GameTrailers Shutting Down

I woke up to this news this morning. I'm shocked and gutted.

Holy Crap!!! Those guys were massive!!

So sudden! I can't believe it! I used to love their retrospectives!!!

Man, I remember them when they first started out even. Nobody else offered anything remotely as professional as what they did...

Gonna miss them something fierce

What?! i thought they were still doing well?

Wow, I used to love that site. At one point I would listen to Invisible Walls and Epic Battle Cry every week. I always thought their reviews were really good too.

I haven't been to GameTrailers in years though.

What a shame, despite not visiting them myself, I thought they were still pretty big.

WHAT!!!!?

These guys are my favs... *sadface*

Well this is terrible news.

No more episodes of The Final Bosman.

I'm genuinely gutted about this.

Sad news... very surprising as well... shouldn't be that hard to succeed in a world that's huge right now on video when you already have a big following. Can only assume there must've been some high up failure :/

Sad news... very surprising as well... shouldn't be that hard to succeed in a world that's huge right now on video when you already have a big following. Can only assume there must've been some high up failure :/

I think that's where everyone might well be getting it wrong.

In a world where there is so much free content being spewed out by thousands of sites, blogs and Youtube channels, there is increasing competition for views. Having huge offices, overheads and a sizeable number of staff members puts you at a disadvantage to the Youtube channel being run out of a bedroom somewhere.

They were building a new site too. Said on Twitter they just found out today and are out of the building. So sad. I've been going to their site for years, and in more recent times watching their shows and streams daily.

I think that's where everyone might well be getting it wrong.

 

In a world where there is so much free content being spewed out by thousands of sites, blogs and Youtube channels, there is increasing competition for views. Having huge offices, overheads and a sizeable number of staff members puts you at a disadvantage to the Youtube channel being run out of a bedroom somewhere.

Pretty much what I was going to say.

You've got people who sit in their bedrooms all day uploading trailers, lets plays, reviews, all of which are eating into sites like GT. The youth of today would rather watch an Internet personality for their gaming needs than visit a site such as GT.

This certainly is shocking news, came right out of the blue. @Hero\-of\-Time have hit the nail on the head, sites like Game Trailers (to us) are valuable for gaming information, but the youth want to watch the likes of Pew Die Pie* for their gaming needs.

*He's an annoying piece none the less.

Hopefully the people at the, now former, Game Trailers land on their feet soon. Can't believe a site like this will soon be internet history.

I used to really like GT but like Zechs I've not been on the site in an age! I'd been watching the Final Bosman still but had been catching it on YouTube.

Bosman needs to get into something quick, he's my favourite personality in gaming!

I posted an article on the main site

Short and sweet. Would post more, but I have to dash off to work, so don't gots time.

Can't believe that the likes of IGN and Eurogamer have yet to even mention it on their sites! Sure, they're a rival but come on! Show a little respect at least!

I'm pretty gutted about this

GT was almost always the first place I would go to watch the review of a new game as well as enjoying features like 'Final Bets' and 'the Final Bosman', at least before the quality started to diminish with the latter.

Ever since the move, I've always got the impression that something wasn't quite right there but I certainly wasn't expecting this

Sad to hear, didn't realize their fortunes had fell so hard. Games journalism is unrecognizable from 10 or even 5 years ago.

Aww I used to go there every day, the retrospectives were great and the reviews were really good. I was just watching a few last night actually, never thought they were in such bad shape that they would have to shut down. The qyallity and production values of their videos stayed the same and they were putting them out regularly so I didn't really notice they were having problems.

Here's a great piece by Jim Sterling which highlights the problems with modern media outlets and the effect that it has on sites such as GT.

On Monday, February 8, Brandon Jones announced that GameTrailers was going to end its thirteen-year run and officially close up shop. The site’s entire staff – all set to lose their jobs – found out about the closure mere hours before it was revealed.

 

GameTrailers was a huge personal inspiration for me, a big part of why I wanted to get into games media in the first place. The news is incredibly saddening, and I can only wish the very best to those impacted by the layoffs.

 

Unfortunately, this news was only a matter of time.

 

Among the many reactions to the news, I’ve spotted some familiar questions crop up, generally following this particular query – “But they were huge? How could an institution like that fail?”

 

Welcome to corporate media!

 

Yes, GameTrailers was significant in terms of size and audience reach. Its videos easily pulled in hundreds of thousands of views, even in recent years. Such numbers are nothing, of course, compared to those lucky YouTubers capable of accruing millions upon millions of viewers, but as far as traditional games media goes, GT was a heavy hitter.

