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

19/11/2025

Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music Hall

Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...

19/11/2025

The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, and More

The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...

19/11/2025

One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video Production Layout with the LA Clippers

One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...

19/11/2025

SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital Trends Report

SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...

19/11/2025

Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's Fan-First Media Machine

Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10 Print This Story Brighton & Hove Albion'...

19/11/2025

Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebuilt David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium

Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...

19/11/2025

Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video-Production Infrastructure

Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...

19/11/2025

MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Peacock Exclusive Game, and More

MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...

19/11/2025

Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) Takes a Tender View on Queer Relationships

Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...

19/11/2025

Sundance Institute-Supported Seeds, Apocalypse in the Tropics, Selena y Los Dinos, and More Earn IDA Documentary Awards Nominations

Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...

19/11/2025

L3Harris Breaks Ground on Arkansas Advanced Propulsion Facilities

Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...

19/11/2025

L3Harris and PentenAmio Team to Advance Sovereign Cryptographic Capability and Innovation in the UK, Australia and Canada

L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...

19/11/2025

Multi-year partnership for Calrec and Phoenix Broadcast Solutions

Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...

19/11/2025

The Gauge: Poland | October 2025

October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...

19/11/2025

Nexstar Urges FCC to Waive Ownership Rules, Quickly Approve Tegna Acquisition

IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...

19/11/2025

Vitec Buys Datapath, Expanding Product Portfolio, Engineering, Support

Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...

19/11/2025

Telestream Unveils ARGUS V2.3 With Live Look Stream Validation

NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...

19/11/2025

Charter Taps AWS for Generative AI Solutions

STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...

19/11/2025

Atomos Adds New Camera Control Features to Ninja TX

TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...

19/11/2025

Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Coldplay

Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...

19/11/2025

PlayBox Neo Wraps NAB Show New York 2025 with Big Energy...

PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...

19/11/2025

AAVBR Boosts Event Production Efficiency With Pliant Tech...

AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...

19/11/2025

Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support...

In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...

19/11/2025

Popularity of Online Short-Form Content Moving Beyond Social Media

NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...

19/11/2025

YES Network, CAMB.AI Strike AI Translation Partnership

NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...

19/11/2025

FCC Releases New Filing Deadlines

WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...

19/11/2025

NFL's Popularity Advances TV Seasonal Viewership Growth

NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...

19/11/2025

MyFree DirecTV Adds Seven New Channels

DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...

19/11/2025

MRMC's Flair Bridge Simplifies Robot Control Across Any Platform

SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...

19/11/2025

FCC Sets Deadlines for 2022 Quadrennial Review

WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...

19/11/2025

Nexstar Urges FCC to Waive Ownership Rules, Quickly Approve of Tegna Acquisition

IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...

19/11/2025

Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of next-gen Wi-Fi 8 chipsets

Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...

19/11/2025

Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netflix in Spain on December 12

Back to All News Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...

19/11/2025

Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With 'Troll 2' Director Roar Uthaug to Discuss Creatures and Folklore

Back to All News Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...

19/11/2025

A Look Behind Luxembourg's Most Ambitious Broadcast

Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...

19/11/2025

Bay Area Host Committee And Dolby Partner To Deliver Immersive Fan Experiences

November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...

19/11/2025

New RT documentary on the life of former President Michael D. Higgins

Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...

19/11/2025

November 18, 2025

Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...

18/11/2025

AGILE: Securing the Future of Independent Journalism

Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...

18/11/2025

NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for Referees

NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...

18/11/2025

Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty for Broadcasters on the World Stage

Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...

18/11/2025

Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Content to Any Platform

Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...

18/11/2025

Spanish Basketball Federation Partners with ScorePlay to Power Digital Transformation

Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...

18/11/2025

HBS Selects BBright Encoders and Decoders to Connect ST 2110 Live Production Workflows to the Cloud via SRT

HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...

18/11/2025

Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' Hybrid and Maverick' Production Plan for Coverage of Cricket's Oldest Rivalry

Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...

18/11/2025

SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tennis Channel

SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...

18/11/2025

Sports and Entertainment Convergence: Productions Share Tech, Infrastructure

SVG LIVE! Conference Explores the Tech Side of Sports and Entertainment ConvergenceLive sports and music productions increasingly share gear and infrastructureB...