Aside from a few years off due to the covid pandemic and one outlier weekend when it took place in Vegas instead, every fall in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, TwitchCon takes over. The three-day long convention brings together Twitch partners (the more exclusive tier of streamers with higher revenue shares), affiliates (the more accessible tier with lower revenue shares), and “community” members, who are often either moderators for streamers or fans.
What may have once been considered a “gaming” convention has become something way bigger, with the weekend showcasing the diverse kinds of content creators on the platform and the variety of interests Twitch streamers and their fans have. It’s also, like any convention, an exhausting long weekend full of bad food, blisters, and booze.
This was my first year attending TwitchCon, here’s how it went.
TwitchCon 2024 Day One: Getting there
At 5 a.m. I’m in a car on the way to the airport for a flight that doesn’t leave until half past 8. I wait too long in line for a mediocre iced latte. I worry that someone is going to get angry about my trucker hat that reads “men made me what I am today: a bitch.” I get a few dirty looks as I tramp through JFK, but one Delta flight attendant openly laughs at it as I board, so I’m safe. I’ve no idea what the weekend has in store for me, and just a few minutes into my flight I realize that many of us here are going to TwitchCon. A Ubisoft person sits behind me next to a Twitch employee, they chat for a few minutes as they take their seats. I don’t have a window in my row and the internet isn’t working, so I fall asleep for a few fitful hours.
Soon enough, I’m boots on the ground in San Diego, and it’s clear from the airport outfits (Twitch-themed tees from older conventions, anime sweatshirts, plushies) that there are thousands of people here for the convention. Thankfully, the San Diego Convention Center and my hotel are right next to each other, and they’re both not far from the airport—before I know it I’m whizzing past SDCC, which is draped in the spring-time purples and pinks of TwitchCon 2024. Throngs of people mill about, wearing pastel lanyards and holding gimbals so they can stream while they walk.
“TwitchCon, haha!” my Uber driver says, laughing. He drops me off at my hotel, which has been kitted out with Twitch branding as well. I check in, quickly change, and run over to the convention center to pick up my badge. The space is fairly empty, but there are dozens of staffers directing people to the proper counters. I’m in and out fast, which is good—I still need to be editing pieces from Kotaku staff back in New York.
That night, I attend a media happy hour, then go to an after party for a company called Blerp, which bills itself as “sound memes for streams.” The nightclub is full of streamers, many of whom seem unaware of typical party etiquette—there’s a lot of drink spilling and accidental hip checks. A guy wearing a baby sling with a Scooby Doo stuffed animal holding a mini solo cup strapped into it demands people try and sink a pong ball into the cup. A sticky-sweet-voiced Southern woman shouts above the music to tell me about her cooking streams. I don’t have it in me to stay there much longer, so I head back to the hotel, wash my face and pass out.
TwitchCon 2024 Day Two: Stream starting soon
I wake up with a start at around 4 in the morning—jet lag, my mortal enemy. I drift in and out of sleep for about three hours before giving up and getting ready for the day. I make the mistake of getting an iced latte from the retro-themed diner in the Hard Rock hotel—it’s bland and way too milky and now I’m cranky. My mood worsens as I walk across the train tracks to the convention center and see several people in army fatigues wearing rubber duck masks handing out squeaky ducks to everyone walking by. My entire trek to the convention entrance is then punctuated by shrill squeaks as an army of neurodivergent people squeeze the ever-loving shit out of the ducks. (For the rest of the weekend, the scream of rubber duckies haunts me.)
The convention center is massive, and though TwitchCon boasts a few tens of thousands of attendees, the show floor is sparse compared to PAX East or New York Comic Con, which are always incredibly crowded. It’s refreshing, actually, having a bit of personal space and a reprieve from body odor.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot on the main floor: setups for tabletop gaming, an arcade sponsored by Differin (TwitchCon’s free swag bags include only one thing: acne wash), a massive, inflatable white cube that’s hollowed out so people can dance to the DJs spinning techno inside of it, a Bob Ross paint-along space, a hair extension vendor with multiple chairs set up to style attendees, a G-Fuel booth offering tasting sessions, the “Loot Cave” (a merch store), a Honda installation where you can get custom dad hats with the car logo emblazoned on the back, a massive meet-and-greet section, a huge Monster Hunter Wilds booth complete with a giant creature you can sit on and take pictures with, various installations for all the items a streamer could ever need (high-quality cams, microphones, Corsair products, Streamlabs folks, etc.), and, bizarrely, Chevron.
