Hackathons at Internet Cafes Actually Have Hackers

"Dark Forest"

Last weekend we held our first hackathon at an internet café in Beijing. Our takeaway: internet cafés are the best possible venue for hackathons.

People have been wasting their time in conference halls forever, and renting out an internet café is way cheaper than booking some grand auditorium anyway.

Here's why:

01

Real hackers at internet cafés

Halfway through the competition, one participant suddenly started spamming scam messages in the group chat. Xianyu thought we'd let in some malware and kicked him on the spot.

Later the guy sent a photo to prove his innocence — he'd gone out to eat without logging off, and his account got stolen.

We had to rush out a new rule: log off when you leave, or one hackathon ends up funding an entire hacker crew.

See, the venues you people have been using — Tsinghua, Peking University, some conference center — average quality too high, laws and regulations too robust. No room for hackers to actually flex.

But an internet café is like a dark forest. Step away from your seat for a second, turn around, and your account's gone. That's how you let hackers show their real skills.

02

No class divide at internet cafés — everyone gets a voice

We ran the hackathon alongside workshops from a bunch of AI gaming companies.

But we also realized that hackathons usually leave AI newcomers feeling lost: some bigshot on stage pontificating about the industry, while you sit in the audience in dead silence.

So we told our audience: if you don't care about this stuff, just grab a machine and game. He's up there directing the future of AI, you're back there directing your squad's retreat. Separate waters, no conflict.

So we ended up with this urban spectacle: half the room listening to PowerPoints up front, half gaming in the back, completely lost in it.

Right in the middle of a fiery presentation up front, some guy playing CSGO shouted "I fuck your mother" — shook the whole room.

Maybe that's the power of having a voice. #SpeakingUpWorks

03

Internet cafés make people willingly 996 on tech

Weirdly, the events we were most confident about — CSGO and 5v5 League — didn't even get enough sign-ups. Everyone was at their stations building game demos instead.

The reason's probably simple: we East Asians have this rebellious streak, this urge to study in the least appropriate places. Doing homework at internet cafés, answering Lark messages at clubs.

Come to our internet café hackathon, and you have to make games during gaming time.

Some friends were clearly good students who'd never been to an internet café — couldn't even find the power button.

The most humiliating two days those GPUs ever had.

04

At internet cafés, you don't worry about running out of tokens

As everyone knows, all hackathons now run on Codex and Claude Code. In the past, waiting for AI output was dead time. But at an internet café, you can squeeze in a tense, thrilling Hexakill match while you wait, then queue up your next request right after — seamless.

Per one participant's actual testing, queuing up Hearthstone while coding was the most comfortable setup.

Take it further — once your Codex quota's gone, aren't you basically useless? Rather than hand-coding everything, you might as well just game and wait for Altman to bless you with a reset. One participant was in the group chat recruiting people for Delta Force at 2 AM when his quota ran out.

And gaming didn't stop anyone from making games. Per our stats, 95% of participants submitted demos.

The most extreme case: one guy started building his product at 4 AM on day two and still submitted on time.

With AI getting this terrifyingly capable, humans really should game more and build less.

05

Internet cafés are the most humanistic hackathon venues

Hackathons happen all over the country. Out-of-town participants often pay for hotels out of pocket, and to save money they usually have to room-share.

Have you ever considered: what if some brilliant but broke technical genius is missing that one night's room fee, and their dazzling ability gets buried? How tragic, how moving!

Internet cafés solve this beautifully. First, they're open all night. The whole hackathon's only 30 hours — you won't die from no sleep. Second, if you really can't take it, just sleep in the chair. Instant hotel savings.

When I left at 2 AM, over 10 participants were still grinding. Four hardcore ones stayed the full 30 hours.

Per one Jike user's suggestion: esports hotels should just rebrand as hackathon hotels.

06

Internet cafés guarantee the fairest competition

The usual hackathon food is boxed meals or DIY delivery — a headache for organizers and participants alike.

Especially: what if some people eat well and others don't, and the difference in physical condition affects results? What then?

So our internet café hackathon only served instant noodles. Lots of participants and audience told me they don't know why, but internet cafés just make you crave instant noodles. "Appetite goes wild with instant noodles at an internet café." Someone even ate it for breakfast.

We even held an instant noodle eating contest. The top consumer downed six cups and won four cases of Kangshifu braised beef noodles — probably enough for half a year.

And some kind soul ordered a bunch of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, so suddenly there were lemon waters appearing next to computers. Correct. At internet cafés you eat instant noodles and drink Mixue.

Only concern: can we pull off an internet café hackathon in Shanghai, or will the Oriental Pearl beam vaporize us all.

07

Double the compute at internet café hackathons

Besides your own laptop, there's already a computer at every seat.

So even if you don't game, I still recommend internet cafés — more machines, more options. You can load up a bunch of domestic AI tools on the café machine, pair it with your own Codex, and double your productivity.

If you're going to a normal hackathon, I still suggest booking the nearest internet café private room. Start with one extra computer — how can they compete?

One guy's first move at the internet café wasn't to game, but to download Qoder, Trae, and other domestic champions, and open Kimi, Zhipu AI, Minimax and more in browser tabs. Sadly he ended up using none of them.

08

Internet cafés are made for attacking each other

Back in the day, losing at an internet café meant trading family insults, escalating to ancestors, occasionally to brawls and group fights.

But physical combat's not the move in the AI era. So we introduced Dengke Wang's Agent Tank — you train your tank with LLMs at home, then bring it to the café to battle directly.

Agent Tank carries on the glorious tradition of internet café combat.

09

No child prodigies at internet cafés

As everyone knows, AI hackathons these days have to gate by age — and the younger the better.

Look at the teams: all post-2010s, middle schoolers, compulsory education incomplete. Average age 13.25 to be marketed. Building their personal brands, never mentioned. 4,000 hours of AI exploration and development, apparently counted from the maternity ward.

Basically infected with VC's pedophilia. Won't happen at an internet café hackathon — minors aren't allowed in.

10

No mutual back-scratching at internet cafés, only the harshest fathers

Domestic hackathons often have同质化 projects, leaving audiences unsure how to react.

We solved this for our final demo session: if someone's product is dead boring, don't give them face. Just go boot up in the back row.

Xianyu also tracked what AI tools people used to make games. Most used Codex. After some flashy moves, Claude Code became roadkill. We also faintly heard Qoder, Trae, Kimi and such — but someone actually used Yuanbao. Didn't know it was still alive.

Truly a gamers' event: fierce competition over the Switch 2 from Tripo. Tripo got name-dropped constantly during demos. Two-thirds of game demos used Tripo for 3D assets.

In the end, a guy from team Wanaka used their company's game engine to build a GTA-style game and won the Switch 2.

Reportedly, this participant added "God of 3D" to his Lark display name the moment he got back to the office.

You can also watch the official documentary of this hackathon, Instant Noodle Hacker 🍜

To sum up: this event was genuinely great. I not only rented out an internet café but let people game for free — became the person I dreamed of being as a kid.

One participant said this was the most human hackathon he'd ever attended. Crowds of people cursing at screens — how could it not be human? 😭

If Beijing college students had found out, it would've instantly become a dorm bonding trip.

Thanks again to Monolith and Tripo for their generous support.

Also thanks to Bilibili's livestream front page — yes, we finally got a livestream slot. 1.6 million Bilibili users watched our internet café hackathon. Worth celebrating.

Final announcement: how could such a chill event not continue?

Internet Café Hackathon #2 will be in Hangzhou, tentatively June 27-28. Registration details coming in a few days.

(Cover image generated by ChatGPT, text 100% human-written)

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