Destiny Community Con Case Study

Event Background

Originally designed to be a meetup of Destiny influencers in Florida, Destiny Community Con was born out of an overwhelming demand from the community to meet those who they have been interacting with online for years. Thus the vision of the original meetup was upgraded to a full blown “Con” and community members from all over the world flew out for a day of panels and festivities around their common interest, Destiny and the people who play it.

Hubtag was contracted for the livestream production of Destiny Community Con. Because of the full view we had on the execution, we are publishing this case study to highlight key factors and takeaways from the event.

Pre-Event Charity Stream

A week before Destiny Community Con was scheduled to take place, top Destiny influencers united under one channel for a week long fundraising awareness stream with the goal of raising $250,000 for St Judes.

The week was packed with Destiny content, details about the event coming up, and of course one the most impressive charity fundraising endeavors to date in the gaming community.

Raising a total of $520,000 before the event even started, Destiny Con had already doubled the largest donation ever given to St Judes. This did not go unnoticed as Forbes, CNBC, and IGN all picked the news up.

This pre-stream is a perfect example of using influencers to rally a community together around a common goal. While the event was streamed to the DCC Twitch channel, other Destiny streamers would host the stream themselves maximizing the total reach. Essentially, the entire Destiny Twitch community was in one place.

Additionally it is worth noting that Destiny is more than 2 years old now. Most games would see a significant drop off in player base and viewership in that time. Twitch, however, provides a massive “Virtual Couch” where players and members of the community can gather on a daily basis to play with friends and meet new ones. A perfect example of what an active streaming community can do for the longevity and engagement of a game.

Live From Florida

Kicking off early Saturday morning, Destiny Community Con was held in Tampa Florida. As we take a look at event day, lets start with the numbers.

Stream Stats (Courtesy of Stream Hatchet)

Every panel and performance was streamed live for those at home to still take part. With a community born on Twitch, the stream consistently had around 6000 Viewers. Without being featured on the front page of Twitch, and most of the influencers being at the event and not streaming, this is a fantastic turnout.

The stream also had excellent engagement throughout the day. While Twitch measures successful engagement if a viewer watches for more than 5 minutes, the broadcast consistently stayed at high levels for 8 hours straight. Again, this illustrates the power of community and how viewers will tune in just to be part of the conversation around the Destiny water cooler.

In Person

By the Numbers

2,399 Tickets Sold Online

1,101 Tickets Sold at Door

3,500 Capacity

1,600 Turned away from door

As was stated before, this was originally designed to be a small meetup. Even after expanding to accommodate interest, they still needed to turn 1600 people away. A stunning turnout! With the first year being a testing ground for what works, it is expected for year 2 to at least double if not triple the turnout of year 1.

Event Demographic

Physical event numbers, based on observation, showcased that Destiny Community Con was for the millennial generation (18–34) age group. Almost all panelists, volunteers and event organizers fell into this group. While there were cases of younger event participants, the event and its subsequent after-parties were designed for those over the age of 21.

While Destiny’s online player base has often encompassed the millennial generation, Destiny contains various “older” groups. Dads of Destiny and Dames of Destiny are good examples of this falling outside of the demographic. These groups also contain the die-hard Bungie fans who have been playing the companies games since its first title Marathon in the 90’s.

This created a unique atmosphere of people of multiple different demographics coming together with a common thread. It helps illustrate the diversity of experiences players have when playing the same game, whether it be for the community, gameplay, lore, etc.

Overall Impressions

Destiny Community Con 2016 focused heavily on its community leadership through Youtube and Twitch streamers. Being the ones who organized it, key members of the community were instrumental in driving the right amount of traffic and engagement for the event.

The venue contained various gaming related vendors, a laser tag section, and a Destiny game bus containing playstation consoles and characters leveled by the panelists. The true entertainment and most noteable section was the youtube/twitch panels and subsequent meet and greet sections. Both areas allowed for fans of Destiny to meet their favorite content creators and entertainers in a way that mirrored Comic Con. Autographs were signed, selfies taken, and a community that once existed purely online were able to meet each other for the first time.

Overall the attendee feedback was excellent. With a variety of content on stage, influencers to meet, and booths to engage in, the average attendee stayed for the full duration of the event. Constantly sharing their experiences on social media and online helped bring the virtual audience a step closer to the actual experience. The digital engagement of both the fans on social media and the livestream no doubt will help drive more ticket sales and a bigger venue for year 2.

Sponsor Return On Investment

Generating Return on Investment for your sponsors is also a key component to creating a scalable event in the future. Hubtag being among the sponsors, saw significant ROI on our themepack stream overlay release.

In conjunction with the event, Hubtag released a set of free overlays for broadcasters and members of the Destiny community. Designed to be used on a user’s stream regardless of what software they are using, each Themepack had over 1000 downloads each during the event. Look to the Twitch directory in the future to see them in the wild.

Additionally the Game Station and Laser Tag setups experience similar engagement levels as attendees took the opportunity to play with their friends and favorite influencers.

Year 2: Guardian Con

Building off the success of Year 1, Year 2 was announced at the conclusion of the livestream.

If you wish to learn more about Guardian Con 2017 reach out to Kevin Murray or visit Guardiancon.co

Background on Hubtag

Hubtag is an esport technology company providing resources and broadcast solutions to video gamers. Our current product is the Hubtag Caster, an OBS Production Suite that provides powerful production assets for broadcasters. In addition to our software, we also provide free overlays for video game streamers called Themepacks.