When it was announced that TwitchCon 2023 was being held in Las Vegas, it felt like an odd choice.
Since TwitchCon’s start in 2015, this celebration of Amazon’s live-streaming platform has normally been held in California and Europe. It also didn’t help that over the past few years, Twitch has had a plethora of controversies centered around problematic gambling. But after spending a weekend in the air-conditioned halls of the downtown Las Vegas Convention Center surrounded by glimmering casinos, I can see that this heavily commercialized town was actually a fitting choice.
See, TwitchCon Las Vegas was a mixture of fan conventions like Comic-Con and a more traditional trade show like New York’s Advertising Week or Toy Fair. Its main objective is to get streamers to leave their curtained, LED-covered dwellings to learn about the latest advancements in streamer tech, meet up with fans, and watch panels on how to grow (and sell) more as a creator.
Walking around the floor, there were booths dedicated to mechanical keyboards, AI streaming tools, and even software that allows you to create (and then stream) your own virtual avatar with ease. But streamers don’t pay the bills, advertisers do. …
