Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

GlitchCon 2020: How Twitch Created a One-of-a-Kind Virtual Experience for Fans in Place of TwitchCon

05/12/2020

GlitchCon 2020: How Twitch Created a One-of-a-Kind Virtual Experience for Fans in Place of TwitchCon Multiple virtual stages, 425 creators attract 6.7 million viewers to 12-hour live stream By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Friday, December 4, 2020 - 1:22 pm

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

Each year, content creators and fans from across the globe flock to TwitchCon, the world's preeminent convention for gamers and streamers. However, with the pandemic continuing, Twitch was in search of a way to bring its community together for a singular experience that didn't include a large public gathering. Enter GlitchCon.

The virtual replacement for TwitchCon Amsterdam in May and TwitchCon 2020 in September (both canceled due to the pandemic), GlitchCon was a 12-hour marathon live-streaming experience offering 425 Twitch creators across four separate virtual stages - /twitch, /twitchpresents, /twitchgaming, and /twitchrivals - live-streaming a wide variety of content.

Twitch has relied on tools like NewTek TriCasters, VMix, OBS, and Discord to produce GlitchCon.

The goal was to create a special experience for the core Twitch community, and we achieved that, says Steven Flisler, head of esports and content production, Twitch. The problem we were solving for was, how do we create four separate virtual' stages with different entertainment experiences but still unify them to have a common beginning and ending with a theme stitched together. We needed to mimic what our community knows and expects in person at TwitchCon but reimagine it for the Glitch of the year that 2020 has become.

The Concept: Five Teams, Three Production Approaches To achieve this goal, Twitch split its team up to focus on five areas: the four content channels and a fifth team responsible for the overall hub, keynote, and musical after-party. Each team was led by a senior Twitch Channel producer: Erin Schmalfeld, Callum Hanlon, Chris Ambrosio, Sean Keegan, and Cyrus Ghahremani. And the teams were supported by the Twitch Original Content production arm: Mitch Rosenthal, Matthew Lamos, Farnoush Ansari, Sean Sullivan, and Alex Solomita.

Twitch Rivals used a physical stage to implement the Virtual Arena.

The team combined three production approaches to balance out the effort: well-known TwitchCon favorites like the Cosplay Contest and Artist Alley, existing formats from large content franchises of Twitch Gaming and Twitch Rivals, and new formats -each with a glitchy twist - developed specifically for GlitchCon.

I often joked that we took eight months of work and fit it into eight weeks, says Flisler. The overall theme and content plan took some time to come to life to make sure it was perfect. Designing and executing the production plan happened incredibly fast, and we didn't have time to pause.

Twitch also was forced to secure key production partners and studio facilities while simultaneously building show segments.

All the elements of the flow of the show and how we were promoting across the shows and feasibility testing happened back to back, with some show mechanics being seen only during our dress rehearsal, Flisler says. We moved fast to ship a cohesive event experience, which forced us to right-size a lot of elements and, of course, make quick decisions to execute.

Creating New Experiences: Twitch Rivals, Twitch Gaming Lead Out-of-the-Box Thinking Caleb WavePunk Simmons hosted the Twitch Rivals live show at GlitchCon from the Rivals Arena stage.

In addition to its in-house team, Twitch tapped existing partners Vindex/NGE and Butcher Bird Studios, along with new partners ADVNCR UK and ADVNCR Done & Dusted (AD&D) for a number of production services.

When moving TwitchCon to an online experience, says Flisler, we saw an opportunity to test and learn with different partners and thought-leaders in the virtual-event and technology space to help deliver the most unique, immersive, and entertaining experience for our viewers. With such a high volume of content, we sought out different companies to help bring our vision to life for each of the marquee moments.

For the Twitch Rivals esports channel, Flisler and company were looking to create a more immersive experience for the viewer and player. They built a Rivals Arena environment using extended reality (XR), which has seen exponential growth in esports, including the League of Legends World Championship earlier this year. The Rivals Arena included a Verizon 5G super suite with fans live-streaming into the arena, hundreds of fans as audience members with prerecorded reactions, and various video surfaces used for live gameplay, scoreboards, or other explainers.

