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

[whatever I feel like]

I just don't think that normal hardcore gamers care about "crunch" and "bad culture at Ubisoft" like they do games being ruined by monetization. I know the switch in focus killed my interest.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

I just don't think that normal hardcore gamers care about "crunch" and "bad culture at Ubisoft" like they do games being ruined by monetization. I know the switch in focus killed my interest.

Personally I care more about a game treating me like cattle than the devs being treated like cattle.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Personally I care more about a game treating me like cattle than the devs being treated like cattle.

At least the developers are being paid to be treated like cattle. Their employers want me to pay for the privilege of being treated like cattle instead.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

If he changed the Jimquisition over to a day-of-news five minute video, cut out the self serving weird skits, and just focused on addressing the actual topics, he'd get much more engagement. He could even keep the monday rant-a-thon cancer, but he needs to change the model, living off a weekly show just doesn't cut it anymore in the gaming media sphere. His production quality is low enough that he could easily get the news and script on one day, record, edit and post on the next. One day news lag isn't bad.

I don't think there is enough gaming news worth covering, at least not in Jim's shit-on-all style to make a daily show. If he tries to move to socio-political news first, it would be awful, second there is enough left \ progressive commentators with established position and following so Jim would have to fight for his place on the stage.
His best shot would be doing what he did a few years back, unscripted impressions on random garbage indie games. It was fairly entertaining, didn't require a lot of work other than finding the games to play and gave him some actual recognition thanks to DigHom situation.

 

[bluebarrel]

Personally I care more about a game treating me like cattle than the devs being treated like cattle.

I think this is pretty spot-on for most people. I do care if people are being treated like shit at work like many game developers are, however, that is not a unique problem to the games industry. There are many industries in which the workers are far more essential to society than the work of making video games, that also get shit on, have their passions exploited, or are treated as if they are disposable. I think many of us that work for someone else for a living see at least some aspect of this at our own jobs.

Which. of course, is part of why people play video games, because they want to have fun and relax and debate about strategies or dive into fantasy worlds, they are our escape. I think most people already know that it's the case that someone had a bad time making the game and don't need a reminder, because they are keenly aware that working for clueless higher-ups often results in project mismanagement, delays, and bad times at work. Because that's everywhere. Most of us have first hand experience.

We don't need weekly reminders that it's not woke to enjoy things. I'm not surprised viewership is on the decline if that's all Jim has to peddle.

 

[whatever I feel like]

I don't think there is enough gaming news worth covering, at least not in Jim's shit-on-all style to make a daily show. If he tries to move to socio-political news first, it would be awful, second there is enough left \ progressive commentators with established position and following so Jim would have to fight for his place on the stage.
His best shot would be doing what he did a few years back, unscripted impressions on random garbage indie games. It was fairly entertaining, didn't require a lot of work other than finding the games to play and gave him some actual recognition thanks to DigHom situation.

Yongyeah manges to pull it off. But he also streeeeeetches like a motherfucker to reach that Youtube desired 13 minutes and gives knob slobs to arty trash games.

 

[AnOminous]

At least the developers are being paid to be treated like cattle. Their employers want me to pay for the privilege of being treated like cattle instead.

"Crunch" isn't even always because the company is scumbags. Sometimes, something just has to be done by a certain time and there's a deadline to be met, and it has to be done. Some companies are shitty and if it happens every single time, maybe it's a shitty company, but quit fucking whining about having to work more sometimes.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

I think this is pretty spot-on for most people. I do care if people are being treated like shit at work like many game developers are, however, that is not a unique problem to the games industry. There are many industries in which the workers are far more essential to society than the work of making video games, that also get shit on, have their passions exploited, or are treated as if they are disposable. I think many of us that work for someone else for a living see at least some aspect of this at our own jobs.

Here's the thing as well, these problems aren't new, things like crunch have been regulated for decades at this point. I've said this before but I wonder how he's react to the USPS, during Christmas crunch time is guaranteed to happen. The best way to highlight this is the overtime pay, of course if you go over the standard time you get extra, I think it's double your pay. For most periods of the year there's also a threshold which if you pass that you get extra pay on top of overtime, I think it's quadruple standard pay, but could be wrong so take the figures as just examples. I say most because they don't do quad pay during the holidays because of how much overtime there is.

Now thing about it this way, this is basically a unionized government job (insert comment about the USPS technically being a private company just controlled by the government here) which are rather notorious for being much stricter when it comes to this stuff. If they could do the job without having to make people work overtime the unions would've likely pushed for that a long time ago. Now keep in mind that most places aren't as strict as these unionized government jobs, they don't have to pay anywhere near as much and have less restrictions on how much overtime employees can work than these places.

