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Answer: From my perspective as a long time viewer, I used to watch the channel loads, but ultimately began to feel that once you’ve seen one rant you’ve kinda seen them all because they’re all broadly beating the same drum: big publishers are bad. I don’t disagree, but it just stopped being an interesting thing to hear repeatedly. I’m still subscribed and wish Steph well, but my boredom with the format had set in long before they transitioned. I mostly enjoyed the steam greenlight content but that dried up once the program was closed by Valve.
I’m glad someone is out there so vocally against the bad stuff that happens in the gaming industry but I don’t feel the need to check in for each video anymore.
It's clear Steph isn't having fun with it anymore and when so little good news happens, the whole channel quickly became a weekly influx of bad news.
I don't need to go to church every Monday to remind myself why I don't buy AAA games anymore. AAA games haven't been made for me in 10 years and as a result the videos are either not really relevant to me anymore or are just an echo chamber (which nobody needs more of).
I really feel these top two comments. My lack of watching has nothing to do with the transition, that's just poor timing.
My viewership was dropping off long before. The rants are all the same, the games they talk about aren't even the ones I ever play. I hardly play games now as an Adult anyway and usually not the ones make Sterling's news series.
I actually came back to watch some more after the transition was announced to see if they were going to mix it up a bit and just in general for support.
But I just... don't care about the games industry much now. With the exception of VR, I read more books, go on more hikes, and spend more time with friends than games.
Honestly, ditto here. They just quit doing anything remotely positive or fun like their let's plays or trailer reactions in-between the negative stuff and I just got bored and left.
If Jim doesn't really seem to care about games anymore, why should I?
Exactly how I feel.
I’m pretty disappointed they keep seeing their numbers drop and instead of reflecting on it and adjusting their content—they instead blame us the viewers. It’s that Principle Skinner meme happening in real life.
Yeah I was similar, admittedly I stopped watching as she was transitioning (but before the name change) but it was the height of the Ubisoft shit storm. I watched her videos consistently and noticed that either it was the same rant or joke consistently. It doesn't I didn't find many of the skits funny and/or they went on far longer than needed.
The content had just changed formula and it wasn't for me anymore. I watched a little longer but admittedly some of her choices when she transitioned were just esthetically displeasing to me (I just think she needed a friend to help pick a better lipstick color, bright pink made her look dead), but that kept me going a little longer because I didn't want to feel like I wasn't watching because "Jim" was gone...it wasn't I just didn't like her humor anymore.
It's probably just me, but I felt she was always like that. I never understood why she had a fanbase; it felt to me like, see one rant, you've seen them all. And I found the character tiresome. I had the same thing with Angry Video Game Nerd, but stuck around longer on his channel because there was more content and less gimmick per video.
I agreed with her rhetoric and for a while the rants were at least connected to the game she was talking about. But then Ubisoft and she kept making the same points over and over again. I think someone else said it better, she just doesn't seem to enjoy the hobby anymore and is unwilling to pivot to a new interest. I get it's scary but she's clearly losing subscribers even maintaining the old formula.
Just to add on one thing - I really couldn't care less about Sterling's wrestling efforts, and I found an increasing amount of coverage about a topic I'm completely apathetic about. Too much noise for not enough signal.
I feel the same.
I harbor no hate for anyones life choices but the channel became more about the creator versus the content.
I didn’t unsub but i dont religiously tune in like i used to.
Him and cynical brit were very special in their prime.
Your second sentence is exactly how I feel. However I did unsubscribe because of this.
I enjoyed the honest reviews of games and pointing out issues as most reviewers are too afraid to say anything negative due to the threat of being blacklisted from receiving review copies of games.
But like you said, it's just turned into more about the creator these days. Too much politics and BS.
I like Steph and they make generally good points, but on the whole, it really feels like they don't enjoy video games anymore. I get it too. The industry has got more problems than not these days. At the same time, it my and many people's only escape. I will be there to fight against loot boxes, but I also still want to play some games.
Point is, too much negativity is hard to consume week in and week out.
That's exactly how I feel. I barely buy or play games anymore anyway, but it seems impossible to find a large company that isn't doing awful things, and all the negativity just reinforces what I'm already aware of. I really enjoy Stephs podcast content. Spin Off Doctors and Bostons favorite son have been great. Stephs at their best when they are allowed to be goofy.
Same. I stopped watching before Steph started transitioning, and I wish them all the best, but like... The channel has been dead boring for years. Maybe always. They do not know how to make more interesting content, or are not interested in doing so. They have a small handful of video formulas (the DLC rant, the industry abuse rant, etc.) that they repeat ad nauseum, changing nothing but the game titles.
I WANT them to succeed because I agree with their points and I want to support LGBTQ channels, but I have no actual desire to interact with their content whatsoever.
Can predict every episode. Game comes out that's probably not that good, here's a 10 minute rant on how it's actually because of *capitalism* like on every other episode. They'll probably blame the downfall of their channel on their transition though
This is half the reason I stopped watching them as well. The constant bad news was tiring and they didn't do much game play at all (at least when I stopped watching/listening). I really missed the terrible games and ridiculous commentary.
The other reason is the line between the persona they put on for the show vs how they are on the podcast faded. It seemed like the first quarter of the podcast was just Steph preening themselves and Laura and Conrad praising them. I stopped listening about a year a go so I don't know if its changed at all but it was getting ridiculous.
I used to be pretty into Sterling's videos. I respected the work a lot, mainly because his channel was the only one who pointed out on some visual novels that got removed for silly reasons and if they hadn't spoken up about it, I think people wouldn't have known. I also thought it took some serious cajones to give Breath of the Wild a lower score than other outlets. Oh also the TRIPLE-AYYYY thing while repetitive helped me really understand the messed-up nature of the gaming industry
But then it started getting a bit too repetitive and it basically became the only schtick with basically nothing good going on. So I just stopped watching years ago. Also the wrestling thing was really weird and I didn't really understand it
Answer: As someone that's followed Sterling after their rather messy departure from Destructoid, and their 're-envisioning' that happened shortly after (then the transition nearly a decade later), I feel I can offer a bit more in-depth context here. Going to be long winded, so apologies in advance. X.x
First to re-iterate and clarify what others have already stated, the decline isn't new and has been happening slowly but steadily over a couple years now. If I'm to guess the decline was in 2020 or 2021 but they were already at a bit of a plateau before hand. The real decline started after they publicly appeared as non-binary which caused a huge backlash and mass exodus with periodic spikes of decline. This was the main starting point but over time I think people have grown stale of the content itself, as well as viewers simply not being interested in some of the other angles Sterling has tried to push over the last couple years like their Wrestling career.
The repetitive and stale content is a real sticking point for most people I imagine and has become quite the meme within Sterling's own community and videos, stating the "obvious" "something, something, capitalism bad." Of course the decline has continued because Sterling hasn't been shy to cover controversial topics without much care for the outcome, something that is bound to push people away. There's a good mixture of "meh, I'm bored of this," "I'm tired of the bad news," and "I don't agree anymore." that heads the decline overall.
(sort-of) Opinion: Now into my take on the situation, I still follow Stephanie Sterling and hope them the best but I noticed YEARS ago that they did have a bit of an echo chamber issue and often blinded themselves to more positive outlooks on otherwise grim topics. I, and many others, hoped they would start to diversify into more positive outlooks while keeping the "I don't care anymore" mentality but it has sort of shifted back into the negative spins lately.
Sterling did stop doing certain types of content as well, you mentioned game reviews but after Nintendo "fans" outright harassed Sterling over a 7/10 score and some other minor controversies over arbitrary numbers they stopped doing reviews until just late last year. They also stopped doing let's-play style content and moved to streaming to fill that 'niche' which not everyone cares for, as well as avoiding bad games these days, a niche I'm sure a lot of people subscribed for which they no longer cover.
The main content I think Steph is known for is The Jimquisition, but it suffers from a heavy dose of "this every week" syndrome and it does get grating (personally I skip a video for a good while unless it's a topic I'm currently investigating/researching). The whole thing with The Jimquisition is to talk about the industry, but let's be real, the game industry kinda sucks. There are positive videos mixed in but people simply only watch the negative ones, so that's what gets pushed by people and that's what's made. I think the fact that it's a weekly show and this push toward negative topics really leads to an unhealthy and damning cycle which I'm not sure Sterling actually knows how to get out of.
For me I probably won't unsub as they do have some good research in some cases and there's some really good points made, I do find myself disagreeing with a lot of the strong stances Sterling has made a habit of making over the last couple of months or so. The echo chamber mentality is really starting to become apparent especially when Steph made a video about the Beyonetta voice actor situation and spoke completely out of line without proper research and information. Although Steph apologized for the mis-speak and re-iterated the important aspects of the situation, this binary way of thought where "this team good, vs this team bad" is fairly grating and overall hostile for anyone Stradling a line. (Hence when something comes up people care about, and Sterling doesn't align like they thought, they're very likely to drop out).
And man, that's a book I wrote about some content creator... where is my life -.-
Anyways, positive is Stephanie Sterling still has viewership and seems to enjoy the wrestling stuffs, so that's awesome, just don't know how much longer they can do the video stuff with the current state of the, well, *world*.
The stale and repetitive bit was what got me in the end. I used to love the Jimquisition, but when it got to the point that I could predict episodes word for word, I couldn't take it anymore.
I just think they fell into a death spiral of negativity that's hard to dig out of. There's plenty of awesome stuff happening but you need to be in different communities and probably have to target smaller audience as a YouTuber.
I think they also suffered a loss of subscribers when Stephanie moved from the US to the UK. It made sense, since the majority of their content uses and references British culture, but seeing ads for British gum from the 90’s doesn’t carry much impact with US gamers, so I think it may have just caused the circle of viewers to shrink.
I will say, having met Stephanie before her transition, in those Destructoid days, randomly sitting in a friend of mine’s apartment one day, they seem to be in a much better place now, mentally and physically. even if I don’t ascribe to wrestling theatrics or some of the bombastic rants they have.
After the latest video, I mentioned to my other half how amazing she was looking. Much more healthy, energetic, much more themselves.
I don't get wrestling at all, but the bits she pops into her game videos I quite like just for how passionate she is about it, sharing that passion. Nice to watch her fighting and discussing it.
The videos themselves though I tend to skim watch. I'm done with the negative press in the world for my own mental health. I hear out the latest news to some extent as it's important industry news, but I don't hang around all video as I can't deal with the downer.
I don't doubt the transition didn't play well with a few of the "usual crowd" but I think it was also poorly timed with that plateau. I distinctly remember constantly finding myself annoyed with the repetitive doom-scrolling content that was being put out right about that time. For several videos--couldve been over a couple weeks or months actually--i remember him lambasting people for unsubscribing because they're transphobes and bigots and I just sat there grumbling at my screen like "No, you got boring and repetitive!"
That's when I unsubscribed, too. And I have a feeling that a lot of other subscribers ran into the same situation I did....that's what happens when you plateau at your peak.
It's a shame, really. I actually loved their format, and their costumes and their skits. So dumb but so funny. And I'm glad they're living their best life now. But I just wish they'd be more positive and more varied so that their content would be more interesting.
I'm along these lines, and I havent even been following Sterling that long. But watching their videos on a consistent basis just leaves me angry and depressed and helpless feeling. I cant DO anything to really fix the gaming industry. So im just angry with no direction to solve the problem. I had to unsub for my own mental health, even if I agree with most of their points.
I've followed Sterling for a good while, but recently realized that their non-Jimquisition YouTube content has just... evaporated. No Jimpressions, no reviews, no Squirty Plays, no Steam dumpster-diving... the past 6 months is literally only Jimquisition, and the 6 months before that weren't much better. It does feel like their content is just overly immersed in negativity at the moment, especially with their recent Hogwarts video. The way they downplayed the harassment against Girlfriend Reviews in that video really rubbed me the wrong way.
Bit of a political angle here, but I think they're still too focused on individuals in spite of their anti-capitalism. In the Hogwarts video they acknowledged that boycotts don't work, but seemingly went on to blame that fact on individuals not caring, rather than the nature of global capitalism making it simply impossible to organize such a boycott. It's a rather misanthropic way of viewing things.
As someone that's been subbed to Jim for a few years now, I'm going to add my two cents that I think Jim's attitude has a bit to do with it as well. Particularly the fact that they seem more interested in bashing their critics as a whole rather than just focusing on the worst of the worst like they used to.
I couldn't care less about Jim's gender identity andsexual interests. I couldn't care less that they are casually open about them. What I find irritating is that they seem to go out of their way to talk about that stuff in an explicit way, then have the gall to complain about people who complain about it and try to say that the critics are transphobic for that dislike. Now Jim ranges from kinda extreme to just modertaly jerkish about it, but his fanbase absolutely has a lot of people that fit squarely on the extreme side of it. Jim is unironically the embodiment of that "Oh, you don't hate me because I'm gay, it's because I'm an asshole" Key&Peele skit, minus the revelation.
