Ripten Interviews Adam Sessler about Crazy Killzone 2 Fanboys, Fable 2, and the Cult of Exceptionalism

Fanboys, they approach leisure activities with religious zeal and defend their console of choice with dogmatic ferocity.  Fanboys have had “gentlemanly discussions” with some of the writers here at Ripten, more or less, but no one fought it out with them like X-play’s Adam Sessler. I caught up with Adam to discuss Killzone 2, gaming journalism, and the fanboy plague that corrupts message boards and comment sections like The Flood.  Oops, Halo reference, here they come…

When X-play gave Killzone 2 a sterling five out of five, Xbox 360 fanboys and, inexplicably, PS3 fanboys complained.  The Xbox faithful said it could never be that good and the PS3 faithful somehow accused Sessler of everything from giving out the high score begrudgingly to attributing Killzone 2′s high score to Microsoft payoffs (wha?).  Sessler responded by picking out individual posters and verbally grounding them into paste in his Sessler Soapbox.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, please, clear the children from the room and check out his Samuel L. Jackson-scale rant.

Zungre:  Hey, what’s up Adam, thanks for taking the time to talk to us, man.

Sessler:  No problem at all.

Zungre:  I really enjoy your Sessler’s Soapboxes, especially the recent ones about Killzone 2 and I just wanted to ask you, in your time in game journalism, has fanboy hostility ever been this bad?  Is it really at an all time high?

Sessler:  Oh, I would actually say it’s at an all time high.  I mean, there was always some stuff like that back in the old days, but it seemed to be at least incorporated into a grounded discussion about the merit of the consoles or the games that were exclusive to those consoles.  Where as now it seems to be fully disassociated from that, and it’s kind of, “I bought this and I need to justify it to myself”.  I mean, obviously, all the comments themselves are incredibly obnoxious, but it’s more that how much space it takes up on our message boards and other people’s message boards, that, you know, people who would like to maybe use it to foster an interesting discussion and enlighten themselves really can’t get in there because these people just pop in constantly.

Zungre:  So, it’s almost ruining entire message boards.

Sessler:  Yeah, I mean, I’ve always joked that the Internet serves only to give voice to those I didn’t want to hear from [laughs].  I mean, it’s supposed to be an area where you can have interesting discussions of ideas on topics and you don’t have to use the mainstream media, but unfortunately it does allow for too many voices to get in there and it’s just, so juvenile [laughs].

Sessler opening a can of verbal whoop ass.

Zungre:  I wonder why is it that in most message boards and a lot of comments that you see on youtube, that everything seems so middle school?  Why does that voice or that vibe seem to be dominating instead of logical, normal discussion?

Sessler:  Obviously, there’s the role of anonymity, but I like how you said middle school because what we all don’t know is what age these people are.  I would like to think that they’re ten years old given the lack of intelligence that’s demonstrated.  I think it’s a mixture of young people who think that’s how you voice an argument or they’re not able to carefully construct one and other people who just, you know, I think there’s a lot of people out there that I think are just spoilers.  And I think there’s also some, and they’re definitely on our message boards, who are just borderline pathological.  There’s one guy on our boards who continually posts this conspiracy theory about who owns us, especially from back in the Paul Allen Tech TV days, and somehow that means we’re owned by Microsoft.

And it’s not so much that he states that, but that he states that continually and just reposts the exact same thing to the point where it’s a little disconcerting for me because this guy clearly doesn’t have much of life outside of that and seems so fixated on people and things he has no control over and has decided they’re his mortal enemy.

Zungre:  Yeah, in your video response to the Killzone 2 comments, you seemed to be most serious about those posts that, like you said, were trying to impugn your integrity as a journalist.

Sessler:  Why I use the “do you fuck your mother” line is because, obviously we, and I’m talking about myself and my colleagues on various sites, you yourself, we do pride ourselves in taking our job seriously and respecting the necessary objectivity in reporting and the lack of, obviously, taking money when we do these reviews, that to charge that from someone, and from the same position of anonymity I wanted to put it in the context of, that’s a very, very serious statement to make.  And I know they’re doing it whimsically, and they probably don’t understand that, whimsy or not, that’s an absolutely inappropriate thing to say, just as much as, you know, implying that you have familiar relations with your own mother.

