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

[Oliver Onions]

How the fuck do you even manage to lose subs in 2021? 90% of subscribers for channels this old are just abandoned accounts or people who forgot they were even subscribed since everything operates through algorithms now so you don't even see videos from your subscribed channels once you stop actively clicking on them. I know channels with 5M+ subs that get 50k views per video because everyone has forgotten about them.

You've gotta be doing something extraordinarily terrible for people to bother clicking 'unsubscribe'.

It's the consistency of losses that impresses me. Lots of channels will peak and trough, especially older ones with stale content, but Jim loses 1k EVERY time he uploads a new JQ, and about 50% of the time when he uploads anything else.

Even Movie-fucking-Bob has had a better 2021 than Jim. He's had no growth since July 2019 but he at least manages to maintain an average of 0-1k subs lost per month, and that obnoxious prick uploads videos near daily.

In 2021, Bob's lost 2,000 subs compared to Jim's 51,000; even adjusting for the disparity in their channel sizes --133k to 869k, respectively-- that is shocking.

 

[Divine right to rule]

Sustained sub loss also represents potential new subs that are being missed. Many if not most channels naturally trickle in new subs over time so outright regression is a lot worse than the numbers belie even if it's a slow bleed like Jim.

>keeps ranting about "toxic gamers" and how every single one of them needs to fuck off
>they do
>"TRANSPHOBIA!"
Maybe someday he realizes that alienating the very audience he caters to is a bad business decision

You also have to keep in mind that Jim's audience has been majorly left-wing for a long time. Right-wingers or centrist probably fucked off a while before he trooned out. He was a radical left-wing gaming channel for years, and his audience seemed fine with that.
I think it is more of an issue that he stopped talking about games, and increasingly about tranny issues, Brexit, Orange man and co.
Problem is, there are countless breadtube and general left-wing political channels who do this better than him.
Jim isn't that smart or well spoken, and he is not educated in politics and social issues. He just shows an article headline and blabbers the headline in a salty voice. That isn't a worthwhile take or commentary. It is a waste of time.
I think even his far left audience are getting tired of a deranged troon bitching about issues he doesn't understand, instead of commenting on games while also bitching about capitalism. The latter seemed to work, the former, not so much.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Jim isn't that smart or well spoken, and he is not educated in politics and social issues. He just shows an article headline and blabbers the headline in a salty voice. That isn't a worthwhile take or commentary. It is a waste of time.

I've compared Jim to YongYea before, and for good reason. Both do essentially the same things: read an article and regurgitate it over and over until they can't milk the subject anymore. But while Jim's entire shtick is being a whiny brat and he berates and disowns his viewership on a regular basis... Yong doesn't. Sure, he complains a lot and he makes 10 videos when 1 would do, but he usually treats everybody with a modicum of respect even when he's tearing them to shreds. Yea is stagnant, but he's got a damn better chance of recovering his viewership than Jim.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I've compared Jim to YongYea before, and for good reason. Both do essentially the same things: read an article and regurgitate it over and over until they can't milk the subject anymore. But while Jim's entire shtick is being a whiny brat and he berates and disowns his viewership on a regular basis... Yong doesn't. Sure, he complains a lot and he makes 10 videos when 1 would do, but he usually treats everybody with a modicum of even when he's tearing them to shreds. Yea is stagnant, but he's got a damn better chance of recovering his viewership than Jim.

The other difference is Yong uploads almost daily, meaning he's going for the kind of quantity over quality the algorithm loves. While Jim uploads a single Yong-tier video a week, and occasionally farts out some other trash that averages about 60k views at best, any random video Yong uploads usually manages to match the JQ average of 170k.

Jim could easily make the JQ a daily show because he puts even less effort into it than the guys who do daily news roundups --one poorly researched rant vs collecting and summarising half a dozen stories-- but he's such a lazy fucking pig he'd rather do the bare minimum and then complain nobody turns up to watch him any more.