The XR technology has become more prevalent as of late, says Flisler. By partnering with AD&D, we were able to achieve a larger-than-life experience and elevate the bedroom' caster backdrop to a presentation that matched the magnitude of GlitchCon.

Twitch created a unique Rivals Arena environment deploying extended reality (XR).

On the Twitch Gaming front, the production team worked with Warped World to build a custom top-down shooter game leveraging Unreal Engine, with key game-design decisions determined on-stream by fans via Twitch Chat. This game is set to be released for the Twitch community to download and play for free.

In all, Twitch had 20 content segments across the entire GlitchCon event. According to Flisler, in a normal world, one of those shows could be considered a full day's work and a single production team's focus.

Dealing with so many different creators across different time zones and languages was a Herculean talent-logistics effort, he explains. Coordinating so many different vendors, some of which we worked with for the first time, takes a lot of trust. And there were a number of new technologies that were unteste
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2020/12/04/glitchcon-2020-how-twitch-creat...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

13/03/2025

TAG Video Systems and Harmonic Partner to Deliver Enhanced Real-Time Monitoring for VOS360 Streaming Workflows at the 2025 NAB Show

TAG Video Systems and Harmonic Partner to Deliver Enhanced Real-Time Monitoring ...

13/03/2025

DigitalGlue Invites NAB Visitors to Experience New Features in Managed Storage Platform that Empowers Video Teams to Scale Effortlessly

DigitalGlue Invites NAB Visitors to Experience New Features in Managed Storage P...

13/03/2025

FOR-A America Theme - Connecting the Present, Building the Future - Comes to Life at NAB 2025 Exhibition

FOR-A America Theme - Connecting the Present, Building the Future - Comes to Lif...

13/03/2025

Ajit Pai Appointed President of CTIA

CTIA, the wireless industry association, has named former FCC Chairman Aji Pai as its President and Chief Executive Officer, effective April 1. He replaces Mere...

13/03/2025

NAB: FCC's 60 Minutes Investigation Is Unconstitutional, Invalid

he National Association of Broadcasters is urging the FCC to end its investigation of that controversial CBS interview with Kamala Harris stating there is no ...

13/03/2025

CBS Miami to Launch AR Coverage of Weather and Sports for March Madness

MIAMI CBS News & Stations continues to expand its use of augmented and virtual reality technologies with the planned launch of an augmented reality/virtual real...

13/03/2025

Meet the co-founder and chief customer success & innovation officer

Srividhya Srinivasan, co-founder and chief customer success & innovation Officer at Amagi, tells TVBEurope how staying ahead of the latest trends is essential f...

13/03/2025

FCC Chairman Carr Launches Massive Deregulation Initiative

WASHINGTON FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the agency has launched a massive, new deregulatory initiative that could potentially subject virtually all ...

13/03/2025

SDVI Integrates Rally With Spectra Vail

SUNNYVALE, Calif. SDVI has announced that it has integrated its Rally media supply chain management platform with the Spectra Vail multi-cloud data management s...

13/03/2025

FCC Approves Gray's Acquisition of KXLT

ATLANTA Gray Media has announced that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted a waiver of its local ownership rules to permit Gray Media to acqu...

13/03/2025

NAB Show 2025 Exhibitor Insight: Blackmagic Design

TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2025 NAB Show?...

13/03/2025

Watch Student Naomi Soleils Folk Pop Performance on The Voice

Watch Student Naomi Soleils Folk Pop Performance on The Voice The songwriting major sang Stars by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals during the blind auditions. ...

13/03/2025

Italia 90 Republic of Ireland Squad, Riverdance, Cian Ducrot & B*Witched on Friday's Late Late Show

Here is your host, Patrick Kielty! Shake your Shamrocks, Patrick Kielty will be...