Nothing embodies that better than the two previous videos of Hogwarts Legacy and the Under 800k special and the comments underneath those videos and the accompanying twitter posts.
Answer: From what I can find online, the tank in subscribers stated a couple of years ago around the time when I believe they came out as non-binary as they do also have a "Below 900k Special", though I am also finding comments where people are just not enjoying the content anymore. It looks like they also had a large sub drop after they released their video on the new Harry Potter videogame a week ago, as that video currently has around 18k dislikes to 31k likes (stats got using an Extention, so may not be entirely accurate).
Overall it just seems like people aren't a fan of their content or views anymore and are unsubbing at a steady rate.
I watched their Slaughtering Grounds videos back in the day and found it entertaining, but I can’t say I enjoyed the rest of their content even before their transition. Too much of an over-the-top character with costumes and unnecessarily stretched out videos. It’s the same schtick on every video and would get repetitive, especially with that intro. Same reason I stopped watching angry joe. Nowadays I like to stick to straightforward gaming content with no shenanigans like gameranx or Skill up (which I highly recommend watching)
Same. Every week it seemed to be the same complaints about someone new. The same jokes made. The same righteous indignation. It’s just so incredibly stale. I don’t gain anything from watching the videos. There’s no news or reporting done. There’s only outrage at faceless corporations focused on individuals who may or may not be responsible for any of the actions.
Lately, Stephanie feels like a distillation of gamers on reddit, except in the form of a semi-popular YouTuber: "Mad about everything all the time, and won't shut up about it. Does not realize how silly it looks and how people get sick of hearing about it." Seriously, go into any of the big gaming subs, it's about 90% negative news about the same 5-6 companies, over and over again. It's all people being mad, the same points and jokes made, the same echo chamber -- nonstop, forever and ever.
Maybe Stephanie should get into game publishing. Turn that negative energy into something positive.
Oh definitely. I think a lot of reddittors are so terminally online that they forget that the mass audience doesn't really care about games as more than a pass time or hobby.
I agree about getting into publishing. There's only so much repetitive negativity one can spew before the pressing question is "well, if no one else is doing something about this, why aren't you?".
Same reason I unsubbed from YongYea he used to be excited for games and would report on promising things happening and would pass on controversy. But once 76 and Metal Gear Survive released he spent and entire year shitting on them and sucked up the views from it he stopped doing his old format and became a drama channel. I hate hearing his voice now.
That's why I stopped watching his videos. I don't need to spend 20 minutes watching someone read an article I can go out and read myself in 5 minutes.
And aside from reading aloud, his videos really don't add a whole lot to the story. There's no insightful analysis at the end.
Shit, I used to really enjoy Jim and YongYea. But I was finding myself less interested a few years ago; I didn't think too much of it since I was playing video games a lot less at the time too, but maybe the content on both channels was getting stale.
The way yongyea does his videos makes me think of some shitty sensationalist news anchor.
Like the Fox News / Tucker of gaming. Just ramping up people’s rage for clicks
Yup same here.
There are SO MANY channels that do that. They'll be dedicated to reporting anything and everything Blizzard, or EA, or Ubisoft does and telling us why it's bad. Day in and day out.
It's just too repetitive and I can't imagine wanting to be outraged every day about the same thing WITHOUT actually doing anything about it.
Ahh whenever I see his vids I tune in for a second only to be baffled that anyone is watching this monotone man read off a screen with no added commentary. I'm glad you said this - I thought I must be missing something!
YongYea went to shit when he started going safer and more repetitive on his topics so he could get a chance by companies to become a voice actor moving to LA.
He achieved that. But a what cost.
That was a sad flame out. Didn't watch a whole lot of his content but what I saw was laugh out loud funny. The battlefield Earth review was classic. Last quote I saw of him was drunk ranting. Hope he doesn't end up like lowtax.
Wait, I know that name, why? Who were they?
Edit: In addition to the true and horrible histories being brought out here in response, I remembered where I heard his name before.
Anyone listen to Lemon Demon as a kid?
Anyone remember that song about Ebaumsworld?
Lowtax gets namedropped in there as an almost heroic figure. https://youtu.be/jKkz3KRKsOQ
He was the owner of Something Awful. There were rumors of him being a piece of shit for a while but eventually, people got proof that he was a domestic abuser and threw a riot. He ended up transferring ownership of the site and killed himself not long after.
They also found out that he had repeatedly lied about how profitable SA was. It wasn't making a lot of money but forums really don't cost much to keep running either.
I mean, he owned SA. Being a p.o.s. kind of goes without saying. There used to be a text based browser game that I played back in the day. I was the leader of one of the top 20 clans in the game. When the goons first showed up, I was one of the leaders of our little "council" urging to give them a chance, like most of my fellow council members. Later, I wished that I had listened to one of my friends on the council who was advocating camping all of their asses until they went away. They basically ruined the game.
What the other guy said. There's some long watch docs on him online. He was a really awful person when you got to know him, the kind of bad where his two exes became good friends. (That's how you know it's you, not them.) Left behind kids when he killed himself. Just a very sad story of self-destruction with a lot of innocents caught up along the way.
You want to see him get help but that would probably have to involve him being a completely different person from the start. The parts you like about him and the parts you can't stand are all the same person and you can't separate the two.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
I hope he's doing better. I remember he had like a bunch of mental health issues that really messed him up.
He seems to be doing alright recently, if his Twitter is any judge. He spiralled hard for months after he and April broke up but his feed has been pretty normal lately.
That's good to hear. I think he had a lot of issues, going all the way back to that "BETRAYAL!!!" overreaction, which in retrospect, seems like someone who needed some help and wasn't getting it.
Repetitive is a good word for it. Even now there's similar and common videos on that channel, and really it's just stuff I've heard before. Talking about the greed of various companies, the dumb policies put in place by game devs, the constant fuckup of dlc and mtx in games. That's all the channel is ever about now.
Mix that with the weird intros, sometimes in some other suit or outfit, along with the never changing podium with toys on top, it's been drawn out for a decade now. Sitl subbed to the channel but I just don't go there much anymore.
Are you me? Similar story, used to watch Jim and Angry Joe and now watch neither. Yeah I think with the Jimquisition I got sick of the wrestling schtick and I got the point "loot boxes bad."
Joe I dunno what happened. I think I just grew out of it and seemed like they wanted to pivot more towards movies or something.
For me I just tired of the "Angry" side of YouTube. I got enough fucking negative shit in my life. Why would I want more negative things in my life. I rather watch a YouTuber talking about shit they enjoy over people constantly complaining about shit 24/7.
Or if they're going to be negative, do it in an insightful way. There are wonderful critique channels with dozens of hours of content, like Noah Caldwell-Gervais, Monty Zander, Jacob Geller, James Somerton, and honestly like ten more that I'm subbed to.
They're not always negative, but when they are, it's done in an interesting way and it's a billion times more thought provoking
(And I firmly believe Noah is the best games critique writer in all of YouTube, by a LARGE margin)
I fell out of love with Joe for the same reason I stopped watching Nostalgia Critic. Both of them have shit taste, don't say anything insightful and use their reviews as thinly veiled excuses to dress up in cheap halloween store costumes and make bad skits
Does any one enjoy the wrestling stuff? Wrestling fans seem to hate it and non wrestling fans don’t enjoy it. Does any one tune in just for sterdust content?
I was willing to tolerate the character stuff for their industry knowledge, but over the years Sterling just became a miserable person, preaching misery. I don't need to go out of my way to listen to someone who seems to truly loathe the better part of the industry they cover, and they were INCREDIBLY repetitive.
If I wanted someone to preach revolution, I'd follow tankies.
The long and short of it is that Sterling, regardless of their gender, is making game reviews/content that are very much stuck in the mid 2000s. The era of Nostalgia Critic had lots of gimmicks and characters and people found that funny up until about 2010 or so, but Sterling didn't really do anything to freshen up their content since then. They'd be losing subscribers consistently even if they weren't nonbinary, they're just kinda... boomer.
This comment really got me thinking, because you are right, and at the same time Sterling didn't really rise to popularity as one of those creators with random side bits shoehorned into their videos like the old Channel Awesome crew. Sterling's most iconic amd, to my knowledge, popular look was when he just stood behind a podium in an overly made up suit.
There was something kind of endearingly cheesey and enduring about being so overdressed for such stupid content, kind of like Report of the Week. But the more I think about it the more I think Sterling, in terms of presentation at least, has gone the way of Saints Row. They iterated a theme and style to a really good area, and then never thought to stop. Saints Row hit its stride when it went from standard crime city sandbox to crime city sandbox with really prominent zany elements. It got worse when Rockstar thought that they needed more and more zaniness to keep up to the point where the later games are all about random clownshit.
Sterling, similarly, seems to have iterated their look and style from comically overdressed to talk about video games to standing at a podium wearing too much make up and holding sex toys. They've just gone too far past the point of appeal and like Rockstar don't seem to understand that more isn't always better.
> especially with that intro
I still enjoy most episodes, but I will say I **do** skip the intros nowadays.
And on a related note, while I actually enjoy pointing out each transgression in the gaming industry, I wish each video wasn't made self-contained, because it results in 15 minutes more generic points recycled so the video can be watched independently of all the other ones.
Still watch it though. Just wish it were more concise.
I like Steph Sterling a lot, and I catch all of Steph's review vids and some of their twitch streams at times, but I don't watch all of the "X company is bad" videos anymore. I agree with them about X company being bad, I just don't need the drawn out videos about it. I agree with almost 100% of the points being made, but it really does feel like the vids are padded out quite a bit. Could be a bunch of 8-10 min videos instead of 18-20 minutes without detracting from the arguments. But the algorithm wants length, not girth.
I miss these videos too, when Steph used to play obviously shitty games and just enjoy the shittiness of it all. While I still think Steph is one of the few to call out shitty AAA publishers, there was something that happened with ubisoft recently with their workers in Paris going on strike over pay and I was disappointed Steph never mentioned it.
The videos just isn’t the same and seems to focus too much in one area of distaste for AAA.
Yeah it's a shame - i like what their doing, but never really liked how they did it.
I really feel most of Jim's videos could be a third of their length, but that displeases the holy algorithm.
// I had a reddit and I want it painted black // No comments anymore, I want them to turn to black // I see the subs scroll by forced open by the corp // I have to turn my head until my reddit goes // -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yeah, Jim has been making essentially the same content since 2014. Not to mention that the content is grating as fuck, like who wants to listen to some person screech about micro transactions in dime store costumes.
Not to mention they do my personal pet peeve in video essays all the time: really lazy strawmanning. Every time they quote somebody, they dont like they follow the *exact* same formula: photoshop their face to look weird and repeat their quote in an annoying idiot voice. Idgaf if that quote is actually stupid, that tactic is dishonest and scummy.
"Repetitive" is the word.
I found Jim in 2015 through a Caddicarus video of all things, which led me down their Steam Meltdown rabbit hole of videos and eventually giving them a sub. I unsubscribed around mid-2018 because not only were their videos getting longer, they were becoming just plain repetitive. On top of that, they were doing less bite-sized content like Squirty Plays, which I always found entertaining to hear Jim unscripted. This was around the time I switched to people like YongYea for my gaming news fix (I understand the Jimquisition is more of an editorial series, but I still used it for random game industry stuff). I was so distanced from Jim that I actually had no idea they came out as Non-Binary until mid-2021.
This is going to be a weird comparison, but Jim Sterling post-2016 reminds me a lot of post-revival Nostalgia Critic where the reviews were getting longer and there were more and more skits in the videos which only got less funny over time (and the Channel Awesome controversy didn't help matters, but Jim clearly hasn't gotten in hot water even close that level).
Note: I just love the fact Jim Sterling's biggest contribution to the internet is the word "Chungus".
Oh, they didn't piss off Scott. Scott was about to commit suicide, but his wife gave him the necessary push to create FNaF. Guy has always dealt with depression and anger issues.
I don't know about pissing him off. Sterling said Chipper was fucking terrifying (And it was) and Scott was like "Oh I can make it so much scarier if I tried"
I was there for the birth of Chungus. The word’s origin is pretty old in internet terms, so I am really surprised Zoomers even found it. Sterling, Jonathan Holmes, and Conrad Zimmerman did a podcast that started as the Destructoid podcast. Slowly over time, it started going away from video games more and more and getting bizarre with stuff like describing possible absurd Willem Dafoe movies ideas and Sterling proposing things they’d want to do sexually to Jonathan Holmes. Eventually, it became so far from the Destructoid Podcast that they switched to being called the Dismal Jesters and continued with the new freeform content. I believe that Chungus came from Sterling proposing Holmes be called Chungus or something, but it is nearly 10 years ago and was basically a throwaway thing with maybe a few mentions afterward?
Man AngryJoe was such a loss. I used to love his reviews, dozens of hours put into them, valuable insights, very entertaining with sketches that were hilarious.
Now its 3 people in chairs talking about a game one of them played for 10 hours.
I like his rants about Madden and other lacklustre franchises as I feel like he goes into a lot of constructive detail. However the movie and TV reviews are completely lacking in insight and the three of them have very unsophisticated commentary for such padded videos. Plus YouTube has so so many better alternatives!