 

Unfortunately, “traditional games media” stopped being willing or even capable of rewarding success as we recognize it, and for those who could see the writing on the wall, there would be no saving GameTrailers.

 

The site’s woes were an open secret for years. I first heard about GameTrailers’ troubles a few years ago, when it was still owned by MTV and grouped in with Spike Digital Entertainment. I’d heard about the skeleton staff they had working there, Spike’s displeasure with the site’s performance, and its plans to shut it down or sell it on post-haste.

 

Since that point, GameTrailers underwent several notable changes, focusing more on personality-led content and giving itself an overhaul after it was purchased by Defy Media in 2014. None of this would be enough, however, because GameTrailers was destined to be a victim of its own nature.

 

The current crop of traditional games media outlets are their own worst enemy, and I don’t mean to say that derisively or with the insinuation of insult – they’ve been painted into a corner where very few of them can succeed anymore, especially with so few of them remaining independent and having to please an owner that does not necessarily want the same things they do.

 

In the case of GameTrailers, its issues are depressingly common. For those wondering how a site so big can so easily fall, you must be aware of one important fact – audiences don’t matter anymore.

 

I’ve been able to witness this shift firsthand. Once upon a time, your success was judged by… how successful you were – your ability to engage and keep viewers, to build an audience, to produce work that was shared and commented upon and watched in the hundreds of thousands. These days, how successful you are and how much money you make just aren’t the same thing.

 

Audiences aren’t as valuable to corporate-owned media as once they were. For a start, the ad-supported model is an absolute mess now. It barely works. A single viewer is worth less than a percentage of a single cent to the average site. You can have thousands of people reading your reviews or clicking on your videos, and chances are you’ll be bringing pennies back to the your corporate taskmasters.

 

This, of course, doesn’t even start to factor in AdBlock’s evergrowing ubiquity, and how it has undeniably harmed ad-supported content. Of course, advertising networks themselves have only helped speed up their own demise – creating more intrusive, obnoxious adverts in a desperate bid to retain prominence. A counter-intuitive measure that has only made ad blockers more appealing.

 

Look how easily IGN let its most recognizable faces go to form Kinda Funny Games as an independent venture. Look at how The Escapist was able to lay off Bob Chipman – who I can tell you from personal knowledge was routinely pulling in a significant percentage of traffic. Hell, for that matter, neither Destructoid nor The Escapist were prepared to fight to keep yours truly when I moved on from each.

 

Whether you’re the most recognizable face a website has or a new hire brought on to write about Assassin’s Creed-branded headphones, it doesn’t matter – you’re all as disposable as each other in the eyes of a corporation’s sales department. The playing field has never been more level, because the field begins and ends at rock bottom for those doing the actual work.

 

I’m not saying this to attack the outlets in question, but to point out the lack of monetary value recognizable personalities and large traffic draws have in the traditional media space.

 

They are as disposable as the average press-release rewriting intern – perhaps more disposable, since popular content makers cost more to keep around when you can hire a handful of lesser known writers for a fraction of the cost and the views all the look the same at the end of the month.

 

I’ve been straight-up told in the past that the success of my brand doesn’t matter because I wasn’t willing to produce sponsored content, which is where a lot of the money is made nowadays. Getting your content makers to namedrop Hulu or promote Deadpool gives you a significant chunk of change that is unaffected by AdBlock and not reliant on the actual content making variable amounts of money.

 

Which is of course what a corporation wants – predictability. A safe, measurable sum of cash coming in. This is something no individual journalist, critic, or pundit can guarantee, because we all still work to draw in an audience in a world where corporate-owned media doesn’t value the inconsistent rewards of an audience anymore.

 

Yet, the sad irony is that these outlets still need an audience to work. While it remains the dream of many games media sites to do away with ads (just look at how hard many places try to push premium subscription services), they still rely on them to keep the bills paid. No company is going to seek a sponsorship deal with a site that has no readers, and you still need to generate money in between those deals.

 

Here’s where GameTrailers’ biggest problem rears its head – YouTube.

 

This is not one of those “YouTubers are the future and more honest than corrupt GAAAAMES JOURNALIIIIIISM” puff pieces, this is more to do with YouTube as a platform itself. It has, undeniably, become the place to watch videos.

 

Other video sites exists, other video players exist, but if you want to make your audiovisual content work, you’re almost obligated to be on YouTube. It’s the television of the Internet, and if you’re publishing your videos elsewhere, you’re doing street theater in comparison.

 

Unfortunately, few major websites actually do well on YouTube, even really big ones. I won’t single any companies out here, but have a look at the official YouTube channels of some big-name game blogs sometime and you might be surprised at how little their videos are actually being watched.

