🌟 Internet Famous Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

[Oliver Onions]

The things that I like will not be the same as other people, the things that I don't like will not be the same as other people; so why should I listen to other people's reviews or thoughts?

I'm genuinely not being rude when I ask this, but trying to understand your perspective: are you autistic? From a lot of your posts I've noticed you seem to have an extremely rigid worldview. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or anything, you just take very strong stances on relatively mundane things and it fascinates me.

Personally, I enjoy hearing other people's thoughts on games, movies, music etc, even if I disagree with them....especially if I disagree with them, in fact. I think it's interesting that two people can experience the same piece of media and come away with wildly different takes; that some people (me) think Blade Runner is the greatest sci-fi movie ever made and others think it's the most boring pile of shit imaginable.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

-So many people (including myself) grew tired of content complaining about games and wanted something either more nuanced or more positive / optimistic; Jim's had the same few pet causes since 2013ish and he almost never talks about stuff like higher hardware prices, retro-gaming, modding, game preservation or technical issues in games. And when he does he mentions those topics and ties them into ranting about his pet causes again ie game runs badly = crunch bad / greedy publisher bad, game preservation = fuck Konami, etc.

I always say that there is a market out there for "publisher bad" content but one of the real issues with Jim is that his format has been essentially unchanged for over a decade and especially now when there are so many more competitors and a greater demand for immediate content its a real handicap, Jim could do the same shitck he does now in videos a quarter of the length (or even the same length its not like there is huge amounts of work put into them) and releasing them as stuff happens so they're actually topical.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

I always say that there is a market out there for "publisher bad" content but one of the real issues with Jim is that his format has been essentially unchanged for over a decade and especially now when there are so many more competitors and a greater demand for immediate content its a real handicap, Jim could do the same shitck he does now in videos a quarter of the length (or even the same length its not like there is huge amounts of work put into them) and releasing them as stuff happens so they're actually topical.

Totally agree, although I don't think shorter helps him. I feel like extreme long form content has taken a lot of the "Just bitching about something" space - People will evidently watch multi hour analysis of fallout 3 that goes down to every individual quest line and design decision just to hammer home how much they believe Bethesda mishandles the franchise, or whatever else the grounds of criticism or praise are.

By comparison, Jims stuff is unfocused, stale, and surface level. People don't really want to watch videos to get a twitter post worth of depth on something these days.

 

[femboy fart huffer]

I'm genuinely not being rude when I ask this, but trying to understand your perspective: are you autistic? From a lot of your posts I've noticed you seem to have an extremely rigid worldview. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or anything, you just take very strong stances on relatively mundane things and it fascinates me.

Personally, I enjoy hearing other people's thoughts on games, movies, music etc, even if I disagree with them....especially if I disagree with them, in fact. I think it's interesting that two people can experience the same piece of media and come away with wildly different takes; that some people (me) think Blade Runner is the greatest sci-fi movie ever made and others think it's the most boring pile of shit imaginable.

Nah I'm just talking from experience. In general the idea of autism is mostly pointless anyway, outside of people like chrischan who are autistic to a life ruining level it's pointless as a diagnosis. Autism is something that can be both learned and unlearned, everyone is born with autistic traits, normal people simply overcome the negative traits through puberty. There is not one person on this planet that you can't cherrypick their actions or views and diagnose them as autistic. Is Jim autistic for how easy it is to coopt him into a political stance? For being scared of changing? For his wrestling shit? More importantly are we all equally as autistic for caring? Most of what I say here will probably come across as some sort of autistic, that's the nature of saying anything online, especially on a forum like this, people posting here are (mostly) never going to change their views on anything. People come here because they have something to say about Jim or someone else that can't be said elsewhere. I'm here because I do have pretty rigid views on certain things, and those views don't align with certain companies or government's desires, I come here because I will not change my views on certain things, I will instead change who I express said views with.

