Popular Twitch streamer and veteran content creator Sodapoppin recently reflected on his visit to TwitchCon San Diego 2022, describing that the livestreaming conference solidified the platform’s gradual culture change.
TwitchCon San Diego 2022 marked the official return of the livestreaming convention to North America after a nearly three-year hiatus. While it was an opportunity for streamers to reconnect with their audiences and fellow creators, the convention itself was rife with controversy. From one Twitch streamer breaking her back at a TwitchCon booth to stalker appearances and multiple accounts of theft and harassment at afterparties, TwitchCon San Diego was far from a graceful return.
For veteran Twitch streamer Sodapoppin, his recent visit to TwitchCon solidified the platform’s growing cultural shift away from gaming. While the streamer admits that he has seen this coming for some time, he described that the most recent iteration of the convention made this more apparent then ever before.
“Twitch is no longer a gaming website, and that’s fine,” Sodapoppin said. “Every year TwitchCon has happened, you kinda see the community in itself is changing slowly. But to go from the last TwitchCon I went to, to this one, the jump, the drastic change… it felt more like a YouTuber convention. It really did.”
IRL and other non-gaming categories on Twitch have undoubtedly risen in priority since Sodapoppin’s start in 2012, with Just Chatting consistently remaining as the website’s top category. In the last month alone, Just Chatting amassed over 111 million more hours watched than the second highest gaming category, according to Streams Charts.
Reflecting on TwitchCons past, Sodapoppin referenced a time wherein he personally knew the majority of streamers attending the event. With past TwitchCons reaching above 30,000 attendees, this is certainly no longer the case for the website’s in-person event.
“I look back on TwitchCon where there was not a single person that I did not know who they are,” Sodapoppin claimed. “I know this person. If they had 200 viewers, I know them. It was a very tight, small community. Then, year after year, there’s more after more, and I’m like ‘what the fuck is going on?'”
Twitch has certainly changed its priorities and services over the years, with its convention being an extension of those changes. While Sodapoppin does not lament the loss of “old Twitch,” he has acknowledged that it’s no longer the platform he originally began streaming on.