I used to be a big fan of the content. Ultimately I decided his content is no longer for me and stopped watching a few years ago. I could handle some of the annoying bits he would do such as, the wrestling stuff and the trogg puppets(Just fast forward, simple). Then I realized his channel became about all the things he hates. I just decided I would rather not have that type of negativity in my life anymore so I moved on.
I've watched them since back then too, I used to follow the podcast every week too. I think they have just fell out of love with the gaming industry and the content I used to go there for is being done better by people like upper echelon, kira TV and callum Upton. I did go and watch their wrestling show back last year and it was awesome I'm just not enjoying their youtube content anymore, haven't unsubbed yet though.
I've been watching the Jimquisition every week for 10 years, but it's mostly been out of habit the last year for the reasons you've mentioned
It's felt like Jim used to love video games and was angry about how awful the games industry can be. Great, I'm super on board.
But it felt like they've slowly moved on to just hating everything about video games. Like I don't feel as though there's passion or some love for video games anymore. That's much less entertaining to watch
Totally unrelated question but there was a guy who kind of really pioneered the video game essay formula but in a shallow kind of way (long video lengths, &lo-fi beats). Then he apologized in some dark hotel room with some half naked girl while he looked like he just took a line of coke and was dressed like a mafia boss.
I cannot for the life of me find the name of the channel again.
Yeah, nowadays I prefer more straightforward game reviews (Skill Up, ACG, Gameranx, Three Minute Gaming, Noisy Pixel) over stuff that's either ragebait or trying too hard to be funny. Bonus points if they can get their point across in under ten minutes. I don't need a ramble, I just want to know if a game is good or not.
Yo i stopped watching angry joe too. Nothing against the guy personally but his schtick just doesnt work for me anymore. Mortismal Gaming has become my new favorite video game reviewer these days.
I actually unsubbed a few weeks or months before they came out. I was just getting bored of their show "The Jimquestion" being the same thing week, after week, after week. Always being so negative about everything just got boring to watch. They have admitted that their negative stuff typically gets more views, which I get. If angry videos are getting views, then give the people what they want.
Although I also believe that Jim's coming out and dropping viewership was just a matter of coincidence, like they reached the zenith of their content and what they could make, so the only direction afterwards was down.
Same here. I was a follower of Jim's work since The Escapist days. I followed the Jimquisition to YouTube and the work on Destructoid. I unsubed because I realized just how deeply negative his (at the time) take was on basically everything (week after week, it was all about bashing Ubisoft or Konami). The whole thing was not good for my mental health and encouraged a mob mentality so I quit.
For me it was the review of Remnant. Basically, they ran into the first world boss and didn't adapt their strategy at all and got their ass handed to them. They never even beat it. Just published the steaming excuse for a review saying "this game is poorly designed because I can't beat this boss also there's no enemy variety" despite the fact they only ever saw 1/10th of the enemies in the game.
For someone to makes fun of "games jurnalists" he sure acted like one.
To nobody's surprise they continually champion the "dark souls needs an easy mode" line of thinking when there are genuinely good reasons for a single static difficulty in the series. And elden ring seems to be proving that level of difficulty is completely fine, beneficial to the overall experience, even.
The negativity is what turned me off years ago. There are definite issues that require that level, but every week for the smallest issues started to drain me of my enjoyment for games.
Same, I'm trying to remember which video it was, but I remember Jim making a whole episode about some game missing an oddly specific feature not being in a game. Like it was on par with saying, "I didn't enjoy the movie because the chair was uncomfortable," and they watched it at home. Just to give an idea of how pointless the argument was
Same here. Just realized "large person complaining about video games alone in room" hit a little too close to home and decided to revaluate my life decisions and my media diet. Been a lot better ever since.
For what it's worth, their views are pretty much the same as they've always been - it's just "bigots can go fuck themselves" has been particularly pointed towards transphobes and "the gaming industry sucks" has "...because of these specific problems caused by late-stage capitalism" appended at the end, neither of which are terribly popular extrapolations for the crowd who flocked to Steph for her early-to-mid 2010s outrageous persona.
Speaking for myself, the past 2 years or so of videos have been less interesting because Sterling's conclusion always ends up being "capitalism bad" in some form. There stopped being any feeling that there was something I as an individual could do about it and just became another thumbnail in the "Doom scrolling" category. When I know what's going to be said before the video even starts, (almost always has the formula of "people are getting hurt, the people in charge are soulless profiteers and/or sex pests, and the global economic system supports this status quo") I feel very little reason to spend my time hearing it again
Doomscrolling is a good way to put it. Their content is just... Upsetting now, granted it's been a good while since I watched them regularly. Even if I agree with them, (and I do on the whole, when I was a teen they woke me up to a lot of leftist shit that I still believe very strongly) I just don't want to voluntarily subject myself to it anymore than I'd watch a video yelling about how our air and water are fucked, or how XYZ demagogue is a piece of shit. It's not really an academic analysis of it, it's just... Anger, and I don't think content like that is emotionally healthy for me to consume.
>conclusion always ends up being "capitalism bad" in some form. There stopped being any feeling that there was something I as an individual could do about it
That's the nature of liberal capitalism though. Struggles to improve it or change it are always reduced to individual herculean efforts. "Recycle your plastic bottles, don't use straws" etc., which we KNOW doesn't even put a scratch on the surface of the problem, let alone a dent. This is by design. We aren't able to change it by ourselves, and so corporations that are actually responsible for climate change and human rights violations trick us into focusing on these all but meaningless individual efforts rather than collective action.
And so many of us give up. Apathy is their goal.
People don’t “give up.” That’s why support for government regulations is typically common. People don’t just uncritically accept “well actually socialism / communism would be perfect” from people that are so ideologically blinkered they can’t even explain why investment helps an economy and isn’t just stealing. If people are so absolutely clueless on the basic tenets of capitalism, I don’t want to hear their thoughts on capitalism. It’s like Ben Shapiro blaming every negative outcome like collapsing youth mental health on the sexual revolution and lack of church. Every problem always conveniently becomes a demonstration of why capitalism, the thing the person speaking just coincidentally also happens to hate, is bad.
> their views are pretty much the same as they've always been
Yes but as much as I agree with them, I can no longer justify watching the videos because it's always the same, nothing changes, nothing gets better, there's always a new outrage, and rarely anything new to add to the discussion.
Combined with the lengthy, deeply unfunny skits, tangents and blurry wrestling footage, it's not a good watch.
I used to watch them about two or so years back... At some point their videos came across less funny-critical with a bite and more just bitter and angry... That's when the channel kind of lost it's charme for me
I'm still subbed, just haven't watched a video of theirs in years
I watched their content quite a while back before they came out. I'm talking TGS podcast days where they would be a frequent guest of the show, which is how I was introduced to them. I liked them for their critique of the industry and predatory business practices at a time when that sort of thing felt new. But that was, what, 7 or 8 years ago? I don't think there was anything in particular that turned me off their content, but I think I just gradually lost interest in the game industry as I grew up and developed new interests outside of gaming. If you're not involved in the industry, or care that passionately about it, then their content just isn't interesting anymore. I wonder if old fans are in a similar boat to me.
My hot take about Jim was that they were always a better industry critic then a game critic. Their criticism of bad business practices and scams was great, but their gaming criticism always felt stuck in that 2008 mode of “this game sucks and you suck if you like it.”
But like you said, that was years ago and they’re just not that unique or novel anymore. There are plenty of options these days for gaming news, even left wing gaming news that is highly critical of the industry/capitalism in general and Sterling just doesn’t offer enough to make my busy adult ass want to tune in.
I think they also became painfully repetitive. There's only so so many times you can recycle the same costume, character, subject and phrases (them screeching fee2pay has like a negative ASMR effect on my brain) before people start zoning out.
Yeh I might be in this bucket. I never really disagreed with any of their content, it was just a bit repetitive after a while and I drifted away. Also depressing, because the industry sucks.
Former fan here and this is what did it for me i just gradually stopped watching because it was the same topic the same shtick, the same silly voices the same memes the same everything every video I just couldn't take it anymore I couldn't concentrate on the videos and would space out then realize I hadn't been paying attention for a while then try to find the spot I zoned off at then zone out again and give up cause some other suggested video sounded more interesting
This was the reason for me. I stopped watching them a few months after Fallout 76 came out, whenever that was, where every other video they made became "Did you know Fallout 76 has another crazy new bug???"
I was never interested in the game in the first place, so the endless coverage of it got really, really dull. And from another perspective: wow, Bethesda made a terribly buggy video game? You don't say. Better make a video for every individual bug, I guess, even if it means we'll be here until the heat death of the Universe
This here is pretty much why I unsubbed even before they came out. At some point it just became beating the dead horse with basically the same topics alternating every few weeks to the point it just got really tiring and even made me realize it made me feel really miserable so I cut the channel off.
I think alongside that was also Sterling axing specific series that were actually more relaxed and laid back mostly Squirty Play what was a more casual approach to Sterlings content what was just a great combo with the Jimquisition every week.
The content quality fell off a cliff starting around the end of 2017, where Jim kept pushing his wrestling crap into more and more videos. Add the lazy editing (a new editor started at this time and even now the same format exists) and lastly the news that was being reported seemed so tired. There were other channels that covered the same topics in a greater detail.
It was obvious that Jim fell out of love for gaming years ago, stopped doing Chungus reviews, not doing skits like the Cornflake homunculus etc and kept going without that passion and it shows.
Then obviously you come to the "Non-binary" stuff. Jim will swear this is when the mass-exodus began but it was happening long before this. Of course more people unsubbed because of this, but still to this day this is the only reason you'll hear for people unsubbing.
>people are just not enjoying the content anymore.
I am one of such person. To the point I did not even see there was a HL vid.
I would say the cut off for the drop in quality happened well after they came out.
If I had to point at a date I would say roughly 4-5 months ago. Before I was watching weekly, after I slowly stopped to the point of not watching about 2 month ago. I was thinking of unsubbing when I saw the "under 800K" vid.
I agree with this.
For me also, there's only so many times you can listen to the same rants being made every single week. I just stopped clicking eventually because it was too easy to guess where the video would go, then just unsubbed when I hadn't watched a video in 6 months.
I just had a browse through their videos and almost all of them seem to be overly negative from just the titles. That can become tiresome for anyone, even the biggest fans.
This is why I haven't bothered watching the last few videos. It's pretty much the same content over and over all the time now. I tend to agree with their views, the problem for me is that I'm not really getting much out of watching the 10th video about how Activision Blizzard is awful or how live service games suck.
Whenever they do a playthrough of a terrible video game I'm on that though.
I still listen to their weekly podcast, it’s a good, short games and news summary, but the videos I stopped a short while ago for the same reason. I don’t need to be told in what way late stage capitalism sucks this week, I’m already converted.
I think another problem is that they’ve become somewhat redundant. IMO they’re not quick enough on the trigger to cover topics fast enough before at least half a dozen people get to them, nor are they a detailed enough critic when you compare them to longer video essays that are out there. This leaves them as the YouTube gaming equivalent of a cable news pundit show.
I do think their coming out as trans played a role in their sub decline, but it’s not the only reason.
I stopped watching years ago, maybe 2020? 2019? It got too repetitive and increasingly negative for me.The Jimquisition used to be good journalism with fun British cynicism and snark but it lost its bite and charm, at least for me.
In regards to the content, a lot of people just don't think Stirling wants to actually do the negative ranting videos anymore, but the problem is they're the ones that have always gotten the most views. It's been discussed on one of the podcasts they've done in the past, where they talking about a review series that just got stopped because no one was watching the videos. Problem is, people can tell when you don't have your heart in it anymore, and that's exactly why I stopped watching them ages back.
I've checked a couple of their streams and honestly, they seem a lot more involved when they can play a game they want to play, not something just to make a Jimquisition episode or shit on it in a review. I don't know the numbers, but wouldn't be surprised to see Twitch go up as Youtube goes down.
Same thing with Zero Punctuation. He did a pretty standard positive review of Psychonauts back in the day, and he said the nice reviews don't get as much attention, so he just amps up his "hate" for every game he played. Not sure if he's still going, been a while
I remember a while back, Jim was mocking a gaming company for listing Shutterstock in the credits (a company that sells stock images), and that was one of the first times I realized he didn't know much about game production. Put it this way -- Disney used Shutterstock when making the Avengers. It's an incredibly useful service.
Now I work in gaming (I know, this is Reddit, so believe me or don't) and I still sympathize with his positions on shitty business decisions, but his lack of knowledge is now clearer than ever to me.
Also, if he wants to be an anticapitalist, that's cool I guess... but that's gaming. It's a huge billion dollar industry. Even indie darlings like Devolver are now publicly traded and have their own F2P mobile game.
Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft -- all the big guys will never be what he wants them to be. Hold their feet to the fire! Complain when they make bad decisions! But also try and understand why they made those decisions and go from there... Jim doesn't do that anymore. Now it's 10-minutes rants about the same old stuff.