Ripten, alone, burns thousands of surplus dollars from Microsoft payoffs every month. We call it the “Rip Ten Thousand” because we’ve got so much money, we can make jokes like that in a recession.

Zungre:  Right, right.  Hey, I wanted to ask you about one thing.  I saw your most recent Soapbox and you talked about how multiplayer sometimes takes away from assets for developing a good single player game, which i completely agree with.  I mean, I played Stranglehold multiplayer online and it was the saddest day of my life.

Sessler:  Yeah [laughs].

Zungre:  But, you know, I wanted to ask you about that because in the review of Killzone 2 you guys said that Killzone 2 could have really used some co-op.  And I wanted to know how you felt about that and give you the opportunity to justify that comment.

Sessler:  Yeah, just so you know, I was not the one who personally reviewed Killzone 2, it was Mr. Sark, Scott Robinson on our staff, and I don’t think he was wrong in doing that [laughs].  More or less, what he was trying to say is that, obviously the game got a 5 out of 5, [and] the game by its nature would be perfect for co-op.  And that some of the weaknesses that were in the single player game, which I personally do see, which is not the best pacing that kind of makes all the set pieces so memorable, could have been bolstered by allowing also for co-op, because the combat of the game is so much fun.  And I think that we all know that when you’re playing with someone else in a single player game, story kind of takes a back seat.  Sometimes in reviews you’re talking to the audience, sometimes you’re kind of talking to the developer as well, as in “be aware of this.”

I’m happy you brought that one up because what precipitated in some of the rant about the Killzone 2 review, and the postings on it, is that it was very evident that people went to our site, they saw the score and they looked at the pros and cons, yet didn’t read the body.  So, in the Cons it said “could use Co-op” or “No Co-op” as if somehow that was a really serious point that we were trying to make and no, if you read the body of the text it’s far more a nuanced statement that’s made with regard to co-op in the game.

You have to fight the spider-Nazi looking Hellghast alone, soldier.

Zungre:  Right, right.  And you know what, I’m so glad you talked about that because I remember one of the comments you really made fun of was the guy who said that Gears 2 got a 9.5 and Killzone 2 got a 9.4.  And it just made me remember, I think it was, “Innovation vs. Innumeration“, your soapbox where you talked about just this thing about numbered scores and about how you don’t like them.  I’d like you to talk about that a little bit, and where can we move as journalists to get away from numbered scores?  Because personally, I don’t like the 10 point scale, I don’t think it’s good at what it does.

Sessler:  No, and to be clear, I don’t think numbered scores period are good.  I would even say that on the show.  If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have numbered scores because that would force you to pay attention to the either video or the written review we have available.  [laughs] I mean, people work hard to put those things together and I can’t stand the fact that no one pays attention until they hear that number.  Obviously, I prefer the five point scale as opposed to the ten point scale, because I think anything below a five just reads as a crappy game, so it’s kind of, you know, pointless.

Zungre:  Oh, totally agree.

Sessler:  If I had to do a numbered score and, once again could have my druthers, I would probably do a four point scale because i don’t like the 3 [laughs].

Zungre:  Oh really?

Sessler:  Yeah.  But the fact is, the reason why we still have the scale the way that we do, obviously we’ve had the five point scale for a while and to make a change like that is a very, very difficult thing to do, because you’ve trained your readership or your viewership on that scale.  I also think that for all websites, we can’t move away from the numbers because, unfortunately, we are still businesses, and we would hurt ourselves if we didn’t have that easy access evaluation of a game, because as I said earlier, so many people won’t read it.  We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Almost anyone out there would just as soon not have the numbered scores, but until the population is willing to educate itself and actually look at these reviews as something that’s more an evaluation and discussion about the game rather than some sort of consumer product, good or bad evaluation, I don’t think it’s going to change.  More or less, we need smarter readers [laughs].

