Trixel Diary | The T-Games Merge

Hello all, Billy here! I'm a co-owner of Trixel Creative (along with Halston), and I will be walking you through how the 'modern-day' Trixel Creative, LLC came to be following the merge with T-Games back in 2019.  For those of you that have followed Trixel Creative for some time, reading the name 'T-Games' may have fired up some neurons that have, over the years, collected some dust.

2011: The Creation of T-Games

For those of you that are unaware, T-Games was a gaming team extremely similar in nature to Trixel Creative that was founded on April 27, 2011. It was originally intended to be a 'log-in' system for a third-party IP, but due to having to revert to back-ups due to an unfortunate glitch, the only element that survived was the logo.

T-Games Promotional Image from 2011

The logo then became a symbol I put on all of my creations in several UGC games, eventually also becoming a symbol for others' creations too.

2014: T-Games and Trixel Studios Partnership

Way back in ancient times, aka July 2013, then-T-Games member Chunky104 published a level series in a third-party UGC title under the T-Games name. To help promote the series and offer insight into the development process to fans of the series, he created a website. It was this very website that Trixel Creative founder Halston reached out to T-Games in hopes of a partnership between Trixel Creative (then called Trixel Studios) and T-Games.

The Evergreen Park website as it looked in January 2021.

Amazed that he'd even found the website in the first place (we hadn't even advertised it - something which we probably should have done in hindsight), we happily accepted his offer. From then onwards, Trixel Creative and T-Games worked closely with each other. We would re-tweet each other on Twitter, offer resources, promotional content, outsource members, and provide feedback on elements in development.

One of the first project collaborations between T-Games and Trixel Creative was actually promotional content by T-Games for a never-before-revealed Trixel Creative project called Isolated Darkness. Isolated Darkness was planned to be a casual third-person adventure game that saw the player exploring a deserted island after crashing their airplane. Unfortunately, Isolated Darkness was a bite bigger than we could chew at the time, and thus wasn't even revealed before it was scrapped in 2014.

2015: Annual Tri-Expo Livestream Events

After a year-and-a-half of collaboration between T-Games and Trixel Creative, we eventually created Tri-Expo in 2015.

The original Tri-Expo promotional image from 2015.

Tri-Expo 2015 was the first proper 50/50 collaboration between T-Games and Trixel Creative, with the first event taking place on October 18, 2015. At that time, the stream was simply about the two teams and the content that we had lined up. Of course, this is completely different from what the event became to be, with its primary focus shifting towards the creations of the wider community until its official discontinuation in 2020. The turn-out wasn't too high for the first three years, but these events solidified the closeness between the two teams and our shared common goal.

The final Tri-Expo event, Tri-Expo 2019, took place after the T-Games merge, but had an estimated viewership of 3,100, with the help of developer Media Molecule hosting the event on their Twitch channel!

A Tri-Expo promotional image from 2019.

2018: Talks of A Merge Begin

By the time 2018 rolled around, T-Games and Trixel Creative were inseparable. Both team founders had become members of each other's team, and would actively work within them. After much chatter, it eventually hit us - something that was sitting in plain sight all this time - why were we separate? We could be collaborating to create one amazing thing - so why weren't we?

T-Games Promotional Wallpaper from 2017

There had been several casual chats over the years about a potential merging of the two teams (with myself even creating mock-ups for a new team), but this was different. Whereas conversations before stemmed from a 'what if?' scenario, this time the conversations were more serious and stemmed from 'why not?'. Additionally, this final talk took place at a time when both teams wanted to expand their platforms beyond third-party content (a massive undertaking), so the timing was perfect.

A concept I sent to Halston proposing a merged entity titled 'T', dated March 28, 2016.

We discussed whether a brand new team should be created, or continue one team with other being absorbied into it. Either way, we agreed to split ownership 50/50. Ultimately we decided to stick with the Trixel Creative name because of the established online presence as well as the unique brand name that allowed for relevant top results on websites - something which was not the case with T-Games.

The most important discussion to be had (for me) was "what would happen to T-Games' existing content?" We decided that all supported T-Games creations (including installments in the Traffic Panic! and Evergreen Park! series, as well as MusicPlayer and Trinity Servers) were to be rebranded as Trixel Creative. All non-supported creations were to keep the T-Games title via a Trixel Creative subsidiary titled T-Games Legacy.

You may not have heard of T-Games Legacy, and this is because it was agreed that it would be an unadvertised aspect of Trixel Creative that would be managed solely by myself. It remains as such today, and you can visit the website at https://t-gameslegacy.weebly.com. It only remains active as a way of continuing ownership over T-Games' outdated creations.

The T-Games Legacy website in January 2022.

2018: The News Breaks, The Merge Begins

It was on September 28, 2018 that we publicly announced that the two teams would begin merging, with T-Games effectively shutting down by December 31, 2018 (though this would later be revised to January 1, 2019).

You can read the full official closure/merge statement here.

The merge has proved to be extremely effective: several projects such as the massive expansion of Trixel Creative, the introduction of trixel+, the legitimisation of our website, and the franchising of Restitched would be so much different if it weren't for the merge.

Of course, now that Trixel Creative has officially sunset all of our third-party content and closed the Trinity Servers program, what was T-Games (and Trixel Creative pre-2020) is now but a distant memory. Alas, it's always nice to look back and see the road that led us to where we are today.

Trixel Creative Today

And there we go! That is how I, Billy, became a co-owner of Trixel Creative. We've since become a whole different team and established ourselves as an LLC - a story for another time! We hope you enjoyed this Trixel Diary as much as we enjoy writing them - it's always fun to dig into our archives!

See you in the next edition of Trixel Diary!