Unaware of the media lounge and its free (but bad) food, I buy a cheeseburger that tastes like the wood shavings I used to use to line my gerbil’s cage. I wash it down with my shit coffee and run to find the meeting rooms for my first interview: Rachel Delphin, chief marketing officer. We chat about inclusivity at Twitch, about their efforts to make the platform more welcoming for women, people of color, and queer folks with their new Unity Guilds, and how Twitch isn’t a platform for free speech.
Then, I chat with Minecraft streamer HannahxxRose, whose face is plastered all over the convention. A few years back, she left college to pursue streaming full time, and now her entire family is here to support her. “[My growth as a streamer] just kind of happened over time and I’m so grateful that it did…I really wasn’t enjoying what I was doing in school. I was very unhappy,” she tells me, before excitedly talking about all the countries she’s visited thanks to her Twitch partnership. “I never had any dreams to travel and do things like that—I never thought I would.” Her agent, who can’t be more than 21 years old, hands me a few Differin acne patches. “She’s sponsored,” they chirp happily.
After that, I’m taken on a media tour of the convention, which starts with the Peloton installation. The exercise company has partnered with charity speedrunning organization Games Done Quick to raise money for AbleGamers through walking on their treadmills or pedaling their bikes. I duck out of the tour early to ensure I can catch Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker’s DebateLords live show in the Twitch Rivals arena, a first for the massively popular political streamer. Half an hour before it’s set to kick off, we’ve been warned that the space is filling up, so myself and a few other journalists rush down there to catch it. The mock debate stars several other high-profile streamers, some from his unofficial crew (Will Neff, Austin Show, Caroline Kwan) and others from his wider circle (bbno$, Cyr, Jasontheween, and Nmplol). It’s quite funny, if a little rough around the edges, and Piker flexes for the crowd several times to keep everyone plugged in—though Kwan steals the show by leaning into a “libbed out” girlboss character.
But I have to catch the TwitchCon Drag Showcase, so I run across the convention center to the absolute ass-other-end of the building, through the impressively large Artist’s Alley, and into the hall to catch the queens. You can read more about that experience here.
After the showcase, I rush out into the street to speedwalk to my hotel and get changed for a Capcom happy hour at the Coin Op Arcade. As I’m waiting to cross the road between the convention center and the Gaslamp Quarter, someone pokes me on the shoulder. I tense up, half-expecting it to be a Very Angry Gamer ready to make good on all those threats I’ve been getting since March, but instead it’s a guy I went to elementary school with—on Long Island. “What the fuck are you doing here?” we ask in unison. His company has a booth at TwitchCon; it’s his first time at the show. We snap a picture and go our separate ways.
I quick-change in my hotel room, throwing on a strappy red dress and motorcycle boots in an homage to Milla Jovovich’s outfit in Resident Evil, only to be immediately upstaged at the party by a Leon Kennedy cosplayer and a drag queen whose wildly teased hair is touching the bar’s ceiling. I play some arcade games (The Addams Family pinball, skeeball, Time Crisis II, and beer pong, of course), talk to a few content creators, then head back to the hotel, jet lag once again threatening my sanity.
When I get back to my room, I realize that I’ve left the balcony doors open. I can hear the San Diego Padres’ stadium from the moment I walk in. The crowd roars and moans and groans and cheers and it’s like I’m right there, even with the music floating up from the Hard Rock’s 207 Bar. It’s Ashlee Simpson. I wonder if she knows she plays at the Hard Rock Hotel.
The Padres win, and the crowd roars so loud I can feel it in my chest. Then, fireworks start exploding around the stadium—I Google it and see it’s Hispanic Heritage Night, and they’re doing a fireworks show set to music by J.Balvin and Bad Bunny. I watch it from the balcony, a grin stretching from ear-to-ear. After the smoke clears, I drift asleep to the dulcet tones of The Weather Channel meteorologists. Right before I lose consciousness, I hear a rubber duck squeak echo up from the street below.
TwitchCon 2024 Day Three: Mods!