Zungre:  [Laughs]  You know what, I really do get upset about some of the comments that pop up on Ripten and some of the other gaming sites that I see.  You talked about this thing called the “Cult of Exceptionalism,” and Adam, I have to say, I absolutely love that term, and I had never heard it before you said it.

Sessler:  I made it up. [laughs]

Zungre: [Laughs] No but it seriously is fantastic because it gave me a term for something I had been seeing and it’s just the thing that happens on the Internet so much where either a game is the most amazing thing that ever happened and it fathered your children or it completely sucks and it’s completely devoid of any worth.  So why do you think this happens, why do you think people are caught up in this idea?

Sessler:  I think it has a lot to do with the media and I think if you wanted to see where you really see that practiced would be in national politics.  When you see bills or politicians.  I mean just look at the Stimulus Bill, that while there is actual cooperation on what’s happening between the Republicans and the Democrats right now, the statements that are being made are, “This bill is completely evil, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad.” And what really happens on that political sphere really does infiltrate other areas of discourse.

And just the media itself.  It’s not able to convey news in a nuanced style because they’re afraid they’re not going to be able to hold your attention.  So it’s either “this is the worst thing that’s ever happened” or “this is the best thing that’s ever happened.” Or “this is going to kill you” or “this is going to save your life,” and when it comes down to evaluations of cultural products it’s only “this is the best thing ever” or “this is the worst” and there can’t be a middle ground that also justifies that this is still worth your attention and your interest.

Zungre: Right, and I see a lot of games that are really good games, maybe not the best games, that are swept up in that undertow of that Cult of Exceptionalism, like you said.  And they don’t even get noticed.

Sessler:  We’re saying “this is really worth your time, it’s just not the best.”  That’s all [laughs].

Oh, Legendary, I know you weren’t as bad as everyone said…

Zungre:  And we’re so obsessed with the best, I think, in America, so it’s just very sad.  But hey, really quick before we finish up here, I just wanted to ask you some questions, journalist to journalist.  You’ve been doing this for how many years?  About ten years now?

Sessler:  About ten and a half.  Yeah, it will be eleven in July.

Zungre:  Ok, now what’s something that you’re really excited for?  In the arc of the gaming industry that you’ve seen, what’s something that your really excited for in the future of gaming?  Where do you see us going?

Sessler:  That’s a good question.  Two of the games that really stand out to me from last year are Fable 2 and Fallout 3.  Because they’re deep, rich, articulated worlds.  There’s such a sense of, who was designing this, they know so much more about the world than even what’s present in the game.  And that, you really feel that you’re in somebody else’s imagination.  And I’m seeing more and more of that.  I don’t know, to me that’s an absolute thrill and I think that those two games are the beginning of a sense of really getting in somebody else’s imaginative playground, where you just literally lose yourself.

Even when I was reviewing Fable 2…  Usually when you do a review you have an eye towards “I gotta get this done because I need to get it up by the time the embargo lifts.”  But in [Fable 2] I kept on catching myself just dithering around just enjoying all the small details.  The same thing is happening in Fallout 3, which luckily, I chose not to review because I wanted to indulge myself as much as possible in that one [laughs].

Zungre: Very cool.  What’s something you’re glad we’ve left behind?

Sessler:  Well we haven’t completely left swimming levels behind, but that’s one thing [laughs].

One thing which we are leaving behind is the abject sadism that was in a lot of video games. I’m obviously a big defender for violence in video games, in the fact that it is an adult medium, but I also think that just justifying the fact that there should be violence in video games isn’t the right thing.  Still, there needs to be utilization.  I look to a game like Soldier of Fortune, which I found to be just abhorrent in every stretch of the imagination.  It almost encouraged you to do horrible things to other human beings.  There is much less of that.  There’s still very violent games, but it seems to work within the context and rationale of the world that has been presented inside of the game.

This is one of the only gaming images that instantly makes me feel anxious and confused.

Zungre: Right, ok.  Hey Adam thank you so much for the interview.

Sessler:  No problem at all, thank you very much, I really appreciate how you pay attention to the recent soapboxes that I worked on [laughs].  Good luck with the website.

If you’d like to see more of Adam check out X-Play and the rest of the always insightful Sessler’s Soapbox.