I enjoy listening to other people's opinions on things too. I'll still listen to game reviews and shit, I'm just not using them as a way of actually judging if I should buy something. I'll listen to people's opinion on games, it's just not going to change my opinion. Most of the time I'm watching that sort of content for entertainment not for an opinion. In general if I like a game enough to watch reviews and all that sort of shit I like the game enough to play it myself and form my own opinions. I've listened to a lot of people talk about borderlands both positively and negatively, but that doesn't form my opinion, my own experiences do and nothing else. If I'm reviewing a game then I'm reviewing it from my perspective, I don't care if other people agree or not because it's not their experience or opinion. If I think something is a 5/10 then it's a 5/10, it doesn't matter if other people say it's a 10/10 or a 1/10. My opinion is insular from other's, unlike Jim who will review a game based on how other people might like it considering accessibility and all that shit.

What I'm saying is there is absolutely nothing autistic about taping a gasmask to a femboy's asshole and larping like it's first world war.

 

[The Scorpion]

I used to put a lot of value into game reviews. I wrote my own for a while and I think I was pretty good at it, for a while I wanted to do it professionally. Kind of still would but we all know what a shitshow games journalism is. I just really liked talking about games. I was never a huge fan of review scores either, especially those that use a hundred scale and not a ten. One thing that puts me off about them now is how hard is to stay relevant with them; games can evolve so much after release now that you'd have to constantly update and rewrite them to remain accurate.

 

[Baguette Child]

His names fucking familiar and I recognize the face, but I can't place it on where. Did this guy do something years back that woulda graced the internet? Its gonna bother me until I remember.

He loves him "some chicks with dicks". It was a shortlived meme for a little while, courtesy of people like bearing.

https://youtu.be/j4fd8F21m10

 

[Catboy Ranch Dressing]

He loves him "some chicks with dicks". It was a shortlived meme for a little while, courtesy of people like bearing.

Oh holy shit, Steve Shives. That's a name I haven't heard since I was one of those cringelords who unironically watched Bearing back in 2017.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

Totally agree, although I don't think shorter helps him. I feel like extreme long form content has taken a lot of the "Just bitching about something" space - People will evidently watch multi hour analysis of fallout 3 that goes down to every individual quest line and design decision just to hammer home how much they believe Bethesda mishandles the franchise, or whatever else the grounds of criticism or praise are.

By comparison, Jims stuff is unfocused, stale, and surface level. People don't really want to watch videos to get a twitter post worth of depth on something these days.

The difference between Jim's inane rambling and the multi-hour "retrospective" videos is the the latter tend to have substances, its incredibly autistic and arguably too in-depth but there is something there. A JQ episode has roughly 10-15 minutes of actual content and even in that he often repeats the point he is trying to make. You could trim the fat and have a few ~6 minute full runtime videos a week that solve so many issues that people have with his stuff.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I always say that there is a market out there for "publisher bad" content but one of the real issues with Jim is that his format has been essentially unchanged for over a decade and especially now when there are so many more competitors and a greater demand for immediate content its a real handicap,

I've argued for some time now that the core problem of Jim's content is that he never, ever offers solutions. Anyone can point at bad thing and say 'bad thing bad' but to offer productive analysis requires research and an understanding of subject matter Jim simply isn't willing to commit to.

One of my current favourite YouTube channels is KnowledgeHusk (which I swear was called KnowledgeHub when I first started watching). His videos usually aren't much longer than Jim's, but unlike Jim KH's videos use 'bad thing bad' as a springboard to discuss how we got to this stage and what it's likely going to mean in the future. Here's his most recent video about Microsoft, as an example, but I recommend all of his content:

If this were a Jimquisition episode it would be 20 minutes of Jim saying Microsoft putting ads into Windows and turning static software like Office into subscription services is bad and they shouldn't have done that. And those things are bad, and they shouldn't have done that, but everyone already knows that. What is interesting is why Microsoft have turned Windows into a dumpster fire, and that's what KH goes into.

TL;DR When I watch someone like KnowledgeHusk I usually learn something and gain perspective I didn't previously have, when I watch a Jim video I get nothing out of it because he repeatedly states the obvious for 20 minutes.

Jim could do the same shitck he does now in videos a quarter of the length (or even the same length its not like there is huge amounts of work put into them) and releasing them as stuff happens so they're actually topical.

If he actually cared about his channel and recapturing his audience his best bet would be to turn the Jimquisition into a weekly news roundup like Sargon's This Week In Stupid series (no idea if he still does that).

It's far too optimistic to expect Jim to return to posting multiple videos a week, but at least with a roundup show he wouldn't have to fill every JQ with 90% padding, even if his take on every story covered is still just 'bad thing bad'.

