Gray Matter Interactive Studios, Inc. (Gray Matter Studios; formerly Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.) was an American
video game developer based in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
.
History
Drew Markham and his business partner Barry Dempsey founded Xatrix Entertainment in March 1993. The studio's first release was ''
Cyberia'' in 1994. Among its later projects was ''
Quake II Mission Pack: The Reckoning'', for which it worked with publisher
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...
.
Around 1999, some of the original business partners sought to exit the company. To handle this efficiently, Xatrix was transferred to a new corporation under Markham as
creative director
A creative director (or creative supervisor) is a person who makes high-level creative decisions and, with those decisions, oversees the creation of creative assets such as advertisements, products, events, or logos. Creative director positions ar ...
.
With the assistance of Activision, Gray Matter Studios was established on June 17, 1999, and took over the majority of the former employees. Activision initially owned 40% of the studio. It bought the remaining 60% in January 2002, after the successful release of ''
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
''Return to Castle Wolfenstein'' is a first-person shooter video game published by Activision, released on November 19, 2001, for Microsoft Windows and subsequently for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Linux and Macintosh. The game serves as a reboot of the ...
''.
The publisher paid 133,690 shares of
common stock
Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. The terms voting share and ordinary share are also used frequently outside of the United States. They are known as equity shares or ordinary shares in the UK and other Comm ...
, at the time worth around .
Post-acquisition, the studio was put to work on the ''
Call of Duty: United Offensive'' expansion.
It also worked on ''Trinity: The Shatter Effect'', which was announced and then canceled in late 2003. In 2005, during the development of ''
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One'', Gray Matter Studios was merged into Activision's
Treyarch
Treyarch Corporation ( ; formerly Treyarch Invention LLC) is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1996 by Peter Akemann and Doğan Köslü, it was acquired by Activision in 2001. The studio is known for ...
studio. As part of Treyarch, the former Gray Matter Studios team worked on ''
Call of Duty 3
''Call of Duty 3'' is a 2006 first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It is the third major installment in the ''Call of Duty'' series. It was released for PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 an ...
''.
Games developed
As Xatrix Entertainment
As Gray Matter Studios
Canceled
* ''Trinity: The Shatter Effect''
References
{{Authority control
1993 establishments in California
2005 disestablishments in California
Defunct Activision subsidiaries
Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles
Defunct video game companies of the United States
Video game companies disestablished in 2005
Video game companies established in 1993
Video game development companies