by step, to expand the number of products a person purchased, which brings us to the crossover event. There's a ton of examples here, many that happened earlier than the one I'm going to talk about. But, for me, the first time I realized exactly what comics were trying to do was the Death of Superman. This was marketed as a major must-experience event. Heck, I think it was actually on like the news. But, crucially, it didn't just happen in Superman comics. It happened all over the DC spectrum. And this is the key step in the economics of obsession. Because by having all of your content point toward your other content, it creates a feedback loop of purchasing. After all, some parts of the

DC audience did only care about Superman, but because to get the full experience of this huge Superman story, they had to also purchase, say, a Green Lantern comic, most of us would. Then, if all goes according to plan, some portion of those Superman fans will now say, "Wow, Green Lantern's pretty cool." and start to consume that series as well. Of course, as a consumer, you have limited time and money to spend on entertainment. So, the more of that time and money you dedicate to one company's products, the less of both you have to explore new things and perhaps find something you enjoy more or that causes you to drift away from their world. And that's exactly what Disney was buying when they bought Marvel and Star Wars. It wasn't just a franchise, it was the fan base. Of course, with those franchises, at least some of that desire to obsess did grow organically. Over the last 20 years, though, the media in the background has started to train audiences to think that this is the way to engage with products to get the most out of them. And for most of us, elder millennials and later, we were targeted like this as kids, so it all feels kind of normal, like it's just the way you're

supposed to consume things. Meanwhile, in the game space, this behavior arguably started with Pokémon. Now, do not get it twisted, I love Pokémon as much as the next totally normal person who petitioned Nintendo to make a new Pokémon Snap for 15 years, but you can't deny that Pokémon is all about obsession. I mean, it's right there in the tagline. You got to CATCH THEM ALL! POKéMON! AND THEY, TOO, LEARNED TO TARGET KIDS YOUNG. The Pokémon TV show was aimed at kids under 10, and it straight-up told them that they should want to learn every Pokémon, that being cool meant knowing more about Pokémon than everyone else. It's kind of the whole theme of the show. Then, they offered those kids other avenues to engage with the product. Besides the video games about collecting, they created, very literally, a game that required collecting, the Pokémon collectible card game, and it paid dividends. Plus, many folks who watched the TV show as kids still play Pokémon to this day. And boy, did parts of the video game industry learn from this. I mean, take any lifestyle game like Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Destiny 2, or almost

any MMO or CCG. Things move so fast in games like those and evolve at such a rate that if you happen to get off the train, you are definitely going to fall behind. So, when you're not playing them, you are often encouraged to be watching them or reading news about them or talking to your friends about them, so you're never not in the know and continue to be in that ecosystem. Now, I know from personal experience that it probably wasn't the healthiest thing for me to have a game try to get me to spend all of my free time on it. Watching esports and streamers, reading patch notes, digging through the lore posts, or pouring over every secret video when I'm actually not playing it. But, you know what it is good for? Retention, which directly correlates to profits. So, companies have tried to train us to do this and not even think about the fact that we are. Though, on that note, it is very important that we do push companies to stop targeting kids with this stuff because they're especially susceptible to this. I know I was. There's a lot about the way that young brains work that just want to glom onto things and obsess about them. So, we should be more critical of those who choose to exploit that for profit. All

of this isn't to say that the concept of obsessing is bad. There's a deeply human desire to find things to really deep dive into, to make it your own world, and there are so many good things that have come from that. I've just found that for me personally, it's important from time to time to take a step back to reevaluate and consciously choose my obsessions rather than be guided into them by some corporate marketing plan. And because I needed to remind myself, I thought it would be good to remind any of you out there that this might be helpful for. What do you all think? Have you found yourself so wrapped up in one game or franchise that you don't have time for anything else? Have you gotten suckered into watching things or playing things just to keep up with a franchise or pop culture? Or, do you have any best practices that work for you when determining what media to spend your time on? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and I promise not to obsess about them, you know, too much. You do not want to get lost in that comment section narrative voice Matt. That way leads to ruin. Not to mention we got the first two extra history episodes on the path to Pearl Harbor to watch. Hold on there casual Matt. I think the turkey day time off has messed

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