This story is part of our new Future of Gaming series, a three-site look at gaming’s most pioneering technologies, players, and makers.
The gaming convention has, as a form, had a damn hard couple of years. The COVID-19 lockdowns took a massive toll on a primarily in-person industry, obviously; so, too, has the rise of alternative events like Nintendo’s Direct series of online press conferences, or largely virtual industry-wide shows like Summer Games Fest or The Game Awards. (Where companies flock to roll out trailers that might once have been the highlight of a big convention showcase, supported by demos that players can have their hands on within minutes of the announcement.) The biggest potential deathknell for “traditional” cons came earlier this year, when the Entertainment Software Association announced it was canceling the 2023 (and 2024, and 2025) iterations of its Electronic Entertainment Expo, once the name in video game conventions. With E3—previously the battleground where Sony, Sega, Nintendo, and more battled desperately for the hearts and minds of a whole generation of gamers— basically moribund, we found ourselves asking: Where does the gaming convention go in 2023, and beyond? How does it weather a future where so many things now live online?
Searching for answers took us far afield—including to the halls of one of the longest-running studio-run gaming conventions in the world, Diablo creator Blizzard’s near-annual BlizzCon. Surrounded by thousands of Overwatch, Diablo, Hearthstone, and especially Warcraft fans, we spent two days wandering the halls of the Anaheim Convention Center, which had been transformed into a series of fantastical environments, filled with gothic churches, medieval taverns, and futuristic bases. (Also, people: An absolutely staggering number of people.) BlizzCon 2023 was the first in-person version of the event to be held in fully four years, after the convention went fully virtual in 2020 and 2021, and was then paused outright amidst a storm of bad publicity for the company in 2022. Sitting in its crowded opening ceremony—where fans bayed joyfully at each new gaming expansion reveal, or gave standing ovations to the company’s lead developers—we wondered: How had they pulled it off? How do you lure people back to in-person conventions after that kind of gap? What, precisely, is the the future of this kind of thing?
“Think Universal Studios,” was one thought, expressed to us by Rod Fergusson, the veteran Gears Of War developer who’s now in charge of the company’s biggest 2023 release, Diablo IV. Fergusson was telling us about his (thoroughly fulfilled) ambitions for the Diablo portion of the Con, and it wasn’t hard, after a short amount of time on the show floor, to see what he meant: Each giant room of BlizzCon was almost overwhelming in its art design, from the lurid red lights of the Diablo area (complete with massive paintings depicting scenes from the game’s lore, and an expansive tree festooned with decapitated heads running along the entire back of the hall) to the cool blues and greys of the Warcraft areas, which were filled with statues of the game’s numerous heroes. The effect, on initial look, was one of overwhelming, otherworldly grandeur. (Even if the illusion was occasionally undercut by, say, the multiple Mountain Dew-branded “Altars Of Mystic Punch” situated around the con, workers dutifully handing out plastic shot glasses of brightly colored sugar water to attendees; a reminder that no con can be so powerful as to escape the influence of its corporate partners.)
It seemed to be working, too: The throngs of people in attendance, from seemingly all demographics and walks of life, seemed suitably awed as they walked out of the California sunshine and into these impressive, distinctive spaces. More palpable, though, than the phenomenal art direction, was the social element at play: Universal Studios vibes or no, attendees were clearly feeling as much joy at the presence of each other as they were the Diablo-branded tattoo parlors or the recreations of beloved Overwatch spaces.
That’s a common element in modern con design, which puts an ever-important primacy on the human element—and in making conventions more accessible to everyone, something emphasized in our conversations with the organizers of other major conventions as we were putting together this piece. “The transition into how our audience has changed is by far the biggest leap in the past 20 years” according to Kyle Marsden-Kish, global VP of gaming for Reed Expositions, the company that puts on multiple PAX conventions every year in convention centers around the planet. Founded by the creators of the webcomic Penny Arcade in 2004, PAX has become one of the world’s largest non-studio-aligned gaming cons, and continues to thrive while older competitors (including, of course, E3, which it once operated in the shadow of) have faltered. Per Marsden-Kish, that’s come with widening its net considerably—and finding ways to bring in gamers who were already there, but who weren’t being best-served by the convention industry:
Our fan demographic has changed a lot from being primarily made of white males. It’s not that women weren’t gaming back in those days, but the con culture has gotten so much more inclusive and welcoming in a way that we, as a community, probably weren’t back in 2004 to anyone who wasn’t a straight white male. That’s something we’ve definitely tried hard to push for over the years, and we’re incredibly proud of our PAX Together program, which has evolved into an entire pillar of PAX, featuring games, panels, developers, and non-profits distributed throughout the show that was created by and for under-represented communities of gamers.
Marsden-Kish also pointed toward the in-person element, both for attendees, and developers, even in a world where trailers and demos go up online the moment they’re announced: “It’s all about engaging with the community. Being there in person to guide them through the journey you want them to have with the demo and control their experience is paramount. Having a connection in person will always be more meaningful and lasting than leaving them to their own devices.” (Multiple Blizzard employees, meanwhile, spoke to us about how they see BlizzCon as an important way for developers at multiple levels of their teams to meet with fans, and hear about the ways their games have influenced their lives.)
