TechTV Scrapbook: Adam Sessler – Experiment Week DTNS 5084  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: TechTV Scrapbook: Adam Sessler – Experiment Week DTNS 5084 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/c6a88a23-2b2a-4696-9bd9-6400dc8927ae ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **How A River Dance Won Him The Job** - Adam Sessler landed the GameSpot TV gig through a chain of social connections and a surprise audition moment. - He improvised a Michael Flatley river-dance bit during the audition and got hired because he committed to it. Transcript: Adam Sessler Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I wasn't working there when the network launched because I've put the story together over decades now. Wow, that makes my knees hurt. Roger Chang So this is a great place to start. How did you get involved with ZDTV? Adam Sessler I cannot tell you how many people have asked me, how can I get a job like yours? Or what advice do you have for me as a youth trying to, you know, forge my path? And it's this doesn't inspire anybody. A series of amazing coincidences occurred. I was not that much of a gamer. I was not even aware that ZDTV existed. I was aware of the Soul Dad O'Brien show, the site that was on MSNBC. It was MSNBC. Roger Chang Yeah, it was MSNBC. Adam Sessler So two things happened. One, before I knew of anything, there was supposed to be a host for the show. He was a former MTV VJ. If you look it up, you'll figure out who it is. I'm not going to say who it was. They couldn't go forward with him because he had done some adult entertainment because he had kind of a Dirk Diggler type of special quality to it. I'll just leave it at that. And so they had to hold off on launching the show and then had to quickly look for a male host. Now, I was working at a bank. Even though I was an English major, I had no aptitude for this job. But I was hanging out with a lot of people. I think for those who are younger and don't know, San Francisco in that part of the 90s was like one of the hippest places you could be. And it was vibrant. It was social. People just knew each other. Roger Chang The term bohemian immediately comes to mind if you were to describe that period of time. If you've never seen the movie with Mike Myers, not the killer from Halloween, but the comedian called So I Married an Axe Murderer, the opening scene kind of describes the zeitgeist Of the city at the time. Adam Sessler Yeah. Yeah. So it was a lively place. You just knew tons of people. That was just how it kind of worked. And of my crew of close friends, there was a woman who was dating a guy whose roommate worked at GameSpot. He was I don't believe the EIC, but the managing editor, his name was Trent. And he knew me through this connection from a cable access comedy show I was doing with these friends. And he thought, oh, this guy might, you know, be able to bring some of the TV thing to the table. So let's have him audition. And so my friend said, oh, go audition. I got there. I remember I was in the lobby of the studio because our studio and the offices were not in the same location in order to save money. And everyone seemed to know each other except for me. And I was like, I don't know. But then lo and behold, the person who was directing the audition, her name was Julie or Julia, also happened to be the woman who ran the public access station in San Francisco that her Show appeared on. So she knew me. Julie Hendricks? Roger Chang Yeah. Ah, Julie Hendricks. Adam Sessler Yes. Yeah. So I go into the audition. There's Prompter. I see Prompter. I've never read Prompor before, but I had a lot of theatrical background, so it wasn't that shocking. So I just kind of went for it, and it worked really well. And then the floor director kind of went like this because he didn't understand what he was being asked to ask of me. And he goes, would you mind river dancing? And I knew what he meant, which is there was a sketch that we had done on our public access show where I was Michael Flatley famous of river dance. And it was supposed to be a Michael Flatley teaching a community college class of river dancing. And all I did was just kind of hold my, my arms really rigid to my side and kick as high as I could. And so that's what I did. And I was told because I did that without any pause, I got the gig. ([Time 0:04:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0be9166c-0381-47bb-919d-d8f78ed838f2)) - **Chasing The Bus On Day One** - Adam missed his first-day bus and chased it to avoid missing a 6 a.m. call time for TV. - He describes early production logistics as double-dicey living in the Lower Haight at dawn. Transcript: Adam Sessler Yeah, because six o'clock, it was a 6 a.m. Call time. I lived in the Lower Haight. Once again, you're going to the Lower Haight as it exists now in San Francisco actually hasn't changed that much. Back then, it was dicey. It was dicey at all times. At 6 o'clock in the morning, well, really 5 o'clock, because that's when I had to get up. It was double dicey. And so I would try to get to the bus stop, but wait at the bus stop for as little as time as possible so I didn't start to draw attention from of the the denizens that had not realized that the Sun was coming up uh and yeah i i i missed my bus and i tried to chase that thing down and i just wanted them i remember trying to scream at them but i have to be on