Geoff Keighley

Geoff Keighley (born June 24, 1978) is a Canadian video game journalist and television presenter, best known for his role as the host of several video game industry conferences & presentations.

Keighley was born on June 24, 1978, and grew up in suburban Toronto.

Both of Keighley's parents were executives at IMAX (and remain there as of 2022), which came with membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Through his parents, he gained an appreciation of the Oscars and awards shows in general.

He and his younger brother were exposed to computers and video games at a young age, both becoming fans of the medium.

As a teenager, Keighley started GameSlice in 1996, a website for game reviews and journalism.

Keighley's foray into video game reporting and presentation had been through Cybermania '94, the first video game awards show broadcast on television.

Keighley was fourteen at the time, but, through his father's connections, was brought in to help write lines for the celebrity hosts to read.

The show was not considered successful, aimed more for comedy than celebration, but from it, Keighley was inspired to develop some type of equivalent of the Academy Awards for video games in his career.

Keighley entered into the University of Southern California in 1997 to obtain a business degree.

During that time, he pitched to GameStop a series of long-form articles to delve into the development of some popular games, inspired by VH1's Behind the Music.

His first such work was "Blinded by Reality: The True Story Behind the Creation of Unreal", covering the development of Unreal.

He had been able to get access to some of the behind the scenes at Epic Games as he had been friends with Epic's co-founder Mark Rein during his youth in Toronto.

Other such works Keighley wrote for GameSpot included deep dives into the development of Daikatana and Metal Gear Solid 2.

Through these reports, Keighley gained numerous contacts with development studios, including open access to Valve.

Following his business degree, Keighly entered into law school, inspired by a Time reporter suggesting he write in the crossover area of business and video games.

Around this time in 2002, Keighley also began writing articles for Entertainment Weekly and Fortune, and was also brought as a co-host of The Electric Playground alongside Tommy Tallarico by the show's creator Victor Lucas.

Spike TV brought on Keighley to host his own show, GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley in 2003.

He was also involved in other video game-related projects on television.

On Comcast's G4 network, he appeared as the network's lead anchor for its E3 press conference coverage, interviewing CEOs from companies like Sony and Electronic Arts.

For MTV he created the concept and produced (with LivePlanet) "Gears of War: Race to E3" and "Gears of War: Race to Launch", two specials that took viewers inside the development of the hit Xbox 360 game from Microsoft.

Keighley was invited by the producers of Spike's Video Game Awards program to help with the programming from 2006 onward.

And in 2007, the Discovery Channel aired a five-hour documentary on releases including those of such companies as World of Wonder Productions, based on a treatment by Keighley, who also served as consulting producer.

Geoff has also hosted and co-produced a number of video game launch specials for Spike TV, including "Madden NFL 08 Kickoff" featuring a performance by Ozzy Osbourne and "Halo 3: Launched!"

featuring a performance by Linkin Park.

He was also interviewed on what became a controversial Fox News segment on Mass Effect, and was later praised by gamers online for being the only one on the show who had actually played the game.

Keighley had also come under some negative perception by gamers in 2012 after he was presenting information about Halo 4 while sitting among stands advertising Mountain Dew and Doritos products.

Several people critiqued this presentation as a sign of a lack of journalism standards, and the scenario became known as "Doritosgate" within the gaming community while Keighley was derogatorly called "Dorito Pope".

Eurogamer's Robert Florence criticized Keighley's presentation and the state of game journalism at that time: "Geoff Keighley is often described as an industry leader. A games expert. He is one of the most prominent games journalists in the world. And there he sits, right there, beside a table of snacks. He will be sitting there forever, in our minds. That's what he is now. And in a sense, it is what he always was."

The event led to Keighley reviewing his current career.

To Keighley, the format became more commercial and promotional rather than a celebration of video game achievements, and coupled with the ridicule he faced from Doritosgate in 2012, he opted to leave the show.

In 2013, Spike changed the format of the show and rebranded the awards as the VGX Awards.

He is the executive producer and host of The Game Awards since its inception in 2014, having previously served as the executive producer of the Spike Video Game Awards.

He also hosts and produces Summer Game Fest, and has hosted live events for trades fairs GamesCom and the now-defunct E3.

He previously hosted the video game show GameTrailers TV, and G4tv.com.

Keighley is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Kotaku among other publications.

His multi-media series The Final Hours, originally an article series published by GameSpot, features in-depth interviews and behind-the-scenes with developers of popular franchises like Portal, Mass Effect & Tomb Raider.

Through 2014, he funded his own efforts to put together a new awards show, gaining the support of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as well as major publications and industry leaders.

Keighley thus established The Game Awards which were first presented in December 2014, and which Keighley remains the primary host.

In December 2016, Keighley was picked as a judge for the Viveport Developer Awards (VDAs).