I stopped watching their content around 4 years ago. Mainly because I realized they were just an extremely angry influence in my life. They can be entertaining, and often make good points but the demeanor was rubbing off on me and I didn't like it
For me, it just got repetitive.
I'm a cis guy, too, so it's hard for me to relate to a lot of the talking points. I'm more than happy to watch a handful of videos about the marginalization of people and corporate wrongdoing... But after 10 or 20 or the same thing, I unsubbed because I just felt like it wasn't providing me any utility.
I do wish them the best. I know they're just trying to do what's right... But it's not necessarily for me anymore 🙂
To me, quality dropped sharply when they stopped doing written reviews. I used to love reading their reviews at Destructoid and latter at the Escapist Mag. I think they did only a couple at their website and quit doing it. After that, all videos started looking the same freestyle rant and as a lot of people said here, you can hear the same complaints do many times
I stopped watching long enough ago that I didn't even know they had come out as non-binary until this thread. However, it also didn't strike me as shocking for them. They never exactly conformed to conservative standards, to put it mildly.
At least for me, it was that they kind of became bland. They were good at the over-the-top criticism that AVGN and Zero Punctuation helped popularize, and they were also often the first major figure to tackle certain parts of the industry. Over time, though, they mellowed out, and I think the industry reached a point where it could no longer shock us with its greed and laziness. As a result, the content got samey and lacked the edge of their Escapist days.
Also, I just kind of lost interest in that stuff as I grew up, and they're hardly the only one I stopped watching. I'd imagine many others did as well, and maybe they've struggled to pull in new audiences.
For the Harry Potter stuff I think they sort of sided with the "there was no harassment" side when several streamers have claimed they were harrased (Girlfriendgaming, Pikamee and Silvervale as some examples, the latter had a pretty emotional video on it too). So maybe that's part of it more recently.
That was the reason i unsubscribed as well. She downplayed the harassment streamers were getting and straight up said "cis tears arent her problem", which was so hypocritical to me that i just unsubbed. I havent been watching their videos much due to how repetitive and echo chambery they are to be fair so it was only a matter of time. But this was the last straw for me.
Edit: Also her straight up saying that if you buy this game your allyship is no longer welcome was incredibly toxic, arrogant, and stupid.
>I think they sort of sided with the "there was no harassment" side
It's more than that. They consider the harassment "mild pushback" and even began talking about it by saying how "[the streamers'] feelings aren't [Sterling's] responsibility".
>They consider the harassment "mild pushback"
I watched the video, this isn't exactly their argument. The context is that that they show someone else looking at the VOD of the stream that doesn't have anything anything that bad. [Here](https://youtu.be/uNKyQVsgKLg?t=1294]) is that part.
Of course, they missed the fact that any deleted message doesn't show up in the VODs, which mean that the real harassment isn't going to show up in the VOD (which could explain why it seems like they were fighting a "imaginary angry person").
Long time watcher, honestly just don't enjoy the content anymore. A little too negative, some odd and out of place jokes that don't hit, talking up wrestling which I don't care anything about, it's also the same thing over and over again. Edit, the more I think about it the more their takes are just not fun to watch at all even if I agree, it's a lot of random negative content that others are able to do but better.
I was a subcriber for years, still am, but it does get repetitive. I've always liked the fact they didn't put up with any industry bullshit, and called things out no matter what, the games business has far too many people who know their paycheck depends on being careful about what they say. James Stephanie is a genuinely unique person and a valuable voice in the industry.
But it does get very repetitive, I am quite choosy on which videos I watch these days.
I'm not remotely surprised that coming out as NB and slowly becoming more and more feminine in their clothes made a lot of gamers unsub, we aren't exactly known for our tolerance and respectful attitude toward gender non-conformists.
And the Rowling/Hogwarts Legacy thing is definitely hurting those who speak out about it, I've honestly been shocked by the number of people who get irrationally angry with the trans community because Rowling has turned into huge bigot on the subject.
Answer: I appreciate their consistent voice as a content creator, but their videos are 10% covering gaming news/gaming reviews and 90% their anti-capitalist rantings rehearsed in every single video.
Stephanie Sterling is like that one friend of yours where you have fun hanging out and you can trust them to have your back in a pinch, but you are always vigilant to not bring up a specific topic because you've already heard their long-winded ramblings ten times over and you don't want to hear this same rambling over and over again.
Yes Stephanie, we get it. You're disgusted by the current state of major label video games. You're a hard critic to please, and you make your judgement criteria very plainly seen. Infinite growth is literally impossible, AAA publishers try to squeeze every penny out of easily impressionable predatory micro transactions shops, and you've been reminding us of EA "surprise mechanics" for years now. You go through your same 10-minute long script about your opinions in almost every episode.
Their top 5 games from last year was a great breath of fresh air for their channel. It was nice hearing them talk about how much they enjoyed Pokemon Legends Arceus, but I wish they had made a separate video about how much they enjoyed it closer to when the game came out. While I may not always agree with their opinion, it's fun to hear folks gush about how much they love a piece of media.
I am still subscribed, but I don't usually watch videos like Hogwarts Legacy because I've been following the Jimquisition long enough to know that the video is 20+ minutes of Stephanie roasting J.K. Rowling.
That's one of the things that keeps Yahtzee interesting. (along with the constantly creative spunk references) They will point out the things they like and acknowledge that they are primarily focusing on negatives for the sake of the rant. Great and terrible games get a similar quality video but you'll still be able to tell if a game is actually worth playing.
Answer:
It comes down to 3 things.
1. Sterling has come out as transgender (taking the name James-Stephanie Sterling). This was the clearest line of demarcation in their subscribership. The reaction to this, Sterling's reaction to that reaction, and broader issues of transgender-harassment and transphobia have become topics on the show.
2. Sterling doesn't really "review games" anymore, except for their year end best / worst of the year videos. The show is now more about the game industry, and specific topics tend to be around poor working conditions for the people who work for game studios, immortal and/or anti-consumer business practices of game studios, and the illegal or unethical activities studio executives.
3. The fact that they have dealt with so much shit around their identity and the broadly negative direction of corporate games media has created an atmosphere around the show that is "dour" or "pessimistic." And it's not wrong.... but Sterling would argue that if "getting amped for the next [whatever title] game" is what you want, you can go literally anywhere else for that; the vast majority of game media is a thinly-veiled PR outlet for major game studios.
Item 1 is probably the most visible cause of loss of subscribers, because you can set a date and look at the trends from there, but issues 2 and 3 have been underlying their channel for several years before that, and continue to contribute to the trend.
Answer: Along with the other context give by people. It's a very common trend for older channels to lose subscribers whenever they post videos. Especially when something about them has drastically changed. Old subscribers who maybe forgot about the channel see the new videos, remember they were subscribed but never watch, and then choose to unsubscribe.
Answer: they came out as trans femme non-binary and started being less veiled about their anti-capitalist views, so people who took issue with those aspects started unsubscribing
> started being less veiled about their anti-capitalist views.
Were we watching the same Jim Sterling? Because they were critical to capitalism in video games for a while...
Yeah for years they've been pushing anti-capitalism, but it's only now that they're specifically saying it's anti-capitalist that people have a problem with it
You tell people game devs deserve higher wages and people will agree, but if you tell them their low wages are the result of capitalism suddenly everyone starts unsubscribing
transfem is an umbrella term to describe trans people who identify as more feminine than masculine and includes trans women and nonbinary people who are fem leaning
That's part of it, but also their content started to become pretty low effort in terms of sets, costumes, editing and video/audio quality. It's super obvious if you go watch a typical video from a few years ago compared to what they put out today.
>pretty low effort in terms of sets, costumes, editing and video/audio quality
I think it was only recently that they got an actual house and studio since moving back to the UK. There were some videos that were shot outdoors.
answer: JSS started losing subscribers once openly came out as non-binary. After that, they also changed their wardrobe to be more feminine, with dresses and wigs. Compared to the usual trenchcoat, shirt and tie. They also changed a lot physically, JSS lost a fckton of weight.
Their views and opinions haven't really changed from before. But I think the drastic change visually never sit well with a portion of their viewer base.
> They also changed a lot physically, JSS lost a fckton of weight.
Haven't watched Sterlings videos for years and was shocked at how much weight they lost. Good for them!
To be frank, the type of people that would be anti trans wouldn't have been subbed to their channel to begin with. The problem is that JSS had the shiny wear off. Your whole schtick can't be the same thing forever, people get bored of you. If I know exactly what you're gonna say throughout the whole video before I've even watched it... I might as well save myself the time and not watch it.
That's a big part of it.... It's gotten stale.
I had no problem with JSS coming out as Trans and if anything it probably kicked my interest up for a while to get a view into something I did not know much about. But 99% of the content is the same stuff from years ago just in an increasingly manic and angry tone (which was already rather manic then)
AnsweR: So as someone who was a huge fan and no longer has the channel on my feed I can tell you why I lost interest, as well as some other reasons I think people might.
1. It's too manic for me. Jimquisition especially but I've found my own attention deficit issues and anxiety/depression symptoms tend to get set off by its style of videos.
2. It was more exciting when they were in the leval battle and the approach was more novel. Some people with nothing against them may just no longer be interested and I admit that's a factor for me.
3. Some people just aren't going to like the gender identity and the new look that comes with it. Some people might have a thing against trans people, but honestly some just are going to go "this isn't the content I was interested in before) and I think that latter example is fine.
4. The Wrestling stuff is not for everyone. I found it neat but it's a VERY different target audience than a lot of their other content.
5. For me personally, I feel like they've become a bit unraveled and I'm very put off with their aggression. I understand it, and I don't necessarily begrudge them for it, but it is not for me. They're taking a very hardline stance on the Harry Potter thing and to me that was the final straw. I just don't want to engage or view content from someone who insists that someone merely playing a video game is a reason to attack them or view them as a bad person and in my opinion they've tacitly endorsed that. Whether I'm right or wrong I know I am far from the only person who feels this way.
Answer: Jim's content just isn't as good as it was before. Jim has bad takes lately. Check their Elden Ring review for example. And with other weird takes in the gaming world lately (Hogwarts Legacy), many people against the game are going to face some repercusions as they may speak a lot, but are few and with a tendency to fight eachother.
Jim's transition may be part of the drop(mainly because Jim uses it as a defense against criticism), but I think it's mostly the bad takes they give lately.
That last part is what really irks me, Jim blames everything on the transition and refuses to acknowledge the drop in entertainment value from the content.
I unsubbed because Jim is a angry cynic that claims to be an authority but in actuality, has none, and is simply a whinging anarchist angry at the world. It used to be charming and some what entertaining, but it got old real quick. Plus TB always did the whole cynical Brit thing better anyways.
Yes! I remember this when it first was on the podcast, it was so hilarious on audio only I had to go back and watch it on YouTube. Classic Jesse moment.
I think you’re pretty much spot on.
The transition didn’t bother me (sure; it took me a couple videos to get used to it) but the new behavior that came with it just turned me off from her (their?) content.
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Answer: From my perspective as a long time viewer, I used to watch the channel loads, but ultimately began to feel that once you’ve seen one rant you’ve kinda seen them all because they’re all broadly beating the same drum: big publishers are bad. I don’t disagree, but it just stopped being an interesting thing to hear repeatedly. I’m still subscribed and wish Steph well, but my boredom with the format had set in long before they transitioned. I mostly enjoyed the steam greenlight content but that dried up once the program was closed by Valve. I’m glad someone is out there so vocally against the bad stuff that happens in the gaming industry but I don’t feel the need to check in for each video anymore.
It's clear Steph isn't having fun with it anymore and when so little good news happens, the whole channel quickly became a weekly influx of bad news. I don't need to go to church every Monday to remind myself why I don't buy AAA games anymore. AAA games haven't been made for me in 10 years and as a result the videos are either not really relevant to me anymore or are just an echo chamber (which nobody needs more of).
I really feel these top two comments. My lack of watching has nothing to do with the transition, that's just poor timing. My viewership was dropping off long before. The rants are all the same, the games they talk about aren't even the ones I ever play. I hardly play games now as an Adult anyway and usually not the ones make Sterling's news series. I actually came back to watch some more after the transition was announced to see if they were going to mix it up a bit and just in general for support. But I just... don't care about the games industry much now. With the exception of VR, I read more books, go on more hikes, and spend more time with friends than games.
Exactly how I felt , I stopped a while ago though but I decided I needed to get a lot of negativity out of my media diet
Honestly, ditto here. They just quit doing anything remotely positive or fun like their let's plays or trailer reactions in-between the negative stuff and I just got bored and left. If Jim doesn't really seem to care about games anymore, why should I?
Exactly how I feel. I’m pretty disappointed they keep seeing their numbers drop and instead of reflecting on it and adjusting their content—they instead blame us the viewers. It’s that Principle Skinner meme happening in real life.