television uh because i thought The television would open doors for me like that like like buses waiting extra you know to indulge me that didn't happen until la but uh yeah were you involved with any sort of the uh developing Roger Chang The the concept of what the show was like what ([Time 0:09:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/67cf3115-bd1f-4013-b111-5932f022f81e)) - **Gameplay Footage Is The Star** - Adam realized B-roll (game footage) is the core of game TV, not the host. - He tailored pacing and clip length because viewers tuned in primarily to see gameplay. Transcript: Adam Sessler There was one other show that was on and that was Electric Playground, Tommy Tallarico and Victor's show, which was produced out of Canada. So it was kind of, I had to learn the basics of television while creating an absolutely unprecedented form of television, because the focus had to be on the games, on what, you know, we Would call it B-roll. You know, that's the common term for stuff that isn't the host talking. But, and it's called B-roll because it's not supposed to be as important as your A-roll, which is your host, your live action, like the important stuff. But the B-roll is actually the most important element when you're doing TV about games, because that's what people are tuning in for. The part that's just kind of representative of what you're talking about. They really weren't there to see me. They were probably there to see all of my co-hosts way more than they were to see me. But first and foremost, they were there to see the games. And figuring out just how long you could let one clip of video game go before you had to cut to something else was one of those things I definitely contributed to. But at the time, in terms of the most basic content, it was previews, it was news, it was reviews. I was stuck on doing the previews because I think that the presumption was I could do the least amount of damage doing that. Reviews, on the other hand, as I was to learn, you know, for all the successive years, that's the gold. That's why people tune in. And that drives about a third of Internet arguments. ([Time 0:11:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/887a33d0-c9bb-4e17-bb32-3b6d41fdb23c)) - **The Grind Behind A 90‑Second Segment** - Producing a 90-second game segment required hours of gameplay capture and heavy editing. - Adam recorded often two hours of raw play to assemble short, interesting clips for broadcast. Transcript: Adam Sessler I don't think the – I kind of knew there was going to be a lot. It wasn't just DV magic, but the banality of it, I wasn't prepared for. It kind of goes back to like just the idea of B-roll and just having to collect so much footage just for maybe a 90-second segment. I would have to play a game, assuming there was a game that I could play to get the footage from. You wanted at least two hours worth of playtime of recording you, of just raw footage of you playing to get 90 seconds worth of clips that were interesting looking. And that was kind of the hard work. I know nobody else out there was like, oh, my God, you had to play games. Playing an unfinished PC game and then trying to record it with equipment that was available in 1998, I mean, that was the other thing. Trying to get images off of a computer and onto digital videotape was one of the most secure. It was horrifying. Roger Chang I mean, especially because broadcast – remember, we're not dealing with HD TV. We're dealing with the old school like NTSC. You needed some really clever workarounds to get it recorded. And this is the thing. Unlike video game consoles, which are default NTSC devices, PCs run at a different resolution. So you had to set the games that's it was so crazy what did what to set what did a typical work day for you look like did you just walk into the office sit down punch out a bunch of emails go to The capture station play games get your two hours of video and then sit back at your desk grab lunch write scripts and then go down to the studio to record? Or was it like... Adam Sessler You know, that's a... Yes and no. Remember, we only recorded once a week, and so rarely in the studio. So we recorded early Friday mornings. But the rest of the week was getting all those segments so you know you would record me on those friday mornings of going hello welcome to game spot tv oh wow daikatana is coming out we got Some new footage of daikatana let's check it out and then the thing that would happen after the flames came up because that was our transition because it was the 90s with extreme and flames. That stuff was really the bulk of the show. So the rest of the week was putting that together, which was playing the game, writing the script, recording, doing the VO for the script, and taking those chunks of gameplay and then Trying to slap it on to my VO and marrying it all together so that you had a two to three minute piece of content that you were going to be tossing to on that Friday or at the very least in the Finished product of the show. And that really was the bulk of the work. ([Time 0:18:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb6ff639-ad47-47cc-9110-61665e5c3526)) - **Conventions Proved The Show's Reach** - Adam felt recognition grow slowly until conventions like Star Wars Celebration and CES made the audience visible. - Those events proved the show had cultural reach beyond its small cable