IT SHOULD BE THE PERFECT SOLUTION FOR ALL GAMERS: GAMESCOM NOW.
A streaming event that should play a very special role due to Corona. This year’s gamescom took place completely online. Instead of various presence events with lots of tam tam, this year there were online conferences on various topics. For some people the streaming version was even positive, because visiting the gamescom was rather a torture for one or the other. Usually you have to push your way through crowded and stuffy halls to find out that you should queue for a showcase for several hours while being exposed to deafening noise from all sides. This was dropped this year.
More than two million viewers from over 180 countries worldwide tuned in live to this year’s opening show: The Opening Night Live with and by Geoff Keighley.
The lockdown has led to people at home devoting more time to playing computer games. There was a significant increase in activity in the games. With increasing looseness, however, a decrease in activity is also noticeable again. The games industry is one of the few sectors of the economy that have not been affected by the Corona crisis, but have actually benefited from it. 35% of gamblers played more than usual and 28% even said that gaming helped them through the pandemic (figures come from www.game.de).
Games are one of the few media consumer goods that do not depend on the presence of the entire team in a common room for their production. Home office in game studios has long been standard practice and since developers are also consumers of various technologies, switching to chat/telephony platforms was not an obstacle.
Many game companies have shown responsibility and have joined the #PlayApartTogether initiative of the WHO to highlight the importance of staying home and keeping their distance during lockdowns. In the course of this, for example, there were numerous free game offers for the community.
The vision of gamescom 2020 was that game companies could now present their new titles online during the stream events. This should offer the advantage of being able to reach more people at the same time than at a face-to-face event with limited attendance. If the servers hold out, it would also be possible to play new games via game streaming or demos would be offered for download. From an economic point of view, this would certainly be more lucrative than an expensive trade show presence that is torn down again after a few days.
A TOTAL OF FIVE SHOW FORMATS WERE PRODUCED FOR THE GAMESCOM 2020:
gamescom: Opening Night Live
gamescom: Awesome Indies
gamescom studio
gamescom: Daily
gamescom: Best Of Show (final show)
But was gamescom 2020 successful? Online viewers leave this year’s stream event with mixed feelings. It was a cool alternative and definitely a good solution for the current Corona situation. Nevertheless, hardly any relevant developers and publishers were at the start and only minimally represented. Big companies such as Epic Games, Nintendo or Capcom only participated as viewers and not as online exhibitors. But this also meant that the online stage was free for indie and mid-sized companies like Aerosoft, who had released the ultimate flight simulator for Microsoft. They organized their own live online event where the latest products were presented.
In addition, there were many own projects, which were launched by various game and influencer companies, such as the Gamevasion – official partner of Gamescom 2020. 80 hours of live stream program were produced by the team, which consists of HandOfBlood, Trymacs, Maxim, Rewinside and Rocket Beans TV. This resulted in 86 million minutes of views and 7 million impressions. Program content included elaborate shows such as letsplays or tournament formats.
The gamescom 2020 was a complete success for such projects and companies. There were numerous new offers as well as shows from over 370 partners nationally and internationally. Even without the usual big players, there were mostly many fringe events that attracted millions of gamers from over 180 countries to the screens.
We must not forget that we are still in the middle of a pandemic and COVID-19 is breathing down our necks. For the current exceptional situation, a very good alternative option was offered, which can’t come close to the live fair feeling, but still offered a very good possibility for all gamers and technology fans to connect somehow.
How the gamescom will turn out in 2021 is still unclear. Currently the evaluations are running at full speed. We are very curious
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