It’s worth noting that there are few gaming companies on the planet better suited to building this kind of social environment than Blizzard. Dating back to the first Warcraft game in 1994, the company has displayed a unique dedication to creating games built to allow for social connection—reaching its apex with World Of Warcraft, with its million-and-one stories of players finding lifelong friends, companions, and even spouses through playing the game. (It’s not for nothing that this year’s BlizzCon wrapped up with a public wedding proposal between two of the company’s fans.) Anecdotally, the Warcraft sections of BlizzCon were the most crowded by far, and the opening ceremony presentation went from “enthusiastic” to “cult-like rapturous” when long-time series writer Chris Metzen came out to lay out elaborate future plans for the MMORPG’s future.
Per the company’s head of marketing, Todd Harvey, that connective element is all by design: “Our gameplay is inherently community-based,” Harvey noted. “People build relationships. [BlizzCon] is as much about them coming together with each other, as it is access to us. This notion of ‘Everybody counts, everyone belongs, we’re one community.’ It’s very deep in the design ethos, and what it is to be part of our community and our employee base.”
Walking through BlizzCon in 2023 as an outsider could, thus, be a weirdly alien experience, as someone observing the community without being part of it.: You could clearly sense a need being served, as people stood in long lines to take a picture at one of the site’s various (and impressive!) photo op installations, or get food, or, more often than not, buy merch. (There was a lot of merch on display; the most concentrated dose was in “The Darkmoon Faire,” which, despite being an absolutely gorgeous recreation of a World Of Warcraft zone known primarily for mini-games and activities, was entirely devoted to selling pins and toys, rather than anything more interactive. We were actually a little surprised by the lack of gamification elements on display throughout the con.)
Everyone seemed to be having a good time, despite the lines. They traveled in vast, cheerful packs. They lounged, collectively, in public bean bag chairs, or in lines to get into the official BlizzCon store. Frequently, activity coalesced around particularly impressive cosplayers for picture-taking. (Shocking no-one, the cosplay game at BlizzCon is elaborate, and fantastic.) Immersed in the human elements, it’s easy to see why everyone we talked to on this topic expressed doubts at the idea of conventions like this ever fully moving into online or virtual spaces. (“It can happen, but it will never replace live human interaction and the impact that it makes,” said Marsden-Kish. Harvey, meanwhile, described Blizzard’s efforts to go virtual in 2020 and 2021 as “functional” as “a communication device,” but asserted that “You don’t have that back and forth. You don’t have that sense of celebration.”)
On a more philosophical note, meanwhile, we couldn’t help but notice the way the convention, the attendees, and the company all seemed to very deliberately blend after some time in this environment. BlizzCon is, after all, simultaneously a marketing platform and a fan convention, a world where Blizzard games are synonymous with the relationships that people have fostered by playing them—and where celebrations of those bonds thus also become celebrations of the games, and the company, that produced them. The effect, at least on the ground, was to produce a patina of rehabilitation and promotion for Blizzard, re-establishing its pre-eminence as a creator of interactive social spaces, in both the real and virtual worlds, at a time when it still powerfully needs it.
(The company’s issues remain well-documented, most recently in the form of concerns about its recent acquisition by Microsoft, but most especially the still-ongoing 2021 lawsuit from the California Department Of Fair House And Employment that accused some in the company of a pattern of “frat boy” behavior that fostered an environment tolerant of sexual harassment or other misconduct. When it announced that it wouldn’t be holding BlizzCon, virtually or otherwise, in 2022, the company stated its commitment to creating a space that “feels as safe, welcoming, and inclusive as possible,” and that’s been it, as far as we know, for public statements on that score; per our conversation with Harvey, the official line is that BlizzCon 2022 was postponed due to worries about another COVID outbreak.)
Is there something mildly dispiriting about all the inward-facing adulation on display here—or is that merely the nature of the convention beast? (This is, after all, a self-selecting audience of people for whom a $300 ticket—to say nothing of travel or hotel—to spend a weekend chilling with their guildmates is a reasonable outlay.) (We should also note here that Blizzard paid for our own attendance at the convention, providing a free ticket as well as airfare and accommodations.) There’s an argument to be made that the fans already brought the single most valuable resource in BlizzCon’s arsenal with them when they arrived: Themselves, and access to each other and that all-important social bond. (They are, after all, the one portion of the experience least able to be replicated from behind your monitor.)
None of which is meant to diminish the massive logistical or artistic feats of BlizzCon, or other conventions like it. (We don’t have official figures for this year’s ‘Con, but attendance at the 2018 edition was reportedly 40,000 people, all swarming a not-especially huge amount of space.) Even beyond the Herculean effort to get that many people moving around each other safely and comfortably, it occurs to us that there’s a deeper need that the convention fills—and it gets back to those “Universal Studios” ambition Fergusson was touting. The gigantic swords, the massive art installations, the chance to get photographed while being menaced by actors pretending to perform ritual sacrifice on you, all do serve a vital purpose. (Besides being genuinely beautiful and awe-inspiring, and also generating so much machine-made fog that the press area immediately above Diablo Land took on a perpetually hazy air just a few hours into the weekend.)
Conventions, like theme parks, are liminal spaces: Otherworldly, permissive bubbles where attendees can cut off the world and genuinely treat gaming like it’s the most important thing in their lives for a weekend. (Per PAX’s Marsden-Kish: Convention spaces are “no longer a giant booth with a logo and rows of machines to get hands-on with…they want experiences that take the fan into the world of the game.”) People are always going to need a space to escape from reality, where they have public signs of permission to let those aspects of their lives that bring them the most joy be given absolute priority. It’s always been what conventions are best at selling, that dividing line between the pain-in-the-ass real world and the pure fun of con living—and while so many aspects of what used to define a convention have moved outside their purview, that part, at least, seems totally futureproof—and only like to get better, and more immersive, as the years go on.