Another 4 a.m. wake up, but this time I just stare at the ceiling until my body can get out of bed and down to the gym. A few Twitch employees are working out together, employing a deck of cards to determine what exercises they do when. I do a quick lift, shower, get ready and go out of my way to get a good cup of coffee: Achilles Coffee Roasters, you will always be famous. On the schedule today are six different interviews, and several shows I want to check out—I need a god damn good cup of coffee.
I chat with a few more execs about businessy stuff and bans. “You want streamers to feel comfortable and safe. There have been instances in the past where streamers or even viewers haven’t felt safe on the platform. And Twitch has heard that and built tools to kind of solve for that,” says Sakina Arishwala, the VP of community health, trust, and safety. I request some clarification regarding the platform’s tendency to let repeat, intentional offenders return to streaming.
Then a much more fun, lighthearted chat: the hilarious Will Neff, who opens up our conversation by celebrating how he went from getting a master’s degree in interactive media to talking about sucking his own dick on Twitch. He gives me a bottle of his hot sauce (TSA took it), and we talk about his pivot from making content for a media company that didn’t value him to making it for himself (expect a story on that soon).
For a brief moment, it appears I’ve convinced Twitch PR to get me the coveted Hasan Piker interview, but he’s running behind and changes plans at the last minute. I manage to say hi while he’s on stream, however, and am immediately bombarded with texts from my friends saying they spotted me.
I head back to the hotel and change to grab a drink and a chat with DenimsTV, a top political streamer. As I’m leaving our drinks, I run smack into Will Neff again, who is wearing a massive, shoulder-padded, leopard print coat. “Try it on!” he urges me. It fits.
I stop by the TwitchCon block party, where attendees are playing big versions of party games like Jenga and cornhole, and we each get three free drinks. It’s too crowded for me though, so I duck out and meet my friend Lisa Wallen, streamer and comedian, for espresso martinis in a hotel bar. They can’t keep me awake though, and I head back to my hotel at a reasonable hour and pass out, yet again, to The Weather Channel.
TwitchCon 2024 Day Four: Chat, am I alive?
I awake with a start at, you guessed it, 4 a.m., my body doggedly refusing to adjust to West Coast time. I drift in and out of sleep for hours, then get ready to head back across the street for the last day. No flat iron today, my hair is more tired than I am. I get a larger latte from Achilles, this one boasts four shots of espresso in a cup that’s bigger than my head. The duck game people are back, handing out ducks as we cross the monorail tracks—I loudly protest, but several immediately begin squeaking the free rubber birds. It’s going to be a long day. I have a few minutes before my interviews, so I wander through Artist’s Alley, running into my elementary school classmate yet again. I buy some smutty Mass Effect stickers from an artist called Maliveth.
Then, two interviews: Pontus Eskilsson, the VP of global partnerships, who excitedly tells me about how many more scientists are streaming on Twitch. Like Paleontologizing, a paleontologist who uses the money he makes streaming to fund his dino digs.
During a brief break, I run to see the Trixie-Cosmetics-branded Power Up room, where attendees can freshen up and get some free makeup. A young girl, no more than nine, is there with her dad, getting some make-up tips from an official rep. I snap a picture in the photo booth and get a free blush palette, then run back to the meeting rooms to chat with Deere, who tells me how she adopted Twitch streaming long before the pandemic, as a means to show off her artistry in different, more unique ways.
I get a last-minute offer to interview Caroline Kwan, who regularly streams award shows and other pop culture events with a political lean. She is, by far, the most engaging and fascinating interview of the weekend—we talk at length about the role of women in such a male-dominated space, the importance of connecting pop culture and politics, and, of course, our outfits. Expect a long piece about my chat with her soon.
After Kwan and I part ways, I run down the hall to meet with Central Committee and Denims to chat for a piece I’m working on about the importance of political streamers in an election year. About 40 minutes into our chat, which we have outside in the designated smoking area, the familiar notes of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” float up from the Kappa Cabana, where live bands have been playing on and off all weekend. Someone says that it’s actually Roan, and we speedwalk through Artist’s Alley and out to the cabana, just to discover we were duped.
“There’s only 30 minutes of con left,” someone utters, half-sad, half-relieved. Tired, a little dejected, and thoroughly over discussing chuds, we separate and head back to our respective hotel rooms. Walking back through the convention center, I hear a rubber duck squeal out, a final goodbye to me and the con, and am stricken with a bout of hysterical laughter.
We did it. TwitchCon 2024 is in the books.
