Pop culture fans from six continents tuned into Dragon Con Goes Virtual, the totally online science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention, leading convention organizers to declare the sprawling online convention a total success.
· Content from the five-day convention (Sept. 3 – 7) was accessed more than 600,000 times by fans around the universe.
· More than 650 hours of live and pre-recorded programming was offered to fan across multiple platforms, including Vimeo, Roku, Eventeny, YouTube, Facebook Live and the Dragon Con website.
· Fans from 49 different nations – from Canada to New Zealand, from Argentina to Japan – joined the fun at some point during the convention.
· More than 40,000 conversations were held over the dedicated Discord server, in chat rooms dedicated to specific genres to the wide-open voice chats held in “bars” and “lobbies”.
· Vendors and artists in comics, pop art, and fine art sold more than $200,000 in merchandise over the first four days of the convention.
· Over 1,400 unique gamers participated in events including Dungeons & Dragons and other roll-playing games, video games, Werewolf and other social deception games, and interactive Jackbox games.
The annual five-day gathering of pop culture madness was offered free to fans worldwide.
“The response of our fans to Dragon Con Goes Virtual has been out-of-this world,” said Dragon Con co-chair Rachel Reeves. “We knew there was a real hunger for the chance to come together as a community, a place where everybody is not only welcome, but celebrated, and just take a break from the real-world events happening around us.
“We are especially grateful to the small army of passionate and insanely creative Dragon Con volunteers who developed the programming, put it into the ether, and fueled the entire weekend.”
For the first time in 34 years, the live, in-person Dragon Con that has become a fixture of downtown Atlanta each Labor Day Weekend was not held, a decision made in response to the ongoing pandemic facing the United States and the world.
Instead, organizers planned a totally online convention, with original celebrity panels, classic programming, 24-hour gaming, virtual vendor halls, plus 100 hours of classic programming and surprising new features. Convention staples including costume competitions, Art Show, Comics and Pop Artist Alley, and the world-famous Dragon Con Parade.
The convention’s long history of broadcasting the live convention to closed circuit hotel channels, and more recently a subscription streaming platform, gave the convention organizers the critical experience and infrastructure necessary to produce this event.
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