13/03/2025

RT Celebrating all things Irish this St. Patrick's Weekend

This St. Patrick's weekend, RT invites you to celebrate all things Irish, showcasing the very best of Irish sport, entertainment and live coverage from the...

13/03/2025

GTC 2025 - Announcements and Live Updates

What's next in AI is at GTC 2025. Not only the technology, but the people and ideas that are pushing AI forward - creating new opportunities, novel solution...

13/03/2025

T-Mobile, Thales and SIMPL ease IoT deployments with a flexible and secure connectivity solution

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn By combining T-Mobile's robust network, Thal...

13/03/2025

Relive the Magic as GeForce NOW Brings More Blizzard Gaming to the Cloud

Bundle up - GeForce NOW is bringing a flurry of Blizzard titles to its ever-expanding library. Prepare to weather epic gameplay in the cloud, tackling the genr...

13/03/2025

Gaming Goodness: NVIDIA Reveals Latest Neural Rendering and AI Advancements Supercharging Game Development at GDC 2025

AI is leveling up the world's most beloved games, as the latest advancements...

13/03/2025

Drop It Like It's Mod: Breathing New Life Into Classic Games With AI in NVIDIA RTX Remix

PC game modding is massive, with over 5 billion mods downloaded annually. Mods p...

12/03/2025

Como o Impacto Cultural e Financeiro da Indstria Musical Define Seu Sucesso em 2025

O Spotify acaba de lan ar o relat rio Loud & Clear deste ano, uma vis o transpar...

12/03/2025

Cmo el impacto cultural y financiero de la industria musical define su xito en 2025

Spotify acaba de presentar el informe Loud & Clear de este a o, una mirada trans...

12/03/2025

Nourish Mind, Body, and Soul This Ramadan With Spotify

Ramadan, a period of profound spiritual significance for Muslims worldwide, is a time for fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. Enrich your experience thi...

12/03/2025

How the Music Industry's Cultural and Financial Impact Define Its Success in 2025

Spotify has just unveiled this year's Loud & Clear report, a transparent loo...

12/03/2025

FAST now transcends back catalog content

More than 70% of FAST programming has been produced since 2010, according to new Gracenote report NEW YORK March 12, 2025 Gracenote, the content data busin...

12/03/2025

Viamedia Adopts ShowSeeker Pilot To Streamline Ad Workflows

GEONA, Nev. Independent digital and linear advertising rep firm Viamedia will adopt cloud-based ShowSeeker Pilot as its primary ad campaign and order management...

12/03/2025

Mediagenix Appoints Wael Yasin as Sales Director Central Europe

BRUSSELS Mediagenix has announced that Wael Yasin has joined the company as sales director Central Europe....

12/03/2025

Omdia: Global Online Consumer Expenditure to Hit $6.6 Trillion by 2029

LONDON A new study highlights opportunities for shoppable TV and the massive impact online consumer spending is having on the economy, with Omdia predicting tha...

12/03/2025

Comcast Technology Solutions Upgrades to Interra Systems BATON Version 9

CUPERTINO, Calif. Interra Systems has announced that Comcast Technology Solutions has integrated recent updates to BATON Version 9 into its operations....

12/03/2025

Nevion announces new 400G addition to its eMerge SDN media fabric offering

Nevion announces new 400G addition to its eMerge SDN media fabric offering Brie Clayton March 12, 2025 0 Comments High-capacity switch enhances existi...

12/03/2025

DaVinci Resolve Studio Delivers Cinematic Sound for Adam Bol

DaVinci Resolve Studio Delivers Cinematic Sound for Adam Bol Brie Clayton March 12, 2025 0 Comments Feature film relies on DaVinci Resolve Studio for ...

12/03/2025

SVT Leverages Ateliere Live to Pioneer 100% Software-Defined Production at Rally Sweden 2025

SVT Leverages Ateliere Live to Pioneer 100% Software-Defined Production at Rally...

12/03/2025

Berklee Awards Fenway Neighborhood Improvement Grant to Four Organizations

Berklee Awards Fenway Neighborhood Improvement Grant to Four Organizations A total of $17,000 will be distributed among the Boston-based nonprofits. By Madd...