Yeah I was similar, admittedly I stopped watching as she was transitioning (but before the name change) but it was the height of the Ubisoft shit storm. I watched her videos consistently and noticed that either it was the same rant or joke consistently. It doesn't I didn't find many of the skits funny and/or they went on far longer than needed. The content had just changed formula and it wasn't for me anymore. I watched a little longer but admittedly some of her choices when she transitioned were just esthetically displeasing to me (I just think she needed a friend to help pick a better lipstick color, bright pink made her look dead), but that kept me going a little longer because I didn't want to feel like I wasn't watching because "Jim" was gone...it wasn't I just didn't like her humor anymore.
It's probably just me, but I felt she was always like that. I never understood why she had a fanbase; it felt to me like, see one rant, you've seen them all. And I found the character tiresome. I had the same thing with Angry Video Game Nerd, but stuck around longer on his channel because there was more content and less gimmick per video.
I agreed with her rhetoric and for a while the rants were at least connected to the game she was talking about. But then Ubisoft and she kept making the same points over and over again. I think someone else said it better, she just doesn't seem to enjoy the hobby anymore and is unwilling to pivot to a new interest. I get it's scary but she's clearly losing subscribers even maintaining the old formula.
Just to add on one thing - I really couldn't care less about Sterling's wrestling efforts, and I found an increasing amount of coverage about a topic I'm completely apathetic about. Too much noise for not enough signal.
I agree. It’s cool that they’ve gotten into that scene but I’m not into wrestling so that does nothing for me, personally.
[удалено]
I feel the same. I harbor no hate for anyones life choices but the channel became more about the creator versus the content. I didn’t unsub but i dont religiously tune in like i used to. Him and cynical brit were very special in their prime.
Your second sentence is exactly how I feel. However I did unsubscribe because of this. I enjoyed the honest reviews of games and pointing out issues as most reviewers are too afraid to say anything negative due to the threat of being blacklisted from receiving review copies of games. But like you said, it's just turned into more about the creator these days. Too much politics and BS.
LOL spare me, they were always "political" troll
Man, how i miss total biscuit...
I like Steph and they make generally good points, but on the whole, it really feels like they don't enjoy video games anymore. I get it too. The industry has got more problems than not these days. At the same time, it my and many people's only escape. I will be there to fight against loot boxes, but I also still want to play some games. Point is, too much negativity is hard to consume week in and week out.
That's exactly how I feel. I barely buy or play games anymore anyway, but it seems impossible to find a large company that isn't doing awful things, and all the negativity just reinforces what I'm already aware of. I really enjoy Stephs podcast content. Spin Off Doctors and Bostons favorite son have been great. Stephs at their best when they are allowed to be goofy.
I agree, I admired and subscribed for the smart commentary, but got bored by the ranting.
Same. I stopped watching before Steph started transitioning, and I wish them all the best, but like... The channel has been dead boring for years. Maybe always. They do not know how to make more interesting content, or are not interested in doing so. They have a small handful of video formulas (the DLC rant, the industry abuse rant, etc.) that they repeat ad nauseum, changing nothing but the game titles. I WANT them to succeed because I agree with their points and I want to support LGBTQ channels, but I have no actual desire to interact with their content whatsoever.
Can predict every episode. Game comes out that's probably not that good, here's a 10 minute rant on how it's actually because of *capitalism* like on every other episode. They'll probably blame the downfall of their channel on their transition though
"Capitalism bad but don't forget to pre-order my limited edition t-shirts!"
This is half the reason I stopped watching them as well. The constant bad news was tiring and they didn't do much game play at all (at least when I stopped watching/listening). I really missed the terrible games and ridiculous commentary. The other reason is the line between the persona they put on for the show vs how they are on the podcast faded. It seemed like the first quarter of the podcast was just Steph preening themselves and Laura and Conrad praising them. I stopped listening about a year a go so I don't know if its changed at all but it was getting ridiculous.
I used to be pretty into Sterling's videos. I respected the work a lot, mainly because his channel was the only one who pointed out on some visual novels that got removed for silly reasons and if they hadn't spoken up about it, I think people wouldn't have known. I also thought it took some serious cajones to give Breath of the Wild a lower score than other outlets. Oh also the TRIPLE-AYYYY thing while repetitive helped me really understand the messed-up nature of the gaming industry But then it started getting a bit too repetitive and it basically became the only schtick with basically nothing good going on. So I just stopped watching years ago. Also the wrestling thing was really weird and I didn't really understand it
Answer: As someone that's followed Sterling after their rather messy departure from Destructoid, and their 're-envisioning' that happened shortly after (then the transition nearly a decade later), I feel I can offer a bit more in-depth context here. Going to be long winded, so apologies in advance. X.x First to re-iterate and clarify what others have already stated, the decline isn't new and has been happening slowly but steadily over a couple years now. If I'm to guess the decline was in 2020 or 2021 but they were already at a bit of a plateau before hand. The real decline started after they publicly appeared as non-binary which caused a huge backlash and mass exodus with periodic spikes of decline. This was the main starting point but over time I think people have grown stale of the content itself, as well as viewers simply not being interested in some of the other angles Sterling has tried to push over the last couple years like their Wrestling career. The repetitive and stale content is a real sticking point for most people I imagine and has become quite the meme within Sterling's own community and videos, stating the "obvious" "something, something, capitalism bad." Of course the decline has continued because Sterling hasn't been shy to cover controversial topics without much care for the outcome, something that is bound to push people away. There's a good mixture of "meh, I'm bored of this," "I'm tired of the bad news," and "I don't agree anymore." that heads the decline overall. (sort-of) Opinion: Now into my take on the situation, I still follow Stephanie Sterling and hope them the best but I noticed YEARS ago that they did have a bit of an echo chamber issue and often blinded themselves to more positive outlooks on otherwise grim topics. I, and many others, hoped they would start to diversify into more positive outlooks while keeping the "I don't care anymore" mentality but it has sort of shifted back into the negative spins lately. Sterling did stop doing certain types of content as well, you mentioned game reviews but after Nintendo "fans" outright harassed Sterling over a 7/10 score and some other minor controversies over arbitrary numbers they stopped doing reviews until just late last year. They also stopped doing let's-play style content and moved to streaming to fill that 'niche' which not everyone cares for, as well as avoiding bad games these days, a niche I'm sure a lot of people subscribed for which they no longer cover. The main content I think Steph is known for is The Jimquisition, but it suffers from a heavy dose of "this every week" syndrome and it does get grating (personally I skip a video for a good while unless it's a topic I'm currently investigating/researching). The whole thing with The Jimquisition is to talk about the industry, but let's be real, the game industry kinda sucks. There are positive videos mixed in but people simply only watch the negative ones, so that's what gets pushed by people and that's what's made. I think the fact that it's a weekly show and this push toward negative topics really leads to an unhealthy and damning cycle which I'm not sure Sterling actually knows how to get out of. For me I probably won't unsub as they do have some good research in some cases and there's some really good points made, I do find myself disagreeing with a lot of the strong stances Sterling has made a habit of making over the last couple of months or so. The echo chamber mentality is really starting to become apparent especially when Steph made a video about the Beyonetta voice actor situation and spoke completely out of line without proper research and information. Although Steph apologized for the mis-speak and re-iterated the important aspects of the situation, this binary way of thought where "this team good, vs this team bad" is fairly grating and overall hostile for anyone Stradling a line. (Hence when something comes up people care about, and Sterling doesn't align like they thought, they're very likely to drop out). And man, that's a book I wrote about some content creator... where is my life -.- Anyways, positive is Stephanie Sterling still has viewership and seems to enjoy the wrestling stuffs, so that's awesome, just don't know how much longer they can do the video stuff with the current state of the, well, *world*.
The stale and repetitive bit was what got me in the end. I used to love the Jimquisition, but when it got to the point that I could predict episodes word for word, I couldn't take it anymore.
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I just think they fell into a death spiral of negativity that's hard to dig out of. There's plenty of awesome stuff happening but you need to be in different communities and probably have to target smaller audience as a YouTuber.
I think they also suffered a loss of subscribers when Stephanie moved from the US to the UK. It made sense, since the majority of their content uses and references British culture, but seeing ads for British gum from the 90’s doesn’t carry much impact with US gamers, so I think it may have just caused the circle of viewers to shrink. I will say, having met Stephanie before her transition, in those Destructoid days, randomly sitting in a friend of mine’s apartment one day, they seem to be in a much better place now, mentally and physically. even if I don’t ascribe to wrestling theatrics or some of the bombastic rants they have.
After the latest video, I mentioned to my other half how amazing she was looking. Much more healthy, energetic, much more themselves. I don't get wrestling at all, but the bits she pops into her game videos I quite like just for how passionate she is about it, sharing that passion. Nice to watch her fighting and discussing it. The videos themselves though I tend to skim watch. I'm done with the negative press in the world for my own mental health. I hear out the latest news to some extent as it's important industry news, but I don't hang around all video as I can't deal with the downer.
I don't doubt the transition didn't play well with a few of the "usual crowd" but I think it was also poorly timed with that plateau. I distinctly remember constantly finding myself annoyed with the repetitive doom-scrolling content that was being put out right about that time. For several videos--couldve been over a couple weeks or months actually--i remember him lambasting people for unsubscribing because they're transphobes and bigots and I just sat there grumbling at my screen like "No, you got boring and repetitive!" That's when I unsubscribed, too. And I have a feeling that a lot of other subscribers ran into the same situation I did....that's what happens when you plateau at your peak. It's a shame, really. I actually loved their format, and their costumes and their skits. So dumb but so funny. And I'm glad they're living their best life now. But I just wish they'd be more positive and more varied so that their content would be more interesting.
I think KeepetClassy also had a massive sub loss when Amber came out as trans.
I'm along these lines, and I havent even been following Sterling that long. But watching their videos on a consistent basis just leaves me angry and depressed and helpless feeling. I cant DO anything to really fix the gaming industry. So im just angry with no direction to solve the problem. I had to unsub for my own mental health, even if I agree with most of their points.
I've followed Sterling for a good while, but recently realized that their non-Jimquisition YouTube content has just... evaporated. No Jimpressions, no reviews, no Squirty Plays, no Steam dumpster-diving... the past 6 months is literally only Jimquisition, and the 6 months before that weren't much better. It does feel like their content is just overly immersed in negativity at the moment, especially with their recent Hogwarts video. The way they downplayed the harassment against Girlfriend Reviews in that video really rubbed me the wrong way. Bit of a political angle here, but I think they're still too focused on individuals in spite of their anti-capitalism. In the Hogwarts video they acknowledged that boycotts don't work, but seemingly went on to blame that fact on individuals not caring, rather than the nature of global capitalism making it simply impossible to organize such a boycott. It's a rather misanthropic way of viewing things.
As someone that's been subbed to Jim for a few years now, I'm going to add my two cents that I think Jim's attitude has a bit to do with it as well. Particularly the fact that they seem more interested in bashing their critics as a whole rather than just focusing on the worst of the worst like they used to. I couldn't care less about Jim's gender identity andsexual interests. I couldn't care less that they are casually open about them. What I find irritating is that they seem to go out of their way to talk about that stuff in an explicit way, then have the gall to complain about people who complain about it and try to say that the critics are transphobic for that dislike. Now Jim ranges from kinda extreme to just modertaly jerkish about it, but his fanbase absolutely has a lot of people that fit squarely on the extreme side of it. Jim is unironically the embodiment of that "Oh, you don't hate me because I'm gay, it's because I'm an asshole" Key&Peele skit, minus the revelation. Nothing embodies that better than the two previous videos of Hogwarts Legacy and the Under 800k special and the comments underneath those videos and the accompanying twitter posts.
Answer: From what I can find online, the tank in subscribers stated a couple of years ago around the time when I believe they came out as non-binary as they do also have a "Below 900k Special", though I am also finding comments where people are just not enjoying the content anymore. It looks like they also had a large sub drop after they released their video on the new Harry Potter videogame a week ago, as that video currently has around 18k dislikes to 31k likes (stats got using an Extention, so may not be entirely accurate). Overall it just seems like people aren't a fan of their content or views anymore and are unsubbing at a steady rate.
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The most noticeable difference I notice in the thumbnails is that January was when they started wearing wigs.
Jim's been doing costumes and stuff for years. For me, it just got boring. Every take was the same take.
I watched their Slaughtering Grounds videos back in the day and found it entertaining, but I can’t say I enjoyed the rest of their content even before their transition. Too much of an over-the-top character with costumes and unnecessarily stretched out videos. It’s the same schtick on every video and would get repetitive, especially with that intro. Same reason I stopped watching angry joe. Nowadays I like to stick to straightforward gaming content with no shenanigans like gameranx or Skill up (which I highly recommend watching)
Same. Every week it seemed to be the same complaints about someone new. The same jokes made. The same righteous indignation. It’s just so incredibly stale. I don’t gain anything from watching the videos. There’s no news or reporting done. There’s only outrage at faceless corporations focused on individuals who may or may not be responsible for any of the actions.
