Sessler was born in Berkeley, California. He graduated from El Cerrito High School in 1991 and is a graduate of UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He was previously a credit analyst for ABN-AMRO in San Francisco, and an actor on the San Francisco Public-access television show Chip Weigh Magnet Down, which he also helped to make. Sessler admitted that he was grateful to no longer work for Fortune 500 companies, saying in The X-Play Insider’s Guide to Gaming that he was “very sad” about the job. Sessler currently lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife Amber.

Sessler has a younger brother, Jonathan, who appeared as Adam 2.0 in X-Play’s 2005 April Fool’s Day Episode, a “clone” of Adam who claims he’s much better-looking than the original Adam with a “special USB port” (a reference to the Game Boy Advance SP succeeding the original Game Boy Advance).

In addition to co-hosting X-Play, Sessler also appeared semi-regularly on Attack of the Show! as a video game correspondent. On April 1, 2005, Sessler confused many by announcing he was leaving X-Play to host a late night talk show on G4 entitled Meet the Sess. A trailer of the new show aired on X-Play, showing Sessler verbally and physically abusing his guests until they released information about upcoming video games. Despite being extremely over-the-top and obviously fake, many viewers began flooding the G4 forums asking when the show would air, and if Sessler was really leaving X-Play. On several occasions, Sessler has since publicly announced that the show was in fact an April Fool’s Day joke. However, he had a podcast called Sessler’s Soapbox as well as Feedback, where he discussed various gaming topics with other G4 correspondents and guests until late 2011, when he was replaced by Blair Herter.

Some of Sessler’s favorite game series’ are the Halo series for its first-person shooter qualities; the Japanese version of Rez for its Trance Vibrator peripheral; the Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper series for their unique platform qualities. In 2010, Sessler stated his top 5 games of the decade were, in order of release: Deus Ex, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Shadow of the Colossus, Fable II, and Uncharted 2. He also stated that Uncharted 2 was his favorite single player experience of all time. In his review of BioShock Infinite, he stated that it is in the “rarefied company of titles like Half-Life 2 and Uncharted 2”, intimating it to be a new personal favorite. Likewise, he has recently expressed affinity towards titles such as Gone Home, The Last of Us (calling it one of the finest games he’s ever played), and L.A. Noire (referring to it as a “watershed moment in gaming”).

On April 25, 2012, Sessler’s employment contract was terminated by G4TV. No reason was given for his termination. As of October 2012, he is listed as a judge on Syfy’s reality competition Viral Video Showdown.

On November 12, 2012, Sessler announced that he was joining Revision3. He remained with the network as Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of games content at Rev3Games until April 2014, when he announced his departure to “explore new opportunities” within “gaming that help further the medium”.

On April 2, 2014, Adam Sessler announced he was leaving Revision3 and would pursue a career outside video game journalism.

On June 9, 2014, Sessler appeared as a panelist on Spike TV’s coverage of E3 2014.

On June 19, 2015, he was featured as pre-show and post-show host of the Bethesda Game Studios E3 event alongside his past co-worker Morgan Webb.