placement. Transcript: Adam Sessler It probably was years before that happened. But I do remember it was while we were tech TV, went to Star Wars Celebration, I believe. If it wasn't that, it was Gen Con. Both at the time were being held in Indianapolis at their new convention center. Went there and I couldn't go more than five feet without somebody saying Adam Sessler, Adam Sessler, Adam Sessler. And that had never happened before. Something's working here. And that was really cool because it really – it was tough. I don't know how you felt about it, Roger, but it was somewhat tough back when we first started because everyone was working so hard at ZDTV, Tech TV. But there was no sense of reaction from our immediate world. You went out on the weekend or in the evenings and they're like, what's it called? Tech TVs, EDTV. It just, it had very limited pull as time went on in the internet.com thing started to grow. At least within that world, we had some, some currency, but outside of that, it was, it was, it was kind of nothing. You had to go to Vegas. Actually, that's the other time. The CES. Roger Chang Oh, yes. ([Time 0:27:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1cd08a37-46a0-40b2-8da4-cffb9db8b160)) - **Live TV Changed How Games Were Presented** - Live coverage (like broadcasting E3 press conferences) injected immediacy and reshaped how companies produced trailers. - Adam calls that live-broadcast experience the 'money shot' that changed G4's E3 coverage. Transcript: Adam Sessler I would say the most important thing that happened was 2001. And for those of you out there, what happened with tech TV is with the creation of tech TV and Paul Allen's investment in it came the demand for tech live. One of the most quixotic creations in all of television, which was nine hours of live TV all about technology, and treating it like CNN. But there was just a ridiculous amount of money that was thrown at this issue, whether or not it was wise. And what brought with that was some insanely talented people who wanted to get out of kind of the daily grind of local television, maybe CNN, something like that. And I was suddenly being used a lot more, and I was kind of understanding television production from that far more immediate, like we got to get something done for today and how live TV Might potentially work. And then as E3 was rolling around that year, I don't remember. I think it was my idea, but maybe one of the people on Tech Live got this bug in my head. I wanted to try to broadcast one of the press conferences live from E3 because they were going to be announcing both the Xbox and the GameCube. I decided that the GameCube was the better one because Nintendo, people love Nintendo. I had a better relationship with Nintendo at the time. And what happened from there was because of Nintendo wasn't like, they were like, okay, we guess this sounds good. No one had thought about that before, that these things that used to be very private, just the press and maybe some special guests were in those audiences. And they tended to have a funkier, more informal quality. Nintendo's like, okay, maybe we're going to change our act. And then we discovered that it was being done at the basement of the Biltmore Hotel, where we couldn't get a signal out. And so we had to come up with this insane jerry-rigged uh process to be able to tell them what camera to switch to we had to do that over a rotary dial phone uh but you know going it was it was Insane but it was so much fun and i love the like okay we have a crisis we have to fix it i was doing that with ryan vance who was a long time executive producer of the show and it was like suddenly This sense of immediacy and purpose and excitement suddenly hit me and it was i i had the bug before but that was like shooting just raw heroin into my veins and i'm like i want to do more Of this like everything i was just telling you about like sort of you know we would work on all the segments for the show that we would kind of have this less than exciting, you know, session To create the week show. Suddenly I was like, I was getting the money shot of television right there doing it live. ([Time 0:35:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01e6601a-dfbd-4ac7-a3f1-bf6638f1a998)) - **Games As Cultural Bellwether** - Video games have led cultural and technological shifts beyond entertainment. - Gaming trends often foreshadow broader social and tech movements, sometimes in troubling ways. Transcript: Adam Sessler I don't think I ever thought that in the moment. But wow, in retrospect, I mean, the one thing I know now is so much, and this isn't just technologically, but culturally, that video games has been sort of leading the charge for good Or ill. I can assure you, you know, like where VR, you know, it was going to start with games, you know, and I actually still believe that we're going to see, like, VR is going to become commonplace Not in games, but in types of surgery, things like that. That's out there. But it has to start with games first because that's how you subsidize it. You turn it into a commercial property. Culturally, I hate to say it, but, you know, Gamergate, the horrible sort of hate campaign that occurred in 2014, that was, I think, for people that went through that, that was a precursor Of the interesting conservative environment we currently find ourselves in. You know, you see a lot of these