Kodiak kind of touched on what I’m about to say, but I think it’s still worth saying.
Do we “need” anything to do with Bionicle? Is there anything Bionicle provided that we’d all be much worse off without?
It’s not fair to say that the contests are providing a sort of “inessential” enjoyment without acknowledging that Bionicle itself has always been entertainment. I’m sure some people have had it impact their lives in genuinely positive ways, but it’s not like that’s through anything it was doing that these contests aren’t.
No, we don’t need the contests. But we don’t need Bionicle either. Yet here we are, talking about it nearly two decades since it began. So obviously it provided something that, though we didn’t need it, we still very much enjoyed it and were perhaps positively impacted by it. There’s no reason the canon contests provide any less valid a form of enjoyment.