 

[Aaron Costello]

If he actually cared about his channel and recapturing his audience his best bet would be to turn the Jimquisition into a weekly news roundup like Sargon's This Week In Stupid series (no idea if he still does that).

It's far too optimistic to expect Jim to return to posting multiple videos a week, but at least with a roundup show he wouldn't have to fill every JQ with 90% padding, even if his take on every story covered is still just 'bad thing bad'.

Does Jim have any Patreon exclusive content, like exclusive videos?

 

[Oliver Onions]

Does Jim have any Patreon exclusive content, like exclusive videos?

Not as far as I'm aware. A big point of Jim's Patreon was always supposed to be that nothing was paywalled.

 

[Lou's Sentient Backfat]

If he actually cared about his channel and recapturing his audience his best bet would be to turn the Jimquisition into a weekly news roundup like Sargon's This Week In Stupid series (no idea if he still does that).

It's far too optimistic to expect Jim to return to posting multiple videos a week, but at least with a roundup show he wouldn't have to fill every JQ with 90% padding, even if his take on every story covered is still just 'bad thing bad'.

I actually enjoyed Jim's Squirty Plays more than his weekly JQ content. Sure he was mostly playing absolute trash but he seemed to be having some fun laughing at how bad the games were. But that was also before he fully started hating video games and still had a sense of humor that wasn't just talking about his totally not a fetish.

 

[femboy fart huffer]

I actually enjoyed Jim's Squirty Plays more than his weekly JQ content. Sure he was mostly playing absolute trash but he seemed to be having some fun laughing at how bad the games were. But that was also before he fully started hating video games and still had a sense of humor that wasn't just talking about his totally not a fetish.

If Jim does actually want to try and fix his channel I think that starting something like SP again would be a decent idea. SP feels like he's just having fun rather than just reading you the news. Jim's content is far too negative and is obviously alienating people, if he tried to have some fun and piss around in some shit games might slow the bleed at least. Assuming he even has the ability to allow himself to have fun anymore.

One of the biggest games I think you can point to is balan wonderland, Jim's entire coverage of this game that is hilariously shit was just a few minutes in his worst of video (that I can see at least). One of the main things he says about the game is the price, which yea it's not worth the price. But like come on, the game has one fucking button, the game is so stupidly terrible it would be incredibly easy to laugh at. The game has 7 fucking jump buttons and you're more concerned with the price? Another channel called lilaggi I think made a video on the game where it was just four guys getting a bit drunk and laughing at the game. That video is actually genuinely funny and ranks in my personal top gaming videos on youtube.

I went back and rewatched the original slaughtering grounds SP, honestly, it's not even that funny and I'm already half drunk. Don't get me wrong, it's still much better than anything he posts nowadays. I'm just not even sure if Jim has the ability to be funny and entertaining, at least in a positive manner.

 

[Lou's Sentient Backfat]

I went back and rewatched the original slaughtering grounds SP, honestly, it's not even that funny and I'm already half drunk

I think that was more or less the turning point for his content. The DigiHom shit is really what killed my enjoyment of his videos. It's like, yeah, people get it, lazy asset flip factories are shit. It doesn't mean you have to continually seek out every single thing they release on Steam and make a video about it. And him "winning" the lawlsuit made him into an even more smug and insufferable asshole.

 

[Funeral for a Furry]

So best we can sat us Jim is a hold over from the Total biscuit period of games review that has passed and really is at an evolutionary dead end.

 

[Preacher ✝]

Oh holy shit, Steve Shives.

The Jimquisition in its heyday was unlike anything else I can think of, to the point where even people who hated Jim's personality would still watch the show because nobody else talked about those topics. If you look at the numbers for everything else he tried, even at his peak --Squirty Plays, Steam Greenlight, Jimpressions etc-- nothing ever did the kind of numbers the JQ did; most of his other content didn't even come close.

I agree but I don't think the problem is that the JQ can't succeed on modern YouTube, the problem is the JQ isnt the JQ anymore. If he dropped the faggot shit and the wrestling and just did the fucking Jimquisition as it used to be I could even forgive the fact that he likes to harp on the same few subjects a lot. In his defense the Game Industry is still doing a lot of the shitty things he used to call them out for so theres a reason for his repetition. He might even be able to get away with the tranny costume if he just stops making it his whole personality. Jim was always wearing faggy costumes thats nothing new, its part of the JQ.