bellwethers in games, but you don't realize it as much until after the fact. But it was regardless, even though it was still in the world of games, it was exciting because we kind of knew that games were on the ascent. Movies and television were on the descent. And so there was that sense that even though it was only within this world of video games, we knew that world of video games was expanding. ([Time 0:40:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b9021aa6-2c60-4cc4-a9d9-6dcc6b304c76)) - **Talk To Adults, Use Humor As Bridge** - Do not patronize your audience; write for adults and they will learn quickly. - Use humor to bridge hardcore and casual viewers instead of alienating either group. Transcript: Adam Sessler So we were, you know, it's that balancing act of, do you talk to the hardcore? And a lot of people do believe, and there's good reason for this, that if you talk to the hardcore, you're never going to get any casual people. Because it's like walking into a room and everyone's talking Latin. Like, you know, if you don't know games and you're suddenly around a bunch of gamers, it's weird and alienating and probably smelly. Whereas if you go really casual, you're never going to have those hardcore. And once again, with that bridge of the comedy, I think that kind of eased both groups in. ([Time 0:46:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a33f8a05-510f-491e-a787-d0e101ff7920)) - **Be Real Yet Practiced On Camera** - Be authentic but highly practiced; polish performance to feel spontaneous. - Train language and delivery so authenticity reads as skilled presence for viewers. Transcript: Adam Sessler Yeah, there's a lot. And the second half of that, you know, sort of that sincerity and coming across as a real person, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have performance skills. The way that I think it works, and the best people who are out there, it's kind of like John Coltrane. You know, jazz greats. It sounds like John Coltrane is, you know, for a Love Supreme, is just making it up right there in the spot. But that's the art. He knows exactly what he's doing for the duration of that performance. He knows every note that's about to come, but it sounds like it's happening right there in the moment, and that's what makes it so electric for the audience. That's what the best people are doing online, and there's very, very few of them. You know, I play a lot of video games still, and I'm old. I don't sometimes feel like figuring out, like, what I'm doing wrong when I'm fighting a boss in Elden Ring, and so I'll go look for a video, and I have to turn the VO off. It's just like, ah, that's not how you do it. You know, yes, you're being your authentic self, but you need to have a more refined, authentic version of yourself. Um, it's, you need to, not everyone can do it. ([Time 0:54:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/74c30cf8-e3f0-4831-afc4-ea23e4f723a5)) - **Building AI To Read Gamer Sentiment** - Adam founded an AI startup to analyze game conversations and gauge real sentiment in real time. - The tool tracked Twitter and Reddit to help companies see when audiences were genuinely upset versus organized mobs. Transcript: Adam Sessler Very little. I do want to write a book. Rev3, I did the consulting thing for, you know, everyone does that. And then eventually, I actually, I founded an AI company that it was not producing AI. This is before the AI everything. But I wanted to, it was kind of my mea culpa to the game industry, where I wanted to figure out if there was a way to aggregate all the conversations that we're having about video games and Be able to break them down by topic per game, and then also teach an AI that could actually gauge the sentiment. So many game companies are, and not just game companies, but other entities out there are so susceptible to the all caps guys and the organized astroturfing hate mobs, and they will Change their policies. There's something happening right now in games where some adult content is getting pulled from Steam and itch.io uh over like like one of these mobs yeah yeah and one of the things is It's because once they start happening you can't your brain goes if one person is saying it to me that must mean they represent a hundred thousand people and we really don't know that To be a fact and i wanted to answer that question. And so the AI part was training an AI to understand how people talk about video games, which means a lot of profanity and a lot of profanity that could be a positive or a negative. Also, only within the realm of video games would the term headshot actually denote something good rather than something horrible. And so we had to create a very specific AI that could ingest tons of Twitter, tons of Reddit, and then go, okay, with regard to your game, they're talking about these topics. They think this is really good and this is really bad. And we did it virtually real time. So we could tell even during a press conference when they were losing the audience and when they had them. Did that for a few years. As with all companies, there was drama. But eventually it got purchased, and it's allowed me to kind of slow my life down to a crawl where I talk about writing a memoir, probably about a lot of the stuff we talked about on this. ([Time 0:57:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/288e73f7-7654-4ea0-8295-3e657ef53123))