 

[AngryTreeRat]

You also have to keep in mind that Jim's audience has been majorly left-wing for a long time. Right-wingers or centrist probably fucked off a while before he trooned out. He was a radical left-wing gaming channel for years, and his audience seemed fine with that.
I think it is more of an issue that he stopped talking about games, and increasingly about tranny issues, Brexit, Orange man and co.
Problem is, there are countless breadtube and general left-wing political channels who do this better than him.
Jim isn't that smart or well spoken, and he is not educated in politics and social issues. He just shows an article headline and blabbers the headline in a salty voice. That isn't a worthwhile take or commentary. It is a waste of time.
I think even his far left audience are getting tired of a deranged troon bitching about issues he doesn't understand, instead of commenting on games while also bitching about capitalism. The latter seemed to work, the former, not so much.

Remember when Gavin/Miracle of Sound left the podcast? He did so due to Jim and LKD being too negative, and Gav is pretty lefty. Gav wants to talk about video games and enjoy them, not bitch endlessly about them and politics. He managed to alienate someone who was arguably his friend, and definitely his business partner, through his shit years ago.

 

[KittyGremlin]

New upload.

This is the first video of Jim I've seen since I've unsubbed when his politics started leaking into his content to an insufferable extent. The juxtaposition of his faggy manners with the setting of the game being discussed is something else. I have no further comments.

As a sidenote I'm getting sort of tired of the whole "muh microtransactions" circlejerk. Play another game, faggot. But you can't and you won't because you can't get off the teat of [MAJOR FRANCHISE]. Seethe, cope and consoom.

 

[Matt Damon]

I think even his far left audience are getting tired of a deranged troon bitching about issues he doesn't understand, instead of commenting on games while also bitching about capitalism. The latter seemed to work, the former, not so much.

I imagine even hardcore commies would find "we need communism because muh microtransactions" to be trite and childish.

I think it's the juxtaposition of those two ideas that make the whole thing particularly intolerable. One can talk about issues with modern video games and one can talk about economic revolution, but using the former to justify the latter shows an embarrassing lack of proportion.

But of course Jim wouldn't understand that because he is the consumerist man-child to end all consumerist man-children.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

New upload.

This is the first video of Jim I've seen since I've unsubbed when his politics started leaking into his content to an insufferable extent. The juxtaposition of his faggy manners with the setting of the game being discussed is something else. I have no further comments.

As a sidenote I'm getting sort of tired of the whole "muh microtransactions" circlejerk. Play another game, faggot. But you can't and you won't because you can't get off the teat of [MAJOR FRANCHISE]. Seethe, cope and consoom.

Isn't World of Warships a free to play that's primarily skill based and not buy to win? I know there will never be a consistent answer but I wonder what's Jim's idea of a fair monetization, especially with online games that need servers and updates.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Remember when Gavin/Miracle of Sound left the podcast? He did so due to Jim and LKD being too negative, and Gav is pretty lefty. Gav wants to talk about video games and enjoy them, not bitch endlessly about them and politics.

This is the core issue people like Jim don't seem to get, and the main reason I think his audience is leaving in droves. Because Jim is perpetually miserable, he assumes everyone else must be too.

In reality, it's the year of our Lord 2021, and most people are over the perpetual outrage mentality, especially in video games. Even if you agree with everything Jim believes, there's nothing enjoyable about tuning in to watch/hear a clearly miserable man bitch like a child; I'd rather get that info from someone like Critikal, who covers a lot of the same topics as Jim but in a light-hearted, comedic way that makes it entertaining instead of depressing.

I don't know if it's just getting older --probably not since Jim is my senior-- or a broader cultural shift but I'd rather just enjoy things now, and if I can't enjoy something I ignore it and move on to something else that does spark joy. Life's too short to be angry all the time.

 

[Icterus]

I don't know if it's just getting older --probably not since Jim is my senior-- or a broader cultural shift but I'd rather just enjoy things now, and if I can't enjoy something I ignore it and move on to something else that does spark joy. Life's too short to be angry all the time.

Age and wisdom are not correlated 1:1, as evidenced by ol' Jimbo here. More time does allow for more opportunities to wise up to the reality of a things - and your own - insignificance. It does however require a capability of introspection that's completely alien to depressed doomers.

 

[Product Placement]

The truth is Jim was never likeable, just people agreed with what he said. Now you got 100s if not 1000s of channels now doing the same shit, with many of them ran by people without ego or not an ego near Jim's.

