GameTrailers

Lore & Background

GameTrailers was founded by Geoff Grotz and Brandon Jones in 2002. Jon Slusser and his company Hornet Animation invested in the startup, and Jon took over as CEO. The company was acquired by MTV Networks in November 2005. In 2007, MTV Networks restructured its entertainment division, merging Ifilm.com and SpikeTV.com into Spike.com, and grouping this new property, GameTrailers and Xfire, into Spike Digital Entertainment. In June 2014, GameTrailers was purchased by Defy Media. On February 8, 2016, GameTrailers was shut down. Since 2016, IGN Entertainment has owned the GameTrailers brand and back catalog. On March 21, 2016, a majority of the remaining staff at GameTrailers, including Brandon Jones, launched a series of new Patreon-supported channels under the new name Easy Allies.

In Their Own Story

The office smelled like cold coffee and warm hard drives. It was a Tuesday in the off-season, and the only light in the editing bay came from three monitors glowing with timelines full of red playheads. A host in a black t-shirt leaned into the camera, mid-sentence, saying the words 'and that's where it really comes together' for the fourth time that afternoon. The producer called cut. Someone in the corner muted a controller that had been idling on a loading screen for twenty minutes. The render bar crept forward. Outside, the LA traffic hummed its low drone against the glass, and the red GT logo on the wall caught the last of the afternoon sun.

Reader's Guide

Original content included GT Weekly (premiered August 2005), later rebranded as GameOne in March 2007, and then replaced by GameTrailers TV on January 25, 2008. Invisible Walls was a video blog-podcast created and hosted by editor-in-chief Shane Satterfield, debuting on March 13, 2008, and ending after Episode 284 on January 17, 2014. Other shows included GT Countdown, GT Wish-List, Bonus Round, The Final Bosman, Trailer Score, GT Time, Baddest Games, GT TV, GT Previews, Level, GT Reviews, GT Review Pods, Retrospectives, GT Pop-Block, Anthology, and Angry Video Game Nerd.

Did You Know?

• GameTrailers was created by Geoffrey R. Grotz and Brandon Jones in 2002.
• The site was acquired by Viacom in November 2005 and later by Defy Media in June 2014.
• After shutdown in February 2016, IGN Entertainment bought the GameTrailers brand and back catalog.
• Remaining staff founded Easy Allies on March 21, 2016.