Bottom line, the JQ today is less about games journalist and more of a video game and wrestling theme'd tranny show. If he readjusted the focus back to games journalism the show would probably do better though by now its likely too late.

 

[Irene and 22 others]

He could do is stupid wrestling schtick if he had any passion or care for doing the Jimquisition in the first place. It's not much different than his earlier, equally off-putting dress up act and degeneracy. If he came off as disinterested a decade ago as he does now, he never would have become popular in the first place. At some point he stopped playing a character and became one.

 

[AngryTreeRat]

I'm genuinely not being rude when I ask this, but trying to understand your perspective: are you autistic? From a lot of your posts I've noticed you seem to have an extremely rigid worldview. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or anything, you just take very strong stances on relatively mundane things and it fascinates me.

Personally, I enjoy hearing other people's thoughts on games, movies, music etc, even if I disagree with them....especially if I disagree with them, in fact. I think it's interesting that two people can experience the same piece of media and come away with wildly different takes; that some people (me) think Blade Runner is the greatest sci-fi movie ever made and others think it's the most boring pile of shit imaginable.

Dedicated niche genre reviewers can also be good to find games in your niche. They can also show a large sweep of what a game both starts as and becomes later.

Watching a playthrough before purchasing is something I stopped doing and started preferring in depth reviews for because a lot of games these days are drastically different between hours 1-10 and hours 30+. Sometimes that experience I saw and was put off by was only the first couple hours and other than a bit of off putting early game the meat would be right up my alley. Other times that super appealing introduction hid something I couldn't hate more being the meat of the game. Something that happens quite often to me when purchasing based on a playthrough.

I think part of this is a genre issue. I tend to play a lot of games where they become my lifestyle for the next 3-6 weeks or so. Automation games, survival crafters, colony sims, strategy games, "programmer games", overly indepth simulators, grindy action games, etc. A lot of the type of stuff that you can do a "100 days/years/centuries" type video on and do a 3 hour video about what was 1/5 of a playthrough or where a lot of the discussion is over hyper optimization over 200 hours of content. Such games can't really be judged based on such an overview nor can they be judged based on just watching 10 hours of gameplay because you're expecting to be going far longer than that and it will mutate a lot over that time. You need a review that sunk that 100 hours into it and can show you the early, mid, late, and end game and what you'll actually be spending time on. Genre can really affect review value vs lets play value.

 

[Cyberpunk Panatela]

His names fucking familiar and I recognize the face, but I can't place it on where. Did this guy do something years back that woulda graced the internet? Its gonna bother me until I remember.

I've always known Steve Shives as outstanding in his mediocrity - he's made shit-tier consoomer capeshit content for as long as I can remember (Or is that Mundane Matt? I always confuse the two).

I have never heard of him doing anything exceptional at all, except maybe being an exceptional faggot, and I've been on the Internet since the late '80s.

@Administrator Flotsam wrote:

Can't get ytdlp to dl this for some reason. If someone has the time please do it because it seems the original has been taken down.

Here you go:

3:00

Tubular(fork of Newpipe with added features) worked. You're welcome.

Now I will delete that utter shite to cleanse my phone's memory.

 

[SnergenFlergen]

I actually enjoyed Jim's Squirty Plays more than his weekly JQ content. Sure he was mostly playing absolute trash but he seemed to be having some fun laughing at how bad the games were. But that was also before he fully started hating video games and still had a sense of humor that wasn't just talking about his totally not a fetish.

Some of Jim's old Squirty Plays (and the series where he watched the shit Greenlight trailers) were genuinely some of the funniest videos I'd seen on the platform at the time and showed that he had a real flare for improv comedy at one point in his life. They weren't always winners, but you usually only had to wait a day or two for the next one.

This is why it's so funny that Jim reductively blames 'twansphobia' entirely for his sub count loss, without paying any mind to the more likely explanation (that being that he just stopped putting out entertaining content regularly). Did he ever offer an explanation for why he stopped all of his series apart from the Tranquisition, or is it simply a case of his troon-out killing his productivity and passion?