Gray Matter Interactive Studios, Inc. (Gray Matter Studios; formerly Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.) was an American

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

based in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

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. 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''. 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 studio. As part of Treyarch, the former Gray Matter Studios team worked on '' Call of Duty 3''.

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