12/03/2025

Offering a broad umbrella for IP standards

TVBEuropes Jenny Priestley sits down with new SMPTE president Richard Welsh to discuss his aims for the organisation going forward, its efforts to attract a you...

12/03/2025

Warner Bros Belgium takes a new approach to its post production workflows

The new process has significantly enhanced operational efficiencies, with automation freeing up creators to concentrate on higher value tasks By Matthew Corrig...

12/03/2025

Another VFX company suspends operations

Jellyfish Pictures, which has offices in London and Sheffield, said it has been battling hard in the face of strong headwinds over the last 12 months By Jenny ...

12/03/2025

Bitcentral to Showcase AI-Powered Innovations for Smarter...

Visit Booth #W2213 to Experience the Latest in AI-Driven Content Discovery and Workflow Automation Bitcentral, a leader in media workflow solutions, is set to ...

12/03/2025

Jeff Lilly Named WGN-TV Director Of Technology

CHICAGO Jeff Lilly has been named WGN-TV director of technology effective March 17, 2025, according to Ric Harris, WGN-TV vice president and general manager....

12/03/2025

Survey: Consumers Want More Shoppable TV Experiences

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. A new study from LG Ad Solutions indicates that consumers want more features that would allow them to shop for products on the connected T...

12/03/2025

IP Showcase To Focus On IP, Broadcast Tech Convergence at 2025 NAB Show

BOTHELL, Wash. The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Video Services Forum (VSF) will once again present...

12/03/2025

Comcast Boosts Internet Speeds for More Than 20 Million Customers

PHILADELPHIA Comcast announced that it has upgraded Xfinity Internet speeds for more than 20 million customers for no additional cost....

12/03/2025

Create with Maxon: Cinema 4D Fundamentals Workshop - March 12-14

Create with Maxon: Cinema 4D Fundamentals Workshop - March 12-14 Brie Clayton March 11, 2025 0 Comments Makin' Waffles with Elly Wade During Marc...

12/03/2025

Ross Video Strengthens Cloud Leadership with Appointment of Aaron Tunnell

Ottawa, Canada - March 12, 2025 - Ross Video is pleased to announce the appointment of Aaron Tunnell as Business Development Director, Cloud Solutions, reinforc...

12/03/2025

VEON to release 4Q 2024 trading update on 20 March 2025

12 Mar 2025 VEON to release 4Q 2024 trading update on 20 March 2025 Dubai, 12 March 2025 - VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON), a global digital operator, today confirms ...

12/03/2025

Getting Set for the Winter Olympics: Inside SVT's Ongoing Software-Based Production Evolution

Getting set for the Winter Olympics: Inside SVT's ongoing software-based pro...

12/03/2025

Seamless SMPTE 2110: A Discussion on Making the Move to IP Less Painful

Seamless SMPTE 2110: A Discussion on Making the Move to IP Less Painful Leaders from Netflix, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, LinkedI, and Megapixel address ...

12/03/2025

Opening Doors of Perception: Meta's Ajit Ninan on Rethinking AR/MR Perceptual Displays

Opening Doors of Perception: Meta's Ajit Ninan on Rethinking AR/MR Perceptua...

12/03/2025

Sky Sports Unveils Exciting Plans for 2025 Formula 1 Coverage

With the 2025 Formula 1 season set to begin in Melbourne on March 16, Sky Sports is gearing up to deliver its most comprehensive F1 coverage yet. Following a th...

12/03/2025

Unicanal and Trece TV revolutionize Digital TV in Paraguay with Rohde & Schwarz transmission solutions

Unicanal and Trece TV revolutionize Digital TV in Paraguay with Rohde & Schwarz ...

12/03/2025

Honoring Service, Celebrating Sport: Rohde & Schwarz UK Sponsors NavyFit Rugby Double-Header

Honoring Service, Celebrating Sport: Rohde & Schwarz UK Sponsors NavyFit Rugby D...