Geoff Keighley

About

Geoff Keighley is a Canadian video games journalist best known for his role as the executive producer and host of The Game Awards. He has also hosted events at E3 and the Summer Game Fest. Online, Keighley's visibility has made him the subject of several memes and controversies. For example, a picture of him at the 2012 Spike Game Awards led to the Doritosgate controversy. In 2020, Keighley became the subject of a running joke that he was in "gamer prison" for not showing an Elden Ring trailer at the 2020 Game Awards after the game won "Most Anticipated Game."

History

Geoff Keighley began his professional career at 14 years old, writing jokes for the Cybermania '94 Ultimate Game Awards.^[1] He worked as a host on Comcast's G4 network and was invited to help with programming at the Spike Video Game Awards, which he did from 2006-2013. In 2014, he launched The Game Awards, where he has been an executive host and producer ever since. From 2017-2019, he presented the E3 Coliseum, a live-streaming event that featured interviews with developers and publishers at E3. After E3's 2020 cancellation due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, he launched Summer Games Fest, an E3-like event that helped publishers and developers announce projects.

Online Presence

Keighley is most active on Twitter,^[2] where he has over 1.3 million followers. He also has 36,500 followers on Instagram.^[3] He also posts on Reddit,^[9] where he's done several AMAs.

Doritosgate

A picture of Keighley surrounded by Mountain Dew and Doritos inspired Doritosgate, a controversy in which Eurogamer journalist Rab Florence criticized the image of Keighley as emblematic of the problematic relationship between gaming journalists and gaming publishers. This earned him the nickname Doritopope, leading to him being photoshopped in various memes as the pope with a hat made out of Doritos.

Geoff Keighley In Gamer Prison

At the 2020 Game Awards, Keighley presented the "Most Anticipated Video Game" award, giving it to Elden Ring.

However, no new Elden Ring footage was shown at the event, marking a year and a half since any Elden Ring footage had been shown. This led Twitter user @9_volt_^[4] to post a screenshot from the show in which Keighly is surrounded by red lasers, joking, "geoff keighley in gamer prison after mentioning elden ring on stage without showing any gameplay." The tweet gained over 5,100 retweets and 38,000 likes (shown below).

The tweet led to an ongoing joke in the Elden Ring fandom that Geoff Keighley was in "gamer prison" and would remain there until new Elden Ring footage was shown. On June 3rd, 2021, Redditor Akkyo posted, "It has been set the trial for Geoff Knightley on a request for pardon from the Gamer prison. Date of the trial: June 10th," in /r/EldenRing,^[5] gaining over 770 points (shown below, left). On June 5th, Keighley^[6] tweeted a GIF of a bear attempting to climb out of a crib captioned "I Will Break Free!", suggesting he was in on the meme and was teasing Elden Ring footage (shown below, right).

On June 10th, a gameplay and release date trailer for Elden Ring premiered at Summer Games Fest, leading to joked that Keighley was freed from gamer prison. Twitter user @AmrKamalXP^[7] tweeted an image of Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki freeing Keighley (shown below, left). Keighley himself posted "Am I Free Now?" to /r/EldenRing,^[8] gaining over 13,000 points (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References