Jasmine Liang
Arts & Entertainment Editor
On May 3, the UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) social club Gaucho Gaming held its first Gaucho Gaming Convention (GGCon) in Corwin Pavilion, featuring two panels and a meet-and-greet in the Flying A Studio in the University Center (UCen). The event lasted from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The main hall included freeplay areas with VR and board games, alongside game tables hosted by the UCSB chess, Magic the Gathering, and poker clubs. Students could also participate in the day-long “Super Smash Bros.” tournament for both doubles and singles.
A small artist alley hosted artists from around campus, including a selection from UCSB club Gaucho Graphics members. Some other clubs held booths to advertise their club and what they do, such as the Cosplay Club and Game Development Club, the latter of which provided playable demonstrations of some of the members’ games.
The main stage held live final tournaments for “VALORANT” “League of Legends,” and “Super Smash Bros.,” with a small break for “Kahoot.”
Throughout the day, Gaucho Gaming hosted five giveaways, which included products from CORSAIR, MSI, ZOTAC, AVerMedia, and Seasonic.
At 11:30 a.m., a line of people had already gathered for GGCon’s first panel, the Voice Actor Panel. The panel included a strong lineup of guests, including Cassandra Lee Morris (“League of Legends,” “Marvel Rivals,” “Persona 5”), Allegra Clark (“Honkai: Star Rail,” “Jujutsu Kaisen,” “Persona 3 Reload,” “Apex Legends”), Kimberley Anne Campbell (“86 — EIGHTY-SIX,” “Genshin Impact,” “Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro”), and Alejandro Antonio Ruiz (“VALORANT,” “Guilty Gear Strive,” “Tokyo Revengers”). Gaucho Gaming member Andrea Zeng-Pedersen moderated the panel.
The four voice actors shared their experiences with voice acting, talking about some of the challenges they face in the industry. Morris told a story about how she was mistreated when struggling to perform battlecries while pregnant, while Clark, Campbell, and Ruiz shared that they had dealt with microaggressions concerning their identities during workshop classes. Ruiz told students that “not all teachers and directors are made equal, and this carries over to the real world as well.”
Campbell discussed how being Black makes it more difficult to book roles. “They’re not going to cast me because they see what I look like … even if I turn in a banger audition.” She did note that it has improved because “some studios have been shamed into a fair casting process.”
In response to subsequent conversations about the difficulties around voice acting and imposter syndrome, Ruiz explained that “It’s not you that loses the confidence — sometimes your skills are still there — you got what it takes; the circumstances need to change.”
Even though all four voice actors have their fair share of horror stories, they all emphasized how much they love their jobs. When asked about some of the highlights of their career, Morris disclosed that playing “two characters that talk to each other” in “Yu-Gi-Oh! GX” was “a voice actor badge of honor.” Clark expressed her excitement around first booking a role in “Street Fighter,” a game she had played “in her great aunt’s basement” as a kid.
For Campbell, her first anime role — Hina in “Hunter x Hunter” — was momentous because her mother could watch it on TV, compared to Campbell’s previous game parts. Her mother was originally worried people wouldn’t take her seriously because of their race, but Campbell proudly proved otherwise.
“I’m most proud of when the check clears,” Ruiz said, half-jokingly. Most of his exciting projects are still in development, but he does love “when [he] get[s] to book something that is so wildly different than anything [he’s] done before.” Like Campbell, he was typecast in the early stages of his career, always picking up queer or Mexican characters, and he wanted to show off his range.
Moderator Zeng-Pederson told The Bottom Line (TBL) that their favorite part of the panel was hearing the voice actors talk about their hardships. “How they’ve overcome it [sic] is really inspiring.” They especially found it rewarding since Gaucho Gaming has been working on the convention since mid-winter quarter. “We’ve had a lot of anticipation for the voice actors to come … and then actually seeing them there in the room was really cool.”
GGCon’s second panel was the Content Creator Panel moderated by Annis Feng. It featured Lily Ki, who goes by the stage name LilyPichu, and John Choi. LilyPichu is a content creator, voice actress, artist, musician, and member of the content creation group OfflineTV, with over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and 2 million followers on Twitch. John Choi is a voice actor newer to the content creation scene with over 20 thousand subscribers on YouTube and 27 thousand followers on Twitch.
Although LilyPichu and Choi kept their answers short, with LilyPichu repeatedly affirming “I need to lock in” — no matter the question — their humor and chemistry really made the panel shine. Choi and LilyPichu kept an air of self-deprecation that kept the audience laughing. For example, when Choi made jokes at his own expense, he would pass the microphone to LilyPichu and add, “but Lily has a really good answer,” to her feigned annoyance.
When asked how LilyPichu handles burnout, she responded with, “I deal with it by trying to do a lot of different things. [When] I get burnt out of [sic] streaming, I do YouTube or like voice over, music — I try to keep it fresh. But now I think I’m doing too many things, and I’m mastering none of them. I need to lock in.”
LilyPichu then told the audience about a long talk she had with Jeremy Wang (known as Disguised Toast) about what they’re doing with their lives. “And he says something like he’s trying to live like it’s the second time. And that really stuck with me … I’m trying to do that everyday.”
In another round of questions about daily life, Choi explained that sometimes his days are really busy, such as the day prior, when he was studio hopping and doing auditions from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. “But then other days,” he continued, “or months, of just like absolutely nothing. Like peak unemployment. Unemployed friend on a Tuesday type thing. That’s usually when content creation starts and voice acting ends.”
Choi expanded on his comment, saying that “a lot of [voice acting] is outside of your control. Content creation is like the one factor you can control that might contribute to voice acting, whether it’s like making voice memes … or just streaming … I think content creation is a really good thing to do to further your career.”
When asked about imposter syndrome, Choi reasoned that “a lot of imposter syndrome gets filtered when you see the sheer volume of applicants.” He recently worked on a casting project, and he received so many quality auditions; it made him realize “there’s no perfect voice, really. Like everybody’s voice is unique and usable.”
LilyPichu shared that she hasn’t conquered imposter syndrome, especially because a lot of people tell her that she only gets cast [in voice acting roles] because she’s a streamer. One time, she reached out to a casting director at “Genshin Impact” to ask if it was true, and he responded, “‘I had no idea who you were.’ To me, that was the best thing he could have said.”
“It does not go away,” Choi clarified. “You have to continually work on being yourself and then just try to think you are enough because that’s what the casting director is looking for.”
The panel concluded with a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Feng later told TBL her favorite part of the panel was seeing “them interact with each other and them interact with the crowd … I was really nervous about interviewing, but they were just really nice and really chill; it felt really relaxed.”
Half an hour after the panel, GGCon held a meet-and-greet with LilyPichu and John Choi, where attendees could get photos and briefly chat. The line for the meet-and-greet extended through the UCen, and GGCon staff had to limit students from getting autographs to keep the event on schedule.If you’re interested in seeing the panels, you can access the voice actor panel on Gaucho Gaming’s Twitch channel. Otherwise, you can keep up with their events through their social media.