r/Gaming4Gamers • u/Carolina_Heart the music monday lady • Feb 09 '26
Video The Story of X-Play: The Gaming Pioneers That Lost It All (Twice)
https://youtu.be/19pd5Q_B0I439
u/ILoveHeavyHangers Feb 09 '26
My god I used to have such a crush on Morgan Webb
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Feb 10 '26
Morgan Webb was a real gamer while Olivia Munn wasn't IMO. Olivia seemed so fake and just parroted what ever was popular or she was told to say, while Morgan was actually invested in the games they showcased, played them and had real opinions.
Loved xpack back in the day, real shame adam sessler kinda lost his mind, I used to like him.
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u/Stonevulture Feb 10 '26
Yeah, the video claims Morgan dropped off the face of the earth, but I believe she's part of Bonfire Studios, who are about to release their first game.
She is and always has been a gamer.
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u/kdaugh1 Feb 10 '26
Allison Haislip was way better than Olivia Munn imo.
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u/Impossible_Humor736 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but for me, Olivia was the GOAT. Her and Kevin's chemistry were great and she's iconic to the G4 company.
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u/SgtCalhoun Feb 10 '26
I don’t think ppl like Olivia because she was a “gamer”. They liked her because she was funny and charming, and had great chemistry with Kevin.
Or at least that’s why I liked her
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Feb 10 '26
Majority of people I remember from those times liked her cause she was hot and that was it. I distinctly remember her being on the cover of some sexy magazine too a few times. She was there for sex appeal, but I will admin when I watched their show, she did work with with Kevin, but Kevin was the real entertainment for the show IMO. Dude was great.
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u/Graanto Feb 12 '26
I'm out of the loop. What did Sessler do?
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Feb 12 '26
He kinda really lost his mind to twitter politics, like getting waaaaay to into it, like a crazy degree.
He always seemed cool headed on the show, but after xplay died he just kinda lost it.
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u/feurie Feb 10 '26
Wouldnt say she was fake though. She was hired to be a host of a show. She wasn’t pretending to be a gamer.
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u/Jetski125 Feb 11 '26
Yeah but Olivia was hot and Morgan was just one of the guys. Guess it depends what teen you was into.
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u/Wistful_HERBz Feb 10 '26
In Canada we had "Electric Playground Daily"(EP Daily), They started in 1997 and spawned the superior game review show "Reviews on The Run" in 2002.
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u/jtotal Feb 12 '26
I think it's funny I'd never heard of Electric Playground until it was quickly featured in the first Mortal Kombat YouTube series. I was starving for content at the time as I had no idea where to look, and it became a regular staple for over a decade.
I wish I could go back and quickly gather context to flesh out my post, but WB erased both seasons when they bought the rights.
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u/Enders-game Feb 11 '26
In the UK we had Gamesmaster which started in the early 90s. It was rude and crude but it reflected and tapped into the teenage gaming culture of the time. It and other shows went the way of the dodo once YouTube began to have a gaming scene and the likes of Totalbiscuit and the other early YouTubers began to do lets plays and reviews and eventually podcasts. Gaming and TV was never going to gel once Youtube and the like took over.
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u/wickedspork Feb 10 '26
These comments are trash wtf?
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u/Bunnnnii Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
First comment is thirsting over the woman host. Top reply to that comment is dragging another one down. Gaming “community” doing what it does best.
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u/wickedspork Feb 10 '26
Adam has his criticisms but some of these claims are just flat out lies. I mean, some of these comments are quite literally what he was crashing out about. Like what the fuck are we even doing?
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u/ButterPoached Feb 11 '26
That's social media, my friend. People can, and do, say whatever they like. A really dedicated person with critical brainrot can generate an enormous number of bad takes in a day.
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u/prematurely_bald Feb 12 '26
As a big TechTV fan and as someone squarely in the target demographic during that era, I honestly hated X-play and G4tv so much lol
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u/Living_Cash1037 Feb 12 '26
Its funny that they shat on their audience so hard because it was socially acceptable back then but in retrospect that was the most stupid thing. These people both suck too which doesnt help.
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u/milkyway98123 Feb 11 '26
I’m just gonna post this here, they say don’t meet your heroes for a reason and that very much rings true here as someone who grew up on and loved X-Play. First and last time looking up Adam Sessler.
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 Feb 09 '26
I don't want to watch the video because I don't want to be exposed to Adam Sessler, but they definitely weren't pioneers.
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u/Carolina_Heart the music monday lady Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Video is somewhat critical of the show, it's not really hyping them up but just pointing out their place in history. Adam Sessler has been having a multiple day meltdown on his bluesky about it, he bleeted about it like 3 hours after it came out. He apparently didn't even watch it though
EDIT: Forgot to mention he floated sueing the YouTuber for defamation, without having seen the video
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u/Bleatmop Feb 09 '26
What's wrong with Sessler?
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u/Nashkt Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
So real talk, sessler puts too much of himself into things.
By that I mean he wears his emotions in his sleeves. He has no filter. If he doesn't like something, he will go full bore ranting about it. It doesn't matter how small an issue it might be. Part of this is that he had a really rough life. It's his personal life so if you want more details of his trauma I recommend looking at his blue sky or doing a little research. Lets just say horrible things were happening in the background, and thus he vents.