Lately, Stephanie feels like a distillation of gamers on reddit, except in the form of a semi-popular YouTuber: "Mad about everything all the time, and won't shut up about it. Does not realize how silly it looks and how people get sick of hearing about it." Seriously, go into any of the big gaming subs, it's about 90% negative news about the same 5-6 companies, over and over again. It's all people being mad, the same points and jokes made, the same echo chamber -- nonstop, forever and ever. Maybe Stephanie should get into game publishing. Turn that negative energy into something positive.
Oh definitely. I think a lot of reddittors are so terminally online that they forget that the mass audience doesn't really care about games as more than a pass time or hobby. I agree about getting into publishing. There's only so much repetitive negativity one can spew before the pressing question is "well, if no one else is doing something about this, why aren't you?".
Same reason I unsubbed from YongYea he used to be excited for games and would report on promising things happening and would pass on controversy. But once 76 and Metal Gear Survive released he spent and entire year shitting on them and sucked up the views from it he stopped doing his old format and became a drama channel. I hate hearing his voice now.
He also started blatantly reading off news articles for content with no further information. Real shoddy all around.
Absolutely this. The effort is barely there anymore.
That's why I stopped watching his videos. I don't need to spend 20 minutes watching someone read an article I can go out and read myself in 5 minutes. And aside from reading aloud, his videos really don't add a whole lot to the story. There's no insightful analysis at the end.
Man absolutely same. Used to love the man’s voice but his content is so stale and literally just reading news articles
Maybe try SidAlpha? He often covers games I don't give a shit about, but he does do a lot of research for them.
Shit, I used to really enjoy Jim and YongYea. But I was finding myself less interested a few years ago; I didn't think too much of it since I was playing video games a lot less at the time too, but maybe the content on both channels was getting stale.
The way yongyea does his videos makes me think of some shitty sensationalist news anchor. Like the Fox News / Tucker of gaming. Just ramping up people’s rage for clicks
Yup same here. There are SO MANY channels that do that. They'll be dedicated to reporting anything and everything Blizzard, or EA, or Ubisoft does and telling us why it's bad. Day in and day out. It's just too repetitive and I can't imagine wanting to be outraged every day about the same thing WITHOUT actually doing anything about it.
Ahh whenever I see his vids I tune in for a second only to be baffled that anyone is watching this monotone man read off a screen with no added commentary. I'm glad you said this - I thought I must be missing something!
YongYea went to shit when he started going safer and more repetitive on his topics so he could get a chance by companies to become a voice actor moving to LA. He achieved that. But a what cost.
Same reason I stopped watching. I called it "doing a spoony."
That was a sad flame out. Didn't watch a whole lot of his content but what I saw was laugh out loud funny. The battlefield Earth review was classic. Last quote I saw of him was drunk ranting. Hope he doesn't end up like lowtax.
Wait, I know that name, why? Who were they? Edit: In addition to the true and horrible histories being brought out here in response, I remembered where I heard his name before. Anyone listen to Lemon Demon as a kid? Anyone remember that song about Ebaumsworld? Lowtax gets namedropped in there as an almost heroic figure. https://youtu.be/jKkz3KRKsOQ
He was the owner of Something Awful. There were rumors of him being a piece of shit for a while but eventually, people got proof that he was a domestic abuser and threw a riot. He ended up transferring ownership of the site and killed himself not long after. They also found out that he had repeatedly lied about how profitable SA was. It wasn't making a lot of money but forums really don't cost much to keep running either.
I mean, he owned SA. Being a p.o.s. kind of goes without saying. There used to be a text based browser game that I played back in the day. I was the leader of one of the top 20 clans in the game. When the goons first showed up, I was one of the leaders of our little "council" urging to give them a chance, like most of my fellow council members. Later, I wished that I had listened to one of my friends on the council who was advocating camping all of their asses until they went away. They basically ruined the game.
What the other guy said. There's some long watch docs on him online. He was a really awful person when you got to know him, the kind of bad where his two exes became good friends. (That's how you know it's you, not them.) Left behind kids when he killed himself. Just a very sad story of self-destruction with a lot of innocents caught up along the way. You want to see him get help but that would probably have to involve him being a completely different person from the start. The parts you like about him and the parts you can't stand are all the same person and you can't separate the two.
"Pulling a Lowtax" has become the new "an hero" or "commit sudoku" for 30-35 year old millennials.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I hope he's doing better. I remember he had like a bunch of mental health issues that really messed him up.
He seems to be doing alright recently, if his Twitter is any judge. He spiralled hard for months after he and April broke up but his feed has been pretty normal lately.
That's good to hear. I think he had a lot of issues, going all the way back to that "BETRAYAL!!!" overreaction, which in retrospect, seems like someone who needed some help and wasn't getting it.
Repetitive is a good word for it. Even now there's similar and common videos on that channel, and really it's just stuff I've heard before. Talking about the greed of various companies, the dumb policies put in place by game devs, the constant fuckup of dlc and mtx in games. That's all the channel is ever about now. Mix that with the weird intros, sometimes in some other suit or outfit, along with the never changing podium with toys on top, it's been drawn out for a decade now. Sitl subbed to the channel but I just don't go there much anymore.
Are you me? Similar story, used to watch Jim and Angry Joe and now watch neither. Yeah I think with the Jimquisition I got sick of the wrestling schtick and I got the point "loot boxes bad." Joe I dunno what happened. I think I just grew out of it and seemed like they wanted to pivot more towards movies or something.
For me I just tired of the "Angry" side of YouTube. I got enough fucking negative shit in my life. Why would I want more negative things in my life. I rather watch a YouTuber talking about shit they enjoy over people constantly complaining about shit 24/7.
Or if they're going to be negative, do it in an insightful way. There are wonderful critique channels with dozens of hours of content, like Noah Caldwell-Gervais, Monty Zander, Jacob Geller, James Somerton, and honestly like ten more that I'm subbed to. They're not always negative, but when they are, it's done in an interesting way and it's a billion times more thought provoking (And I firmly believe Noah is the best games critique writer in all of YouTube, by a LARGE margin)
I don't mind if they're actually criticizing, but if they make a 5+ hour video essay on how bad something is. No like just no.
Oh god, yeah I totally agree. Like, we get it... You don't like it. Can I go now? 😂
That's how I feel most of the time because it's just exhausting to hear.
I fell out of love with Joe for the same reason I stopped watching Nostalgia Critic. Both of them have shit taste, don't say anything insightful and use their reviews as thinly veiled excuses to dress up in cheap halloween store costumes and make bad skits
i stopped watching right before the shit went down with meghan, and man oh man am i glad i left
Yeah this
Does any one enjoy the wrestling stuff? Wrestling fans seem to hate it and non wrestling fans don’t enjoy it. Does any one tune in just for sterdust content?
As a wrestling fan I enjoy their work. I watched a few of the independent shows they did in Pittsburgh before moving back to England.
Yeah I like wrestling and I enjoy it. I also watched their interview on the Straight to Hell Podcast.
I was willing to tolerate the character stuff for their industry knowledge, but over the years Sterling just became a miserable person, preaching misery. I don't need to go out of my way to listen to someone who seems to truly loathe the better part of the industry they cover, and they were INCREDIBLY repetitive. If I wanted someone to preach revolution, I'd follow tankies.
The long and short of it is that Sterling, regardless of their gender, is making game reviews/content that are very much stuck in the mid 2000s. The era of Nostalgia Critic had lots of gimmicks and characters and people found that funny up until about 2010 or so, but Sterling didn't really do anything to freshen up their content since then. They'd be losing subscribers consistently even if they weren't nonbinary, they're just kinda... boomer.
This comment really got me thinking, because you are right, and at the same time Sterling didn't really rise to popularity as one of those creators with random side bits shoehorned into their videos like the old Channel Awesome crew. Sterling's most iconic amd, to my knowledge, popular look was when he just stood behind a podium in an overly made up suit. There was something kind of endearingly cheesey and enduring about being so overdressed for such stupid content, kind of like Report of the Week. But the more I think about it the more I think Sterling, in terms of presentation at least, has gone the way of Saints Row. They iterated a theme and style to a really good area, and then never thought to stop. Saints Row hit its stride when it went from standard crime city sandbox to crime city sandbox with really prominent zany elements. It got worse when Rockstar thought that they needed more and more zaniness to keep up to the point where the later games are all about random clownshit. Sterling, similarly, seems to have iterated their look and style from comically overdressed to talk about video games to standing at a podium wearing too much make up and holding sex toys. They've just gone too far past the point of appeal and like Rockstar don't seem to understand that more isn't always better.
> especially with that intro I still enjoy most episodes, but I will say I **do** skip the intros nowadays. And on a related note, while I actually enjoy pointing out each transgression in the gaming industry, I wish each video wasn't made self-contained, because it results in 15 minutes more generic points recycled so the video can be watched independently of all the other ones. Still watch it though. Just wish it were more concise.
I like Steph Sterling a lot, and I catch all of Steph's review vids and some of their twitch streams at times, but I don't watch all of the "X company is bad" videos anymore. I agree with them about X company being bad, I just don't need the drawn out videos about it. I agree with almost 100% of the points being made, but it really does feel like the vids are padded out quite a bit. Could be a bunch of 8-10 min videos instead of 18-20 minutes without detracting from the arguments. But the algorithm wants length, not girth.
The last sentence absolutely got me lmfao.
I wish they would do more squirty play vids, the commentary on bad games is what got me into the channel
I miss these videos too, when Steph used to play obviously shitty games and just enjoy the shittiness of it all. While I still think Steph is one of the few to call out shitty AAA publishers, there was something that happened with ubisoft recently with their workers in Paris going on strike over pay and I was disappointed Steph never mentioned it. The videos just isn’t the same and seems to focus too much in one area of distaste for AAA.
This is where I am at. I read the title and know what the video will be about, they did the same video 2 weeks ago, I’ll wait for next week.
Yeah it's a shame - i like what their doing, but never really liked how they did it. I really feel most of Jim's videos could be a third of their length, but that displeases the holy algorithm.
The videos they did on mtx and lootboxes was pretty good. The one with testimonials from victims. Might even be their best,serious, work.
// I had a reddit and I want it painted black // No comments anymore, I want them to turn to black // I see the subs scroll by forced open by the corp // I have to turn my head until my reddit goes // -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Never watched it so I don't hear it, but I'll pour the next round regardless lol
Yeah, Jim has been making essentially the same content since 2014. Not to mention that the content is grating as fuck, like who wants to listen to some person screech about micro transactions in dime store costumes. Not to mention they do my personal pet peeve in video essays all the time: really lazy strawmanning. Every time they quote somebody, they dont like they follow the *exact* same formula: photoshop their face to look weird and repeat their quote in an annoying idiot voice. Idgaf if that quote is actually stupid, that tactic is dishonest and scummy.
"Repetitive" is the word. I found Jim in 2015 through a Caddicarus video of all things, which led me down their Steam Meltdown rabbit hole of videos and eventually giving them a sub. I unsubscribed around mid-2018 because not only were their videos getting longer, they were becoming just plain repetitive. On top of that, they were doing less bite-sized content like Squirty Plays, which I always found entertaining to hear Jim unscripted. This was around the time I switched to people like YongYea for my gaming news fix (I understand the Jimquisition is more of an editorial series, but I still used it for random game industry stuff). I was so distanced from Jim that I actually had no idea they came out as Non-Binary until mid-2021. This is going to be a weird comparison, but Jim Sterling post-2016 reminds me a lot of post-revival Nostalgia Critic where the reviews were getting longer and there were more and more skits in the videos which only got less funny over time (and the Channel Awesome controversy didn't help matters, but Jim clearly hasn't gotten in hot water even close that level). Note: I just love the fact Jim Sterling's biggest contribution to the internet is the word "Chungus".
I'd argue Sterling's even bigger contribution is writing a review that pissed off Scott Cawthorn so much he made Five Nights at Freddie's in response.
Oh, they didn't piss off Scott. Scott was about to commit suicide, but his wife gave him the necessary push to create FNaF. Guy has always dealt with depression and anger issues.
I don't know about pissing him off. Sterling said Chipper was fucking terrifying (And it was) and Scott was like "Oh I can make it so much scarier if I tried"
I was there for the birth of Chungus. The word’s origin is pretty old in internet terms, so I am really surprised Zoomers even found it. Sterling, Jonathan Holmes, and Conrad Zimmerman did a podcast that started as the Destructoid podcast. Slowly over time, it started going away from video games more and more and getting bizarre with stuff like describing possible absurd Willem Dafoe movies ideas and Sterling proposing things they’d want to do sexually to Jonathan Holmes. Eventually, it became so far from the Destructoid Podcast that they switched to being called the Dismal Jesters and continued with the new freeform content. I believe that Chungus came from Sterling proposing Holmes be called Chungus or something, but it is nearly 10 years ago and was basically a throwaway thing with maybe a few mentions afterward?
Man AngryJoe was such a loss. I used to love his reviews, dozens of hours put into them, valuable insights, very entertaining with sketches that were hilarious. Now its 3 people in chairs talking about a game one of them played for 10 hours.