My basic point here is that you probably aren't going to see much change when it comes to overtime considering what's allowed in other industries. Fact of the matter is game development's a rock star industry, whenever someone leaves you have 20 people behind them ready to take their place. Unless you're Miyamoto, Kojima, or some other extremely prestigious dev they aren't going to push too hard to keep or hire you, because frankly it's a waste of resources to do so when so many other people are out there who are just as good as you.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Here's the thing as well, these problems aren't new, things like crunch have been regulated for decades at this point. I've said this before but I wonder how he's react to the USPS, during Christmas crunch time is guaranteed to happen. The best way to highlight this is the overtime pay, of course if you go over the standard time you get extra, I think it's double your pay. For most periods of the year there's also a threshold which if you pass that you get extra pay on top of overtime, I think it's quadruple standard pay, but could be wrong so take the figures as just examples. I say most because they don't do quad pay during the holidays because of how much overtime there is.

Now thing about it this way, this is basically a unionized government job (insert comment about the USPS technically being a private company just controlled by the government here) which are rather notorious for being much stricter when it comes to this stuff. If they could do the job without having to make people work overtime the unions would've likely pushed for that a long time ago. Now keep in mind that most places aren't as strict as these unionized government jobs, they don't have to pay anywhere near as much and have less restrictions on how much overtime employees can work than these places.

My basic point here is that you probably aren't going to see much change when it comes to overtime considering what's allowed in other industries. Fact of the matter is game development's a rock star industry, whenever someone leaves you have 20 people behind them ready to take their place. Unless you're Miyamoto, Kojima, or some other extremely prestigious dev they aren't going to push too hard to keep or hire you, because frankly it's a waste of resources to do so when so many other people are out there who are just as good as you.

The answer, in that case, was to plan your timetable better, because you should be able to roll your games out like the corporate, factory products they are. And not for your worker's benefit either. Crunch is bad for business, crunched employees are getting way more money than usual, due to OT rules, while putting in subpar work due to burnout. Much better to just plan your shit properly.

 

[AnOminous]

The answer, in that case, was to plan your timetable better, because you should be able to roll your games out like the corporate, factory products they are. And not for your worker's benefit either. Crunch is bad for business, crunched employees are getting way more money than usual, due to OT rules, while putting in subpar work due to burnout. Much better to just plan your shit properly.

That's nice to say, but in reality, unforeseen shit happens. If you plan well, it doesn't happen every time, but sometimes, it's unavoidable. There's a hurricane that knocks down your building, a global pandemic, your main contractor flakes out, whatever.

 

[Ita Mori]

Overall, if I was Jim I would be a bit worried. His core base of paypigs has stuck around, but even before he outed himself it was slowly but surely losing patrons and he is dropping more patrons in the afterglow of his coming out.

His Youtube stats are garbage and reflect a general repulsion to more normal viewers. I don't think he will be expanding his core fanbase anytime soon and he has most definitely peaked in terms of relevance.

Nah. If I were Jim I'd be ecstatic.
This means I can leave my old youtube gaming audience behind since it's essentially dead already and cater to my paypigs who want to see me talk about IdPol and how capitalism is the devil, which he so wants to do.

 

[Enoby Way]

Is everyone just ignoring that crunch in the games industry isn't like crunch in a stable environment?
Games crunch periods will last upward of a month at a time, the workers are let go at the end of every project so they can't acquire seniority or any kind of actual rights, the companies don't really pay benefits, and multiple mental breakdowns by the workers are written off as collateral damage. Stability doesn't exist.

In other jobs with crunch periods, you're still employed during the non-crunch periods so it balances out.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I think part of it is Jim is sunk in to the industry. He doesn't see a fucking 'out'.

Which is weird, because much less sizeable gaming-focused individuals like Destiny have managed to fully escape the gaming sphere to being socio-political commentators while playing games as a side thing.

I think more than being sunk into the industry, he is sunk into his own routine and can't be bothered to change with the times.

You're right there's no reason he couldn't completely pivot and become like Critikal or Pewdiepie, who pump out videos about literally anything and get great views/engagement because they're charming guys who clearly enjoy what they do, but that's Jim's problem: he's totally miserable now, and like most troons will continue to blame everyone but himself for his downfall.

A formula changeup would really be his best bet if he wants to keep being a negative cunt. You can actually present mostly negative takes, if done in an enjoyable fashion. Lookit the Critical Drinker, where the hate is clearly delivered from a place of love, not loathing.

I think Yahtzee is the best example that not only can you make a career out of being a negative cunt, you can do it while only putting out one video a week. The difference between him and Jim is the former clearly still has a passion for writing (even when he hates the games he's writing about,) so his material remains fresh and funny even after 10+ years.

The Jimquisition, on the other hand, has reached the point of parody where you don't even need to watch anymore to know what Jim is going to be talking about, and I think that's why a formula change-up (which is a good idea) still wouldn't save Jim's channel because instead of one video of a miserable cunt being miserable we'd get them daily.

 

[Muppetstudios]

A lot of his videos have become Skit,capitalism bad, (Take a potshot at a company here), Bobby Kotick and what not. It gets grating listening to the same shit and that shit takes 2/3 of the video. Ffs even Angry Joe with his skits has more "meat/content" in his reviews and gaming news.