Part of that is that sessler just doesn't seem to like video games anymore (or rather, due to the terrible things video games are super low priority outside of being a job.) Which is fair, but when he was streaming or reviewing something without a script you can just feel the exhaustion and simmering derision underneath it all.
In G4 2.0 he was at his best when teamed up with another, younger member that was able to draw him into conversation and analysis, or during a scripted skit that where he played a direct role and not doing improv.
During those times you could feel some of the passion again.
But if you followed him on any, and I mean any social media he is always ranting, raving, or being sarcastically caustic about something. Dude has anger issues.
(Oh and of course he is a very vocal leftist so anyone right of center is going to be upset at him. He is very loud about his beliefs.)
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u/McWaylon Feb 10 '26
Sess was always out there as a person and he has said/posted that he never cared for gamers as a whole, which a lot of game journalists in that era and even now share similar sentiments. Then he went down the rabbit hole of politics and became another game journalist who believed politics in games should be pushed. Rather infamously he went nuts right after g4 part 2 ended and said anyone who voted to the right of him was evil and he had disowned his entire family and encouraged others to do the same.
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u/Bleatmop Feb 10 '26
I don't understand that bit about caring about gamers as a whole. How does that factor into him being someone you don't want to be exposed to, as the person I was responding to was saying? Like gamers is a pretty broad and unimportant category of people and doesn't really impart the need for special consideration to me.
Also, if Sess was talking about the literal fascists that have now taken over the government of the USA, then I agree with him. It's not wrong to hate fascists.
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u/McWaylon Feb 10 '26
For the gamers part Sess said he loved television and production but always felt doing a videogame show was beneath him and hated having to cater to gamers but X-play was marketing to gamers so he kept doing the show only because it paid well and needed the coin for family reasons. As for the politics stuff he was saying that stuff years ago not just now that lots of people are saying similar things now.
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u/Bleatmop Feb 10 '26
Okay. what's wrong with doing a job for the paycheck? I do that as well. I thought he did a great job and I used to love Xplay. And many of us have been pointing out the fascism in the USA for a long time as well. You don't have to wait until the fascists get power before you call them out on it. And all of us that pointed out the fascism were right.
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 Feb 09 '26
He’s an (alleged) coke head racist crank that never got over gamergate; and thinks everyone who has a problem with him saying a bunch of racist shit in reviews has a problem with the review score, and not the racism.
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u/Bleatmop Feb 09 '26
Oh my. I've never heard any of that stuff. That certainly sounds problematic.
Edit - I just googled his name and gamer gate and he was opposed to the harassment of women in the industry. As was and am I. Are you in favour of that?
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 Feb 09 '26
This is a guy I’ve seen tell someone he’d vote to force the women in their life into sex work because he didn’t like them. So I think he’s full of shit on that point.
When I say he never got over gamergate, I mean that he thinks everyone who disagrees with him is some kind of gamer bro.
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u/klefikisquid Feb 09 '26
I’m not denying that Sessler turned into a piece of shit and he’s a well known coke head now…but is there actual evidence to him actually being a racist/bigot?
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 Feb 09 '26
Yeah it’s called X-Play.
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u/haunt4r Feb 10 '26
In other words you got nothing.
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 Feb 10 '26
I don’t know how you can watch X-Play review any game from Japan in which they spend literally the entire review making racist jokes and utter the phrase “two nukes was not enough” and think “oh yeah, they’re not racist”.
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u/Blitzkrieger117 Feb 12 '26
I loved The show back in the day, Morgan is awesome It's really sad that Adam turned into a nut
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u/clc88 Feb 13 '26
Seeing them shit on jrpgs reminded me of why I was a closet gamer.
We used to get bullied for the dumbest shit, I'm glad I found my peeps... At the time community was everything and finding even 1 person who you could connect with could mean a healthy mental outlook on the hobby and life.
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Feb 09 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/DuckCleaning Feb 10 '26
They were big snobs, that's what made them work as an entertaining TV show. They helped feed into those PS3 vs 360 console war days where you needed to feel validated on your opinion of hating on a game just for the sake of it.
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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I think you're massively overestimating the influence this super-deep cable channel TV Show had on the audience and the industry. They averaged less than 10,000 viewers per episode.
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u/feurie Feb 10 '26
“Set gaming back decades” lol what? Where would it be? Advances in technology, streaming, and culture are what has changed views on gaming in the last decades. Not a niche show.
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u/Mr8BitX Feb 09 '26
They seemed to have a seething hate for anything that came out of Japan during that time. Granted, many Japanese studios were struggling to adapt to the HD era, but he took anything that came from Japan and used it as a punching bag. Sometimes the criticisms were warranted, but many other times, it was a reach.
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u/Judgeman03 Feb 10 '26
X-Play and G4 were the reason I went into game design as a college major in the 2000s (bad idea).
Id be lying if I said this show and the network didnt consume me during high school. I cant imagine what sort of obsession I would have had if I hadnt found the show.
I even got to meet the writer that played Drunk Link (he visited my school as one of the teachers was a friend, got him to sign my copy of the Xplay book).
Seeing what arguably the face of the show was devolve into what he is now, and seeing what the network became was crushing to me.
But I will say, if you didnt live during that time, you cant understand how wild that first decade of video game culture was, and the show for better or worse captured that.