 

Even if they do garner a lot of traffic, they run up against a familiar problem – audiences aren’t financially valuable on YouTube, and are actually significantly worse for companies who have overheads to consider.

 

It’s a great way for individuals to make money, thanks to the low cost of entry and the ability to partner up with potentially lucrative channel partners, but a corporation? Unless they’re comfortably getting millions of views, chances are they’re making comparative chickenfeed.

 

So what’s the answer there? We know what the answer has been – proprietary video players.

 

Compared to YouTube, third-party of self-built video players allow far greater control of ad revenue and more money per view. The problem is that they’re almost all universally shit, and nobody actually likes having to use them to access the content they want.

 

Ads are more intrusive, the players are less compatible with playback devices, few of them support mobile platforms, and the overall quality is atrocious. While YouTube can now offer full 4K video at 60 frames-a-second, most proprietary video players on game sites are lucky enough to get up to 720p, and even then they’ll still come out looking horrible after they’ve been compressed, rendered, and ruined.

 

In addition, the benefits of YouTube aren’t there for self-sufficient video players. YouTube is very good at getting people to click on other videos once they’re done watching one – recommendations, channel networks, even commercials for other areas of the site – there’s a lot of automatically implemented ways to get your content some new fans, something other sites have to do on their lonesome.

 

So we’re in a situation where a site like GameTrailers needs its own video player to make money from its audience, but the audience hates the video player and becomes less happy about watching videos.

 

It’s a self-destructive situation to be in, reflective of the other problems we’ve mentioned – how audiences have no significant monetary value while remaining the most valuable currency sites have, how advertisements are at once too precious to let go and so damaging to a site’s usability that they get blocked by a ton of users.

 

For any outlet caught in this circle of destruction, there just doesn’t seem to be any way out. No amount of site redesigns or layoffs can stave off the inevitable for long. When your business model exists on a flatbed of contradictions, the only logical option is failure.

 

Sites like GameTrailers have become their own worst enemies – they’re victims of the business models they have relied on to exist, and thus are victims of themselves. This is not their fault, and certainly not the fault of the poor folks just trying to produce content for their fans, but they are the ones who’ll be cast aside by the executives in charge who have plenty of other properties, and can back as many horses as they want so long as a few make it to the finish line.

 

That is the final nail in the coffin, too – upper management. As I said in 2014, the current business model lends undue power to people who really don’t care for, or indeed know much about, videogame criticism. They won’t understand anything written here, even as it stares them in the face and they continue to buy websites without having the first clue as to what to do with them. They’ll just keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results each time.

 

As more individual content makers look to crowd funding and other independent avenues in order to find success while still being able to value their loyal audiences, we can expect to see more news stories like GameTrailers’ demise in future. This is not the death of traditional games media overall, but it is undoubtedly its shrinkage.

 

There are some big outlets out there who have enough financial backing and willing sponsors to keep ticking, but it’s just going to get harder for everybody else. The rich will get richer while the poor will simply shrivel and die.

 

And you won’t know who the poor ones are, because you can look as successful and big as you like, but that’s no longer a sign that you’re actually succeeding.

Just watched their last ever stream on Twitch. Brandon's speech at the end man

Gonna miss watching them a lot, it was what I'd do to relax on a day off or in bed after work.

Hope they go on to do great things, something together would be awesome. I'll be keeping an eye out.

Thank God for him. Well said as usual Jim : peace:

It's sad, but YouTube is just such an unstoppable giant that all who oppose The Machine are getting crushed. It's not just GT or gaming media either. Non gaming media outlets like Channel Awesome are struggling to keep afloat in the age of YouTube dominance as well.

Big shame but I cant say I'm surprised. They've been slowly letting go of staff and reigning the site in for a couple of years now so it always looked like they were on their way out to me.

Here's a great piece by Jim Sterling which highlights the problems with modern media outlets and the effect that it has on sites such as GT.

He's not ad supported, but it's still cool to throw out a link http://www.thejimquisition.com/2016/02/gametrailers-was-a-victim-of-itself/

Like many others said I haven't gone to the website in years. I use to post on the forums there and got into a community that spun off to its own website (which has now basically died) and kinda quit going to GT after that...that was about 8 years ago...wow. I'd occasionally go back and check HAWP, at least until Anthony left to work on Borderlands 2.

Man this is so depressing,the streams the statements it all baffling

Was the AVGN on there? He was good.

Was the AVGN on there? He was good.

AVGN was indeed on there for a while. He had already started before then, but Gametrailers helped him make his name.

Was the AVGN on there? He was good.

He switched over to Youtube and his own site a few years ago.