PixlBit

It seems like it's always in a February that we mourn the loss of someone during BaD. It appears that this February will be no different in a sense.

Two days ago word came via GameTrailers.com own twitter account that they were shutting down after 13 years of operation. The news came out of no where with no one expecting the site would be shutting down. Not much was shared on why GameTrailers was being shut down. During their final Twitch stream the players involved said they couldn't elaborate on the reasons for the closure, citing the usual legal reasons given during such news. According to them half of them only found out about the closure that morning, with the rest of them finding out when they got back from lunch. During the Twitch stream they told people who were subscribing to the feed should refrain from donating any funds given that they weren't going to see a dime of it. Though they did try to joke off that it was probably going to the trash or to the parent company's wallet, it seemed like a half hearten attempt to lighten the mood, it was hard to shrug off the fact that the very people we were watching play GTA (I don't recall which one, not that familiar with the series. I want to say III but don't quote me.) were going to be out of the a job either that night or later on in the week.

I have to admit I will miss GameTrailers.com. For me it had an interesting take on game reviews by not only being a housing site for the ever growing idea of created game trailers to announce a new game's arrival, like movie trailers before an actual movie in theaters, but they were one of the few sites at the time to stick with a numbered rating system for various aspects of a game from story, controls, gameplay, graphics etc. when it came to game reviews. For the most part their reviews seemed to be spot on in the beginning. But I will admit that recently they've had changed their format a bit when it came to reviews. I recall that some game reviews didn't even bother with a breakdown on number scoring and stuck with a basic 1 to 10 score. I'm sure this was done to keep things simple but for me it started to feel less like a GameTrailers review and more like a generic review like you've come to see from other gaming sites or metacritic. Over time I started to give little thought to their ranking system, and given from the comments I read on certain video game reviews they didn't resonate well with others. I still recall when they mistaken the game Halo 3: ODST title as Halo 3: Orbital Drop SHIP troopers. Not sure if they ever lived that one down. I eventually started going to the site less and less when they switched to a different video player that didn't quite work all the time on my firefox.

I can't say how the community there was like given that I didn't hang out there often enough to be apart of it. But what I really enjoyed the most about the site was their video shows. The one's I enjoyed the most were their "Retrospective" videos that tried to share info about specific gaming franchises. My personal favorite was their attempt to create a "Zelda Timeline" before Nintendo came out with their official timeline. It was interesting to see how far they were able to get close to the now official timeline offered, but at the time it was compelling enough to be possible.

One show that I'll miss out on the most will be their most recent video series "Pop Fiction/Pop Facts" where they tried to prove that a certain gaming urban legend was indeed true or false. Most of the time they got them right, or made sure to update their original video if new evidence comes up later on. They touched on numerous subjects that I didn't even know about like Magic Hands in a Super Smash Brother's game and cut content levels from Sonic 3. Even as we speak there are online archivist downloading videos to save them for posterity.

In the end it is sad to see another gaming website gone again. I learned my lesson the first time when 1up.com shut down so I've come to not to expect game websites, or websites in general, for being around forever. Still it just goes to show that the gaming media landscape is ever changing. We never expect for the media aspect of it to change dramatically despite all the long years of stable existence. But we have seen it before gaming mags are almost a thing of the past and we've seen a number of gaming specific websites shut down for various reasons.

And no I'm not going to chalk up the death of GameTrailers to GamerGate.

Just goes to show that not all change is good. And this event doesn't bode well with my current thoughts on the condition of the video game industry. Konami losing it's mind, the PS Vita practically DOA, folks already writing off the Wii U due to NX, the advent of VR 3D gaming soon to arrive and more and more companies relying on the Season Pass sales model for future game releases doesn't give me much hope in what to expect for the future of the gaming industry as a whole. Makes me glad I have a healthy love for retro games.

So goodbye GameTrailers.com. I'll miss your shows and the impact you left on the gaming industry over the years. You were about as old as my "Little One" which makes it all the more saddening that even you can be gone in all those years of existence. We maybe older but you did help us to be a little wiser when it came to what was coming out during your time. Thank you.

Ta-ta

"N"