^

Thats exactly what turned me off to him its not the Troon thing its the capitalism = bad while making your money criticising toys for adults

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I think Yahtzee is the best example that not only can you make a career out of being a negative cunt, you can do it while only putting out one video a week. The difference between him and Jim is the former clearly still has a passion for writing (even when he hates the games he's writing about,) so his material remains fresh and funny even after 10+ years.

The Jimquisition, on the other hand, has reached the point of parody where you don't even need to watch anymore to know what Jim is going to be talking about, and I think that's why a formula change-up (which is a good idea) still wouldn't save Jim's channel because instead of one video of a miserable cunt being miserable we'd get them daily.

There's also the fact that while Yahtzee makes mostly negative videos, he himself didn't become a miserable pile of shit if the fact he got married and had a kid is any indication to go by. Between that and his old Let's Drown Out videos with Gabe, I get the impression that Yahtzee at least has a healthy social life, unlike Jim who only has a social life on Twitter. Yahtzee may be negative, but he's not miserable and depressing to watch. Jim on the other hand exudes this ugly and sad presence in his videos; he looks like someone who hates where he is right now and that makes his videos less appealing. Not to mention, Yahtzee's done a better job branching out with actual books and a couple of new series on The Escapist which means he can actively challenge himself doing new things. Even if people didn't watch Yahtzee's other stuff, it's still good for him on a creative level. Jim hasn't branched out in any capacity in a long time, and you can see how that's detrimental to the Jimquisition when it's literally the same thing every week and even regular viewers are getting sick of it. Jim's in a creative rut and the steps he's taking to rectify his declining viewership do nothing to help his actual problems.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Thats exactly what turned me off to him its not the Troon thing its the capitalism = bad while making your money criticising toys for adults

Then spending his money on toys for children (the Boglins, not the dildos)

 

[Johan Schmidt]

Jim ree's about crunch time for games developers a lot.

As someone who has worked in call centres I literally have zero sympathy. Like, none at all. Oh noooo, you had to work paid overtime at the end of a development cycle? Let me introduce you to my extra 5 hours of mandatory unpaid overtime a week. Oh no! You had your computers have some time monitoring on them? I once got reprimanded for taking an extra minute more than my allocated toilet time because I had a bad stomach.

I literally got told off for taking too long to take a shit. When I made manager, I was told to fire a girl whose dad had just an hero'd because her sales performance went down as a result. I don't care about pampered video game devs anymore than some phuket sweatshop worker cares about my pampered office job.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Thats exactly what turned me off to him its not the Troon thing its the capitalism = bad while making your money criticising toys for adults

Honestly Jim could claim to be pinkypie fused with a dragon dildo if the video's hadnt gone to shit I'd still watch them. I actually agree with Jims politics on corporation and I got fucking sick of it.

 

[The tired cat]

There's also the fact that while Yahtzee makes mostly negative videos, he himself didn't become a miserable pile of shit if the fact he got married and had a kid is any indication to go by. Between that and his old Let's Drown Out videos with Gabe, I get the impression that Yahtzee at least has a healthy social life, unlike Jim who only has a social life on Twitter. Yahtzee may be negative, but he's not miserable and depressing to watch. Jim on the other hand exudes this ugly and sad presence in his videos; he looks like someone who hates where he is right now and that makes his videos less appealing. Not to mention, Yahtzee's done a better job branching out with actual books and a couple of new series on The Escapist which means he can actively challenge himself doing new things. Even if people didn't watch Yahtzee's other stuff, it's still good for him on a creative level. Jim hasn't branched out in any capacity in a long time, and you can see how that's detrimental to the Jimquisition when it's literally the same thing every week and even regular viewers are getting sick of it. Jim's in a creative rut and the steps he's taking to rectify his declining viewership do nothing to help his actual problems.

I wouldnt say that Yahtzee is a social dude, the few times he was shown on camera (doing interviews, making his failed TV show pilot about video games, even promoting his bar) one could tell he isnt very comfortable talking with people or interracting with them too much, however hes clearly more comfy during say Skype like conversations when he was on TBs podcast one time.

 

[Oliver Onions]

There's also the fact that while Yahtzee makes mostly negative videos, he himself didn't become a miserable pile of shit

Yeah I think it's been pointed out before that while Yahtzee's persona is an act he puts on for ZP, Jim's online persona eventually bled into his real life and now they're one and the same, probably because he has literally nothing outside of his e-fame.

I wouldnt say that Yahtzee is a social dude, the few times he was shown on camera (doing interviews, making his failed TV show pilot about video games, even promoting his bar) one could tell he isnt very comfortable talking with people or interracting with them too much

He just comes across as a typical introvert, to me, which would also explain why he doesn't use his social media as a pulpit like the rest of them and ignores the nontroversies that have cropped up around him over the years (the tranny joke in Papers, Please or his 'nigger, nigger, nigger' bit in Mafia 3, for example).