E3 2008: The Adam Sessler Interview

The Sess takes on E3 - On the last day of E3 I hung out for awhile with my favorite interview subject, G4TV's Adam Sessler. The X-Play co-host was his usual chatty, humorous self. Half of my interview is below, for the rest head over to GamePro Arcade.
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TT: How is this year's E3 now that its back at the LACC?
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AS: For us the benefits of coming to the convention center were huge. All the games are under one roof, where last year we were presented with huge problems because everyone was in hotels and getting everyone over to our stage (in the Barker Hanger) in a timely manner proved to be an impossibility and we didn’t get anywhere near the amount of demos we wanted to as a result of that. When you consider the traffic in Santa Monica during the summer period, then with E3 going on? This year was just nice. Every game that I would consider to be a major title that was in a playable form, on the whole, came to the stage and we showed it off. I just loved being able to broadcast to viewers a game as its being played. It’s the most effective way to get a sense of how you’ll be playing that game and what you’ll be experiencing in that game.
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TT: So no E3 complaints?
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AS: One of the things I noticed, in comparison to last year, is that I saw more of my colleagues. My biggest complaint about last year was that because things were so spread out you pretty much saw what was on your beat and didn’t get to see that much more. So getting that kind of overview of the industry as a whole, even if you’re not writing about something, it’s easier to get that big picture. From where I’m sitting, the industry is doing just fine.
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But what we don’t have is that kind of fanboy excitement in the background. Even though those fanboys really weren’t supposed to be at those E3’s all those years ago, yes, they were there. Now you’re always getting the press’ take on things, and with all due respect to so many of my colleagues, I think there’s a fair amount of jaundice that’s out there and cynicism about things. The fanboys offered a kind of counterweight with their enthusiasm and there is something of value to see a more general consumer’s reaction to something. They’re the true audience of video games because they don’t make games for the press; they make games for the gamers out there.
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TT: Was there anything from the Big 3 press conferences that caught your attention?
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AS: Yeah, Nintendo not having anything for their core audience. I know they’re trying to say that Animal Crossing is for their core audience and it’s a great game, don’t get me wrong and I think the games they showed were cool games but they showed a very limited catalog of titles. They had made statements that they were going to show something for the core gamer and that didn’t seem to manifest itself. Animal Crossing was great, when there were other games coming out. When it came out the first time it was the same year as Wind Waker and Sunshine, it can’t stand out on its own in one year as the one core game. I’m just mystified how Nintendo thought that what they were showing was going to go over well with a western audience and they actually seemed to be surprised by the reaction. Afterward there was some degree of scrambling as we heard successive citations by Miyamoto, and from Reggie and from Iwata that the Zelda and the Mario teams are working on something and then there was the admission that they were working on a Pikmin. It’s almost like they were scrambling to remind people. It’s almost like they completely forgot how vocal, and strong, and passionate those core Nintendo people are. If you pull back from the casual gamers, they won’t go screaming from the rooftops that they’re not getting enough of their games.
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TT: How about Microsoft?
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AS: What really struck me was that they seem to be moving in a direction that might work out better for them. They came in as a hardcore console and now they are branching out. They actually have something of a Trojan horse; they put the console out into the home, primarily maybe for the one gamer in the family. And then there are all these new things coming out for it – with all the success of Xbox LIVE Arcade, with downloadable movies. It suddenly has all these other things that other family members can take advantage of. They seem to moving in a very practice way. A lot of people think they’re just aping what other consoles are doing, but as Morgan Webb likes to say, “Nintendo didn’t invent the avatar.” So on one level it may look like they’re copying but that’s not to say they shouldn’t go in a direction other people have succeeded in. Their trying to branch out and broaden their base, but its funny, when you go online and reach message boards and see that people really seemed irk by casual games and stuff like Rock Band because they feel games have to be this one thing. The thing is these games aren’t making Fallout 3 any less fun, that’s what’s so perplexing to me. Lips is fine for people who like Lips, Fallout 3 is fine for people who like Fallout 3. The two can co-exist very easily.
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