Jim, thought people liked him, not what he said, thus why he forced shit like wrestling and now the losing subs due to the non-binary bullshit into his videos. He made his channel more and more about him, and unless he changes that, he will continue to lose subs and money. Any topic he did cover he also ran into the ground, you need to keep shit fresh no matter how big your channel is right now.

Lack of innervation or successful innervation has killed so many youtube channels, yet YouTube creators are unwilling to say that is what killed their channel and will blame anything else.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

Even if you agree with everything Jim believes, there's nothing enjoyable about tuning in to watch/hear a clearly miserable man bitch like a child.

I have been thinking about this. My mother is a gamer and has been since the 80s. She also keeps up with gaming news, and in the early days of Jim's escapist career started following him. She unfollowed a few months before he trooned out, because (and I paraphrase): "He's got a point of course. People should not be exploited no matter the industry. But he's not going get that across wallowing and acting all spoiled every week, blaming me for buying games. I can get that grief in any mainstream outlet."

 

[Corn Flakes]

The truth is Jim was never likeable, just people agreed with what he said. Now you got 100s if not 1000s of channels now doing the same shit, with many of them ran by people without ego or not an ego near Jim's.

Jim, thought people liked him, not what he said, thus why he forced shit like wrestling and now the losing subs due to the non-binary bullshit into his videos. He made his channel more and more about him, and unless he changes that, he will continue to lose subs and money. Any topic he did cover he also ran into the ground, you need to keep shit fresh no matter how big your channel is right now.

Lack of innervation or successful innervation has killed so many youtube channels, yet YouTube creators are unwilling to say that is what killed their channel and will blame anything else.

I've said it a couple months back:

His newfound "will comment positively on anything a troon says" fanbase aside, I always thought Jim's fanbase was less about Jim himself and more about his opinions. Specifically, they hate the same things he hates. There's a lot of attention to be milked out of saying shit about EA, Bethesda and other large publishers, and Jim is infamous for his negativity. He himself admitted that any positive video he tries to make will get much lower engagement than an equivalent negative video. I don't remember talking to anyone who's ever said they liked Jim's character. He's always played that unpleasant type who complained a lot. Of course, negativity isn't the only thing that draws in eyeballs, but Jim brought this on himself by being so laser-focused on it for so long. Fuck, he went out of his way to find shit to complain about during his phase trawling through Steam greenlight titles.

His problem now is that his gimmick is already tired, people are bored, and his attempts at branching out to other subjects clash heavily with his audience's interests.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I've said it a couple months back:

His newfound "will comment positively on anything a troon says" fanbase aside, I always thought Jim's fanbase was less about Jim himself and more about his opinions. Specifically, they hate the same things he hates. There's a lot of attention to be milked out of saying shit about EA, Bethesda and other large publishers, and Jim is infamous for his negativity. He himself admitted that any positive video he tries to make will get much lower engagement than an equivalent negative video. I don't remember talking to anyone who's ever said they liked Jim's character. He's always played that unpleasant type who complained a lot. Of course, negativity isn't the only thing that draws in eyeballs, but Jim brought this on himself by being so laser-focused on it for so long. Fuck, he went out of his way to find shit to complain about during his phase trawling through Steam greenlight titles.

His problem now is that his gimmick is already tired, people are bored, and his attempts at branching out to other subjects clash heavily with his audience's interests.

The really sad thing is, looking back at old Podtoid clips Jim seemed a lot more natural and closer to what I imagine he's like in real life. Even if his sense of humour was incredibly juvenile you could tell by the way he'd burst out laughing while tormenting Jonathan that he was genuinely enjoying himself, and as a result they're still fun to listen to almost ten years later.

Just listen to this old Podtoid clip and how happy Jim sounds and compare it to the modern podcast/JQ where he's ranting about transphobia and capitalism non-stop:

 

[Matt Damon]

The truth is Jim was never likeable, just people agreed with what he said.

I'm not convinced this is the case.

Jim can be very funny when he bothers to try - some of his faux product placement jokes like the "Corey Feldman Suppository Buddy" had me in stitches. And I still basically agree with his core premise that the rapacious monetization of the video game industry is unsustainable and leading to some kind of reckoning.

