More than 2 million simultaneous viewers at gamescom 2020: Opening Night Live
- More international than ever before – Online visitors from more than 180 countries
- Around 300 million views of the TikTok Hashtag Challenges for gamescom
- 370 partners presented their games and other new products
- Over 1,000 companies participated in matchmaking activities of the devcom digital conference 2020
gamescom (August 27th to 30th) was pioneering in many respects in 2020: taking place purely digitally for the first time due to the corona pandemic, the world’s largest event revolving around computer and video games set new standards this year in terms of the concept, content, and with regard to reach. Many new shows and offerings from 370 partners and supporting events captivated millions of gamers from more than 180 countries in front of their screens. More than 2 million simultaneous spectators alone followed this year’s gamescom: Opening Night Live, the opening show with and by Geoff Keighley. The show is thus the most-watched digital event of the trade fair industry worldwide and among the top three of this year’s international event live streams of the games industry. Broad interest in gamescom was also evident in social media: two hashtag challenges by partner TikTok alone generated a total of around 300 million views by the end of gamescom 2020 on Sunday night..
Gerald Böse, President and Chief Executive Officer of Koelnmesse GmbH stated,
“With gamescom 2020, we have created a fully-fledged, global event that has brought the games industry together. We promised that we would be hard to miss during the four days – and we delivered. We are very pleased with how well the digital concept was accepted this year. At the same time, we take the community feedback very seriously, saying that celebrating, playing and sharing emotions together on site makes gamescom so very special. That’s why we’re already looking forward to being able to offer a ‘complete’ gamescom experience here in Cologne and on the Internet again.”
Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – The German Games Industry Association stated,
“A strong signal originates from gamescom and the games industry in 2020: despite the corona crisis, millions of fans worldwide were able to experience hundreds of games, long-awaited new products, entertaining shows and surprising promotions in the context of the first digital gamescom. This involved challenging preparation for all participants, and many partners had to overcome great obstacles in game development in some cases. Despite the extraordinary situation, we achieved many goals entirely in keeping with the spirit of this year’s guiding theme of ‘Playing into the future’, set new records and further developed gamescom in large steps. I am already looking forward to gamescom 2021, as the world’s largest games event, both on site and digitally.”
Strong show offering with a global reach
A total of five show formats were produced for gamescom 2020. Whether gamescom: Opening Night Live, gamescom: Awesome Indies, gamescom studio, gamescom: Daily, or gamescom: Best Of Show closing show, gaming fans found a gigantic package of world premieres, interviews, let’s plays and news here across all event days.
The gamescom: Opening Night Live presented never before shown content, which spectators around the world celebrated. More than 2 million of them simultaneously followed the opening show on Thursday evening. This was four times the number of simultaneous spectators of the strong premiere in the previous year.
The brand new format gamescom: Awesome Indies also thrilled gaming fans on Saturday evening with the most creative and exciting games from more than 30 top indie developers.
The gamescom shows were seen live by a total of 10 million fans worldwide (Unique User).
To be seen were the gamescom formats and content of the 370 partners, such as the E-sports tournaments or the many developer talks on the central content hub gamescom now, on which community-specific theme pages, as well as the programme of the gamescom congress could also be found. gamescom now was the central starting point in the multi-platform approach, which made the large amount of different content easier to find and thus contributed to the growth in reach, including for partner content. The content hub and much of the content will still be available for the community until the end of September, also including the gamescom shows as video-on-demand.
gamescom 2020 is more international than ever
From Australia and Algeria through Spain and Sierra Leone to Uzbekistan and the US – visitors from every region of the world met for gamescom 2020. They came from a total of more than 180 countries; a clear increase in comparison to the physical visitors from more than 100 countries in 2019. The top 10 countries with regard to digital visitors were as follows: Germany, USA, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Brazil, France, India, Netherlands, Austria, and Poland.
The internationality was due in particular to this year’s partners with a foreign share of around 70 percent. Many partners were even present at gamescom for the first time, taking advantage of the expanded digital offerings. Another important contribution to the international character was made by the numerous cooperations with international influencer agencies, whose creators commented on the shows in their own languages. The program could thus be followed in – among other languages – Chinese, German, English, French, Italian, Russian, and Turkish.
Positive response on all social channels
Without the coming together on site, the social media channels played an even greater role in the networking of the community in 2020. At Twitter, the #gamescom2020 hashtag trended for several days in several countries including Germany and the United States, while public viewing was offered for the first time on Discord, and the new cooperation with TikTok was also very well-received by the community: the content of the two hashtag campaigns entitled “Heart of Gaming” and “Well Played”, launched just for gamescom, was viewed around 300 million times in a period of only three weeks.
Also a broad program for the trade public online
devcom, the B2B platform for developers and their ecosystem, also took place this year completely online. As the “devcom digital conference”, the event brought together the international developer community and in this way also created a digital space for gamescom trade visitors. Participants from more than 1,000 companies met in around 3,200 online meetings. On the whole, more than 450,000 spectators followed the devcom content.
The gamescom congress also took place this year exclusively digitally for the first time. In 38 program points with a total duration of 34 hours, more than 60 speakers illuminated the innovative power of games on Friday, August 28, 2020. The many panels, workshops, and talks this year focused on “Digital Learning” and how games can enrich everyday school routine. Among the highlights of the gamescom congress were the Debatt(l)e Royale, in which the secretary generals and federal whips of the political parties CDU, SPD, FDP, Die Linke, and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen discussed various games-related themes, and a talk with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on the importance of games in foreign policy.
In 2021, gamescom will take place from Wednesday, August 25 until Sunday, August 29 in Cologne and online as a hybrid event. This enables the devcom developer conference to use both Monday and Tuesday in advance of gamescom offers gamescom fans an additional gamescom day on the weekend by including Sunday.
Related: gamescom 2020: Best of gamescom award Goes to Cyberpunk 2077
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