The massive riots that have plagued France in recent weeks have not prevented TwitchCon from landing in Paris and bringing together some 12,000 people this weekend. This is the third edition of the European event organized by the online streaming platform Twitch, in which streamers and users from different parts of the world gathered to participate in activities of a different nature: from talks and presentations to competitions and meet-up spaces.
The four floors of the Paris Convention Center are a swarm of people recording themselves. With so much camera, it’s hard to tell who’s press, who’s a streamer, and who’s an attendee who just wants to save a memory. A boy pedals an arcade machine that emulates flying bike racing. While testing the video game, he has a webcam attached to his shoulder and with his left hand he holds a selfie stick with his mobile, where he reads a chat. His name is Mateo, he is Colombian and right now he is broadcasting live on Twitch. As he explains to La Vanguardia, he has been traveling the world for six months with his virtual followers. He has been to Mexico, Istanbul, Spain and France and plans to go through Portugal and Russia to finally end up in Seoul. “It’s my first TwitchCon, I’m exploring a bit, but here the issue is networking,” he explains.
Live shows like Mateo’s are known as IRL (from English, In real life) and are based on recording themselves outside the home. However, Twitch features many other types of content on its platform. “At TwitchCon we want to be really inclusive of all the interests of the Twitch community,” said Rachel Delphin, the company’s director of marketing. “The event is open to everyone and we want there to be a good representation of the entire spectrum of streamers”, adds the director, referring to the difference in sizes and proposals of the guests.
In the Parisian venue you can see different spaces that try to reflect this diversity. Two floors above, in an area known as “Artist Alley”, the French company Megaelod has a stop where it sells its products to the public. She is an illustrator and, in addition to making posters, letters, calendars or ceramic objects, she also broadcasts live shows showing her creative processes. As he tells us, his online store is his main source of income, since he only charges about €150 with Twitch. “Streaming helps me share my works and have contact with the public,” she says. She has gone to the fair to show her products and, perhaps, physically meet some of her followers.
A little further up, on the stage located on the terrace, IriaCovers from Alicante gives a video game music concert together with TwinsOfMetal and OcioSax. At the age of eight, she began to train musically and now she has graduated in violin and singing from the Superior Conservatory. In 2020, she decided to perform songs on the internet: “With the pandemic, she didn’t have an acting job and I thought I’d try Twitch live because that’s how it was like performing for an audience, even if it’s not in person.” Currently, she combines her work as a teacher and interpreter with the world of streaming.
As Delphin explains, many streamers come to TwitchCon to “meet other streamers who are doing the same thing,” collaborate with each other, and thus gain new knowledge. At the same time, communities of fans are also heading to the congress to see and meet their favorite content creators. In this sense, TwitchCon Paris has tried to publicize the participation of big names in the sector in some of its main events. For example, Ibai had to compete in the Twitch Rivals Arena against other well-known streamers such as Dream, an American boy with more than thirty million followers on YouTube. Finally, the Bilbao streamer did not attend, which has done nothing but underline the lack of great Spanish references in the convention.
With TwitchCon Paris, it seems that the streaming platform wanted to claim that “Twitch is what it is thanks to its creators” while showing some data that shows the scale that the company has acquired. For example, that in 2022 a total of 1,200 million hours were viewed or that the number of people who earn money with Twitch has grown by 33% since last year. Ultimately, it’s almost as if the event has created a bubble to celebrate the diversity that exists on the entertainment platform. A bubble that, even being in the French capital, has kept away from the riots and the political debate that rock the country, which ironically also have to do with the management of diversity.