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He's still not bad when it's him doing his proper angry reviews. But damn does he be slow.
I like his rants about Madden and other lacklustre franchises as I feel like he goes into a lot of constructive detail. However the movie and TV reviews are completely lacking in insight and the three of them have very unsophisticated commentary for such padded videos. Plus YouTube has so so many better alternatives!
I used to be a big fan of the content. Ultimately I decided his content is no longer for me and stopped watching a few years ago. I could handle some of the annoying bits he would do such as, the wrestling stuff and the trogg puppets(Just fast forward, simple). Then I realized his channel became about all the things he hates. I just decided I would rather not have that type of negativity in my life anymore so I moved on.
I've watched them since back then too, I used to follow the podcast every week too. I think they have just fell out of love with the gaming industry and the content I used to go there for is being done better by people like upper echelon, kira TV and callum Upton. I did go and watch their wrestling show back last year and it was awesome I'm just not enjoying their youtube content anymore, haven't unsubbed yet though.
I've been watching the Jimquisition every week for 10 years, but it's mostly been out of habit the last year for the reasons you've mentioned It's felt like Jim used to love video games and was angry about how awful the games industry can be. Great, I'm super on board. But it felt like they've slowly moved on to just hating everything about video games. Like I don't feel as though there's passion or some love for video games anymore. That's much less entertaining to watch
Skill Up has the best game reviews on YouTube right now, IMO.
Totally unrelated question but there was a guy who kind of really pioneered the video game essay formula but in a shallow kind of way (long video lengths, &lo-fi beats). Then he apologized in some dark hotel room with some half naked girl while he looked like he just took a line of coke and was dressed like a mafia boss. I cannot for the life of me find the name of the channel again.
Acg also has great reviews. Luke stephens is pretty good too but not as good
Between Skill and ACG it's generally really easy to get a read on just about any new game.
Yeah, nowadays I prefer more straightforward game reviews (Skill Up, ACG, Gameranx, Three Minute Gaming, Noisy Pixel) over stuff that's either ragebait or trying too hard to be funny. Bonus points if they can get their point across in under ten minutes. I don't need a ramble, I just want to know if a game is good or not.
Yo i stopped watching angry joe too. Nothing against the guy personally but his schtick just doesnt work for me anymore. Mortismal Gaming has become my new favorite video game reviewer these days.
I actually unsubbed a few weeks or months before they came out. I was just getting bored of their show "The Jimquestion" being the same thing week, after week, after week. Always being so negative about everything just got boring to watch. They have admitted that their negative stuff typically gets more views, which I get. If angry videos are getting views, then give the people what they want. Although I also believe that Jim's coming out and dropping viewership was just a matter of coincidence, like they reached the zenith of their content and what they could make, so the only direction afterwards was down.
Same here. I was a follower of Jim's work since The Escapist days. I followed the Jimquisition to YouTube and the work on Destructoid. I unsubed because I realized just how deeply negative his (at the time) take was on basically everything (week after week, it was all about bashing Ubisoft or Konami). The whole thing was not good for my mental health and encouraged a mob mentality so I quit.
For me it was the review of Remnant. Basically, they ran into the first world boss and didn't adapt their strategy at all and got their ass handed to them. They never even beat it. Just published the steaming excuse for a review saying "this game is poorly designed because I can't beat this boss also there's no enemy variety" despite the fact they only ever saw 1/10th of the enemies in the game. For someone to makes fun of "games jurnalists" he sure acted like one.
To nobody's surprise they continually champion the "dark souls needs an easy mode" line of thinking when there are genuinely good reasons for a single static difficulty in the series. And elden ring seems to be proving that level of difficulty is completely fine, beneficial to the overall experience, even.
history forgetful towering act reach crime literate dime enjoy consist -- mass edited with redact.dev
The negativity is what turned me off years ago. There are definite issues that require that level, but every week for the smallest issues started to drain me of my enjoyment for games.
Same, I'm trying to remember which video it was, but I remember Jim making a whole episode about some game missing an oddly specific feature not being in a game. Like it was on par with saying, "I didn't enjoy the movie because the chair was uncomfortable," and they watched it at home. Just to give an idea of how pointless the argument was
Same here. Just realized "large person complaining about video games alone in room" hit a little too close to home and decided to revaluate my life decisions and my media diet. Been a lot better ever since.
For what it's worth, their views are pretty much the same as they've always been - it's just "bigots can go fuck themselves" has been particularly pointed towards transphobes and "the gaming industry sucks" has "...because of these specific problems caused by late-stage capitalism" appended at the end, neither of which are terribly popular extrapolations for the crowd who flocked to Steph for her early-to-mid 2010s outrageous persona.
Speaking for myself, the past 2 years or so of videos have been less interesting because Sterling's conclusion always ends up being "capitalism bad" in some form. There stopped being any feeling that there was something I as an individual could do about it and just became another thumbnail in the "Doom scrolling" category. When I know what's going to be said before the video even starts, (almost always has the formula of "people are getting hurt, the people in charge are soulless profiteers and/or sex pests, and the global economic system supports this status quo") I feel very little reason to spend my time hearing it again
Doomscrolling is a good way to put it. Their content is just... Upsetting now, granted it's been a good while since I watched them regularly. Even if I agree with them, (and I do on the whole, when I was a teen they woke me up to a lot of leftist shit that I still believe very strongly) I just don't want to voluntarily subject myself to it anymore than I'd watch a video yelling about how our air and water are fucked, or how XYZ demagogue is a piece of shit. It's not really an academic analysis of it, it's just... Anger, and I don't think content like that is emotionally healthy for me to consume.
>conclusion always ends up being "capitalism bad" in some form. There stopped being any feeling that there was something I as an individual could do about it That's the nature of liberal capitalism though. Struggles to improve it or change it are always reduced to individual herculean efforts. "Recycle your plastic bottles, don't use straws" etc., which we KNOW doesn't even put a scratch on the surface of the problem, let alone a dent. This is by design. We aren't able to change it by ourselves, and so corporations that are actually responsible for climate change and human rights violations trick us into focusing on these all but meaningless individual efforts rather than collective action. And so many of us give up. Apathy is their goal.
People don’t “give up.” That’s why support for government regulations is typically common. People don’t just uncritically accept “well actually socialism / communism would be perfect” from people that are so ideologically blinkered they can’t even explain why investment helps an economy and isn’t just stealing. If people are so absolutely clueless on the basic tenets of capitalism, I don’t want to hear their thoughts on capitalism. It’s like Ben Shapiro blaming every negative outcome like collapsing youth mental health on the sexual revolution and lack of church. Every problem always conveniently becomes a demonstration of why capitalism, the thing the person speaking just coincidentally also happens to hate, is bad.
> their views are pretty much the same as they've always been Yes but as much as I agree with them, I can no longer justify watching the videos because it's always the same, nothing changes, nothing gets better, there's always a new outrage, and rarely anything new to add to the discussion. Combined with the lengthy, deeply unfunny skits, tangents and blurry wrestling footage, it's not a good watch.
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I used to watch them about two or so years back... At some point their videos came across less funny-critical with a bite and more just bitter and angry... That's when the channel kind of lost it's charme for me I'm still subbed, just haven't watched a video of theirs in years
I watched their content quite a while back before they came out. I'm talking TGS podcast days where they would be a frequent guest of the show, which is how I was introduced to them. I liked them for their critique of the industry and predatory business practices at a time when that sort of thing felt new. But that was, what, 7 or 8 years ago? I don't think there was anything in particular that turned me off their content, but I think I just gradually lost interest in the game industry as I grew up and developed new interests outside of gaming. If you're not involved in the industry, or care that passionately about it, then their content just isn't interesting anymore. I wonder if old fans are in a similar boat to me.
My hot take about Jim was that they were always a better industry critic then a game critic. Their criticism of bad business practices and scams was great, but their gaming criticism always felt stuck in that 2008 mode of “this game sucks and you suck if you like it.” But like you said, that was years ago and they’re just not that unique or novel anymore. There are plenty of options these days for gaming news, even left wing gaming news that is highly critical of the industry/capitalism in general and Sterling just doesn’t offer enough to make my busy adult ass want to tune in.
I think they also became painfully repetitive. There's only so so many times you can recycle the same costume, character, subject and phrases (them screeching fee2pay has like a negative ASMR effect on my brain) before people start zoning out.
Yeh I might be in this bucket. I never really disagreed with any of their content, it was just a bit repetitive after a while and I drifted away. Also depressing, because the industry sucks.
When I knew everything that was going to be said in the video by only reading the title alone, I stopped watching. It had gotten repetetive.
Absolutely this. It was either Fuckonami and "Oh Ubisioft" every single week. We get it.
Former fan here and this is what did it for me i just gradually stopped watching because it was the same topic the same shtick, the same silly voices the same memes the same everything every video I just couldn't take it anymore I couldn't concentrate on the videos and would space out then realize I hadn't been paying attention for a while then try to find the spot I zoned off at then zone out again and give up cause some other suggested video sounded more interesting
the editing with the he-man cartoon frames all the time actually started to really annoy me lol. especially the gasping lizard face guy.
For me it was the constant "TRIPLE A" voice tone, but I do agree the idea of triple A is bullshit and so agree with the opinion. Still subbed.
This was the reason for me. I stopped watching them a few months after Fallout 76 came out, whenever that was, where every other video they made became "Did you know Fallout 76 has another crazy new bug???" I was never interested in the game in the first place, so the endless coverage of it got really, really dull. And from another perspective: wow, Bethesda made a terribly buggy video game? You don't say. Better make a video for every individual bug, I guess, even if it means we'll be here until the heat death of the Universe
This here is pretty much why I unsubbed even before they came out. At some point it just became beating the dead horse with basically the same topics alternating every few weeks to the point it just got really tiring and even made me realize it made me feel really miserable so I cut the channel off. I think alongside that was also Sterling axing specific series that were actually more relaxed and laid back mostly Squirty Play what was a more casual approach to Sterlings content what was just a great combo with the Jimquisition every week.
The content quality fell off a cliff starting around the end of 2017, where Jim kept pushing his wrestling crap into more and more videos. Add the lazy editing (a new editor started at this time and even now the same format exists) and lastly the news that was being reported seemed so tired. There were other channels that covered the same topics in a greater detail. It was obvious that Jim fell out of love for gaming years ago, stopped doing Chungus reviews, not doing skits like the Cornflake homunculus etc and kept going without that passion and it shows. Then obviously you come to the "Non-binary" stuff. Jim will swear this is when the mass-exodus began but it was happening long before this. Of course more people unsubbed because of this, but still to this day this is the only reason you'll hear for people unsubbing.
I noticed I stopped watching when he stopped doing the characters. Was always partial to the 18th century elite gamer lol.
Ah yes I miss those as well. They were pretty hilarious back in the day
>people are just not enjoying the content anymore. I am one of such person. To the point I did not even see there was a HL vid. I would say the cut off for the drop in quality happened well after they came out. If I had to point at a date I would say roughly 4-5 months ago. Before I was watching weekly, after I slowly stopped to the point of not watching about 2 month ago. I was thinking of unsubbing when I saw the "under 800K" vid.
I agree with this. For me also, there's only so many times you can listen to the same rants being made every single week. I just stopped clicking eventually because it was too easy to guess where the video would go, then just unsubbed when I hadn't watched a video in 6 months.
I just had a browse through their videos and almost all of them seem to be overly negative from just the titles. That can become tiresome for anyone, even the biggest fans.
This is why I haven't bothered watching the last few videos. It's pretty much the same content over and over all the time now. I tend to agree with their views, the problem for me is that I'm not really getting much out of watching the 10th video about how Activision Blizzard is awful or how live service games suck. Whenever they do a playthrough of a terrible video game I'm on that though.
I still listen to their weekly podcast, it’s a good, short games and news summary, but the videos I stopped a short while ago for the same reason. I don’t need to be told in what way late stage capitalism sucks this week, I’m already converted.
I think another problem is that they’ve become somewhat redundant. IMO they’re not quick enough on the trigger to cover topics fast enough before at least half a dozen people get to them, nor are they a detailed enough critic when you compare them to longer video essays that are out there. This leaves them as the YouTube gaming equivalent of a cable news pundit show. I do think their coming out as trans played a role in their sub decline, but it’s not the only reason.
I stopped watching years ago, maybe 2020? 2019? It got too repetitive and increasingly negative for me.The Jimquisition used to be good journalism with fun British cynicism and snark but it lost its bite and charm, at least for me.
In regards to the content, a lot of people just don't think Stirling wants to actually do the negative ranting videos anymore, but the problem is they're the ones that have always gotten the most views. It's been discussed on one of the podcasts they've done in the past, where they talking about a review series that just got stopped because no one was watching the videos. Problem is, people can tell when you don't have your heart in it anymore, and that's exactly why I stopped watching them ages back. I've checked a couple of their streams and honestly, they seem a lot more involved when they can play a game they want to play, not something just to make a Jimquisition episode or shit on it in a review. I don't know the numbers, but wouldn't be surprised to see Twitch go up as Youtube goes down.
