Blizzcon 2015 has started, a celebration of all things Blizzard related, including games and a movie. The opening ceremony was broadcast free to watch, although you wouldn’t have got caught up in the atmosphere like those in the Anaheim Convention Centre if you watched it via a stream. This means that many people who haven’t even got a virtual ticket have been able to view part of Blizzcon.
Blizzcon gives fans the chance to meet developers, artists, voice actors, view cinematics, engage in sports, cosplay and apparently there’s a tavern there too. Linkin Park will be making an appearance too, so it’s a costly affair to put together and I can’t think of a virtual world conference that would even scratch the costs of Blizzcon. However that doesn’t mean that virtual worlds can’t pick up some tips from Blizzcon.
The first point to note came to me whilst I was watching the opening ceremony via a Twitch stream. As noted earlier, the opening ceremony was a free to view affair, so it wasn’t a dodgy stream. As we all know, when it comes to Second Life, Twitch are the bad guys. However Twitch does have a rival in the shape and form of YouTube Gaming. Second Life has an auto generated channel there, but there’s also an official Linden Lab channel too, although I’m yet to see any live streaming from that quarter, but there is potential.
So why would you want to stream a virtual world conference via an external service? Well for a start, as much as we love being in the virtual world, watching a virtual world conference via a stream is likely to be more comfortable and less crashtastic than trying to cam in from a neighbouring region because the region where the conference is taking place is full. This should also leave room for me in said conference region to take photos as part of my role as the seeker of truth and justice!
Alternatively a live stream could be viewable on YouTube Gaming and also in other regions via media on a prim type solutions, so regions could share the load but have more people inworld watching the event.
Secondly, people may stumble across a stream, wonder what it is, take a look, decide they like the look of it and come and have a closer look.
As I said earlier, Blizzcon costs an arm and a leg to put on, virtual worlds don’t yet have that sort of engagement to create an event on the scale, but the long term aim is that they will. Virtual world conferences may be a bit more academic, a tad more technical but the aim is for large scale engagement and that means looking at the way those who already have large scale engagement sell their wares. Blizzcon sells its wares well.
In terms of music of course, the virtual world experience is a tad more challenging. Whereas Linkin Park can legally stream their tracks, in virtual worlds, that’s not always the case, so that’s something virtual worlds will need to grow into and accept as part and parcel of the medium becoming more widely embraced.
Of course one of the most attention grabbing parts of Blizzcon’s opening ceremony was the first official real trailer of Warcraft The Movie. Prior to this they had released a trailer for the trailer …. As I go to press with this post the trailer has had a whopping 17 views. Wait wait wait, that’s YouTube’s stats not quite being able to cope with the load, the Trailer which was published just over an hour ago has 29,652 likes and 840 whose favourite race isn’t in the movie giving it the thumbs down. That’s impressive user engagement, but it’s the sort of user engagement virtual worlds should be aiming for in the long term.