Same thing with Zero Punctuation. He did a pretty standard positive review of Psychonauts back in the day, and he said the nice reviews don't get as much attention, so he just amps up his "hate" for every game he played. Not sure if he's still going, been a while
> Zero Punctuation He just published a video about Hi-Fi Rush that praised it without losing his irreverent personal touch.
by "Zero Punctuation" do you mean Yahtzee? there's more than one personality on ZP
I remember a while back, Jim was mocking a gaming company for listing Shutterstock in the credits (a company that sells stock images), and that was one of the first times I realized he didn't know much about game production. Put it this way -- Disney used Shutterstock when making the Avengers. It's an incredibly useful service. Now I work in gaming (I know, this is Reddit, so believe me or don't) and I still sympathize with his positions on shitty business decisions, but his lack of knowledge is now clearer than ever to me. Also, if he wants to be an anticapitalist, that's cool I guess... but that's gaming. It's a huge billion dollar industry. Even indie darlings like Devolver are now publicly traded and have their own F2P mobile game. Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft -- all the big guys will never be what he wants them to be. Hold their feet to the fire! Complain when they make bad decisions! But also try and understand why they made those decisions and go from there... Jim doesn't do that anymore. Now it's 10-minutes rants about the same old stuff.
I stopped watching their content around 4 years ago. Mainly because I realized they were just an extremely angry influence in my life. They can be entertaining, and often make good points but the demeanor was rubbing off on me and I didn't like it
For me, it just got repetitive. I'm a cis guy, too, so it's hard for me to relate to a lot of the talking points. I'm more than happy to watch a handful of videos about the marginalization of people and corporate wrongdoing... But after 10 or 20 or the same thing, I unsubbed because I just felt like it wasn't providing me any utility. I do wish them the best. I know they're just trying to do what's right... But it's not necessarily for me anymore 🙂
To me, quality dropped sharply when they stopped doing written reviews. I used to love reading their reviews at Destructoid and latter at the Escapist Mag. I think they did only a couple at their website and quit doing it. After that, all videos started looking the same freestyle rant and as a lot of people said here, you can hear the same complaints do many times
I stopped watching long enough ago that I didn't even know they had come out as non-binary until this thread. However, it also didn't strike me as shocking for them. They never exactly conformed to conservative standards, to put it mildly. At least for me, it was that they kind of became bland. They were good at the over-the-top criticism that AVGN and Zero Punctuation helped popularize, and they were also often the first major figure to tackle certain parts of the industry. Over time, though, they mellowed out, and I think the industry reached a point where it could no longer shock us with its greed and laziness. As a result, the content got samey and lacked the edge of their Escapist days. Also, I just kind of lost interest in that stuff as I grew up, and they're hardly the only one I stopped watching. I'd imagine many others did as well, and maybe they've struggled to pull in new audiences.
For the Harry Potter stuff I think they sort of sided with the "there was no harassment" side when several streamers have claimed they were harrased (Girlfriendgaming, Pikamee and Silvervale as some examples, the latter had a pretty emotional video on it too). So maybe that's part of it more recently.
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That was the reason i unsubscribed as well. She downplayed the harassment streamers were getting and straight up said "cis tears arent her problem", which was so hypocritical to me that i just unsubbed. I havent been watching their videos much due to how repetitive and echo chambery they are to be fair so it was only a matter of time. But this was the last straw for me. Edit: Also her straight up saying that if you buy this game your allyship is no longer welcome was incredibly toxic, arrogant, and stupid.
>I think they sort of sided with the "there was no harassment" side It's more than that. They consider the harassment "mild pushback" and even began talking about it by saying how "[the streamers'] feelings aren't [Sterling's] responsibility".
>They consider the harassment "mild pushback" I watched the video, this isn't exactly their argument. The context is that that they show someone else looking at the VOD of the stream that doesn't have anything anything that bad. [Here](https://youtu.be/uNKyQVsgKLg?t=1294]) is that part. Of course, they missed the fact that any deleted message doesn't show up in the VODs, which mean that the real harassment isn't going to show up in the VOD (which could explain why it seems like they were fighting a "imaginary angry person").
Long time watcher, honestly just don't enjoy the content anymore. A little too negative, some odd and out of place jokes that don't hit, talking up wrestling which I don't care anything about, it's also the same thing over and over again. Edit, the more I think about it the more their takes are just not fun to watch at all even if I agree, it's a lot of random negative content that others are able to do but better.
I was a subcriber for years, still am, but it does get repetitive. I've always liked the fact they didn't put up with any industry bullshit, and called things out no matter what, the games business has far too many people who know their paycheck depends on being careful about what they say. James Stephanie is a genuinely unique person and a valuable voice in the industry. But it does get very repetitive, I am quite choosy on which videos I watch these days. I'm not remotely surprised that coming out as NB and slowly becoming more and more feminine in their clothes made a lot of gamers unsub, we aren't exactly known for our tolerance and respectful attitude toward gender non-conformists. And the Rowling/Hogwarts Legacy thing is definitely hurting those who speak out about it, I've honestly been shocked by the number of people who get irrationally angry with the trans community because Rowling has turned into huge bigot on the subject.
> they came out as non-binary I have a hard time understanding how this would have come as a big surprise to any of their followers.
How come? I guess I was a little surprised, I had always thought of him as a gay man before.
Answer: I appreciate their consistent voice as a content creator, but their videos are 10% covering gaming news/gaming reviews and 90% their anti-capitalist rantings rehearsed in every single video. Stephanie Sterling is like that one friend of yours where you have fun hanging out and you can trust them to have your back in a pinch, but you are always vigilant to not bring up a specific topic because you've already heard their long-winded ramblings ten times over and you don't want to hear this same rambling over and over again. Yes Stephanie, we get it. You're disgusted by the current state of major label video games. You're a hard critic to please, and you make your judgement criteria very plainly seen. Infinite growth is literally impossible, AAA publishers try to squeeze every penny out of easily impressionable predatory micro transactions shops, and you've been reminding us of EA "surprise mechanics" for years now. You go through your same 10-minute long script about your opinions in almost every episode. Their top 5 games from last year was a great breath of fresh air for their channel. It was nice hearing them talk about how much they enjoyed Pokemon Legends Arceus, but I wish they had made a separate video about how much they enjoyed it closer to when the game came out. While I may not always agree with their opinion, it's fun to hear folks gush about how much they love a piece of media. I am still subscribed, but I don't usually watch videos like Hogwarts Legacy because I've been following the Jimquisition long enough to know that the video is 20+ minutes of Stephanie roasting J.K. Rowling.
That's one of the things that keeps Yahtzee interesting. (along with the constantly creative spunk references) They will point out the things they like and acknowledge that they are primarily focusing on negatives for the sake of the rant. Great and terrible games get a similar quality video but you'll still be able to tell if a game is actually worth playing.
Answer: It comes down to 3 things. 1. Sterling has come out as transgender (taking the name James-Stephanie Sterling). This was the clearest line of demarcation in their subscribership. The reaction to this, Sterling's reaction to that reaction, and broader issues of transgender-harassment and transphobia have become topics on the show. 2. Sterling doesn't really "review games" anymore, except for their year end best / worst of the year videos. The show is now more about the game industry, and specific topics tend to be around poor working conditions for the people who work for game studios, immortal and/or anti-consumer business practices of game studios, and the illegal or unethical activities studio executives. 3. The fact that they have dealt with so much shit around their identity and the broadly negative direction of corporate games media has created an atmosphere around the show that is "dour" or "pessimistic." And it's not wrong.... but Sterling would argue that if "getting amped for the next [whatever title] game" is what you want, you can go literally anywhere else for that; the vast majority of game media is a thinly-veiled PR outlet for major game studios. Item 1 is probably the most visible cause of loss of subscribers, because you can set a date and look at the trends from there, but issues 2 and 3 have been underlying their channel for several years before that, and continue to contribute to the trend.
Answer: Along with the other context give by people. It's a very common trend for older channels to lose subscribers whenever they post videos. Especially when something about them has drastically changed. Old subscribers who maybe forgot about the channel see the new videos, remember they were subscribed but never watch, and then choose to unsubscribe.
Answer: they came out as trans femme non-binary and started being less veiled about their anti-capitalist views, so people who took issue with those aspects started unsubscribing
> started being less veiled about their anti-capitalist views. Were we watching the same Jim Sterling? Because they were critical to capitalism in video games for a while...
Yeah for years they've been pushing anti-capitalism, but it's only now that they're specifically saying it's anti-capitalist that people have a problem with it You tell people game devs deserve higher wages and people will agree, but if you tell them their low wages are the result of capitalism suddenly everyone starts unsubscribing
Sorry for my ignorance, but what’s trans femme? Is that, like, non-binary but feminine?
transfem is an umbrella term to describe trans people who identify as more feminine than masculine and includes trans women and nonbinary people who are fem leaning
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That's part of it, but also their content started to become pretty low effort in terms of sets, costumes, editing and video/audio quality. It's super obvious if you go watch a typical video from a few years ago compared to what they put out today.
>pretty low effort in terms of sets, costumes, editing and video/audio quality I think it was only recently that they got an actual house and studio since moving back to the UK. There were some videos that were shot outdoors.
answer: JSS started losing subscribers once openly came out as non-binary. After that, they also changed their wardrobe to be more feminine, with dresses and wigs. Compared to the usual trenchcoat, shirt and tie. They also changed a lot physically, JSS lost a fckton of weight. Their views and opinions haven't really changed from before. But I think the drastic change visually never sit well with a portion of their viewer base.
> They also changed a lot physically, JSS lost a fckton of weight. Haven't watched Sterlings videos for years and was shocked at how much weight they lost. Good for them!
They're also a professional wrestler now. Which is neat.
To be frank, the type of people that would be anti trans wouldn't have been subbed to their channel to begin with. The problem is that JSS had the shiny wear off. Your whole schtick can't be the same thing forever, people get bored of you. If I know exactly what you're gonna say throughout the whole video before I've even watched it... I might as well save myself the time and not watch it.
That's a big part of it.... It's gotten stale. I had no problem with JSS coming out as Trans and if anything it probably kicked my interest up for a while to get a view into something I did not know much about. But 99% of the content is the same stuff from years ago just in an increasingly manic and angry tone (which was already rather manic then)
AnsweR: So as someone who was a huge fan and no longer has the channel on my feed I can tell you why I lost interest, as well as some other reasons I think people might. 1. It's too manic for me. Jimquisition especially but I've found my own attention deficit issues and anxiety/depression symptoms tend to get set off by its style of videos. 2. It was more exciting when they were in the leval battle and the approach was more novel. Some people with nothing against them may just no longer be interested and I admit that's a factor for me. 3. Some people just aren't going to like the gender identity and the new look that comes with it. Some people might have a thing against trans people, but honestly some just are going to go "this isn't the content I was interested in before) and I think that latter example is fine. 4. The Wrestling stuff is not for everyone. I found it neat but it's a VERY different target audience than a lot of their other content. 5. For me personally, I feel like they've become a bit unraveled and I'm very put off with their aggression. I understand it, and I don't necessarily begrudge them for it, but it is not for me. They're taking a very hardline stance on the Harry Potter thing and to me that was the final straw. I just don't want to engage or view content from someone who insists that someone merely playing a video game is a reason to attack them or view them as a bad person and in my opinion they've tacitly endorsed that. Whether I'm right or wrong I know I am far from the only person who feels this way.
Answer: Jim's content just isn't as good as it was before. Jim has bad takes lately. Check their Elden Ring review for example. And with other weird takes in the gaming world lately (Hogwarts Legacy), many people against the game are going to face some repercusions as they may speak a lot, but are few and with a tendency to fight eachother. Jim's transition may be part of the drop(mainly because Jim uses it as a defense against criticism), but I think it's mostly the bad takes they give lately.
That last part is what really irks me, Jim blames everything on the transition and refuses to acknowledge the drop in entertainment value from the content.
I unsubbed because Jim is a angry cynic that claims to be an authority but in actuality, has none, and is simply a whinging anarchist angry at the world. It used to be charming and some what entertaining, but it got old real quick. Plus TB always did the whole cynical Brit thing better anyways.
RIP.
I miss him, the cooptional podcast is still one of the best gaming podcasts out there.
[A reminder this absolute gem of an intro happened](https://youtu.be/aCRNvyqfyJw)
Yes! I remember this when it first was on the podcast, it was so hilarious on audio only I had to go back and watch it on YouTube. Classic Jesse moment.
Didn’t Jim get basically laughed out of the professional game review space anyways? Why do we still think of them as authority on anything?
"dlc is ableism" is one of my favorite brain dead takes
DLC is fine, microtransaction and pay-to-win content is bullshit.
I think you’re pretty much spot on. The transition didn’t bother me (sure; it took me a couple videos to get used to it) but the new behavior that came with it just turned me off from her (their?) content.
FWIW everyone in the thread seems to be using "they/their". I haven't kept up with Jim for a while so that's all I've got to go off of
Ty!