To me, it's simply that he's stopped making any attempt to be likable and everything he creates has become an interminable, dour exercise in po-facedly pushing "the message". The Jimquisition now appears to be about proving that Jim is a very serious, very important man beautiful trans woman who talks about very serious, very important issues.

 

[came4nudes]

A bit off topic but even though this is the kiwi farms and we are supposed to laugh at fat people I still think jim looked way better when he was just a fat pale round person. Now he somehow looks both freakishly lanky and heavy set at the same time.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Jim can be very funny when he bothers to try - some of his faux product placement jokes like the "Corey Feldman Suppository Buddy" had me in stitches. And I still basically agree with his core premise that the rapacious monetization of the video game industry is unsustainable and leading to some kind of reckoning.

I don't think it'll be a reckoning as much as a complete and utter burnout, especially as more and more big series try to pivot towards the live service model. They're about to learn the same lesson all the MMOs trying to compete with WoW did in the 00s.

That is the other really annoying thing about Jim, though, I agree. There is merit to a lot of the things he argues about, but he blows everything so far out of proportion ("Bobby Kotick makes too much money therefore we must abolish capitalism") that it's just annoying to listen to. He's like the guy who got super into atheism in high school and suddenly had to start arguments with anyone he could corner and make sure they all knew that religion was stupid and he was really smart and original for thinking this.

 

[Corn Flakes]

He's like the guy who got super into atheism in high school and suddenly had to start arguments with anyone he could corner and make sure they all knew that religion was stupid and he was really smart and original for thinking this.

Yes, Jim is a born-again SJW.

You see the same shit in people who recently converted into a cult or a more hardcore sect of a religion: it's usually people with low self-esteem (troons are infamously bad at this), who make what they feel is a big life-changing decision out of peer pressure/grooming, and in order to be able to tell themselves they were right in that decision they try their hardest to convert other people into making that same decision.

Look closely and you'll see the same evangelical zeal and refusal to look at facts when their beliefs are challenged in Jim as in one of those firebrand born-again Christians who keep seeing the devil lurking behind everything. It's the same thing: projecting their insecurities outwards and trying to get "confirmation" that they're right by converting other people. Just, instead of the devil, Jim in particular sees "capitalism", "gamers" and "transphobia" everywhere.

 

[AngryTreeRat]

This is the core issue people like Jim don't seem to get, and the main reason I think his audience is leaving in droves. Because Jim is perpetually miserable, he assumes everyone else must be too.

In reality, it's the year of our Lord 2021, and most people are over the perpetual outrage mentality, especially in video games. Even if you agree with everything Jim believes, there's nothing enjoyable about tuning in to watch/hear a clearly miserable man bitch like a child; I'd rather get that info from someone like Critikal, who covers a lot of the same topics as Jim but in a light-hearted, comedic way that makes it entertaining instead of depressing.

I don't know if it's just getting older --probably not since Jim is my senior-- or a broader cultural shift but I'd rather just enjoy things now, and if I can't enjoy something I ignore it and move on to something else that does spark joy. Life's too short to be angry all the time.

I think the general lack of prolonged outrage is why I like YongYea. Yeah, his videos could be shorter, yeah sometimes he covers the same issue a few too many times, but if you want to follow a news story as it develops with minimal editorializing he's a good pick. Working in the industry, I tend to follow it all. I also love games and as a consumer I do agree with Jim that shit is fucked up, and he keeps finding more instances of such.

But he's always so surface level. If I want to know more about any issue I heard about elsewhere, Jim is all but guaranteed to have no new information and a lot more whining.

I don't think it'll be a reckoning as much as a complete and utter burnout, especially as more and more big series try to pivot towards the live service model. They're about to learn the same lesson all the MMOs trying to compete with WoW did in the 00s.

A bunch of large companies are starting to talk internally about live service self cannibalization. It's becoming agreed upon internally that two things are true for AAA live service games:

1. People only have time and money for one at a time.
2. They are never the only game someone plays.

This is leading to discussions I keep getting stuck being a part of for figuring out how many should each publisher try to have, how different they need to be, and how to monetize the rest of the customer bases playtime. I have my opinions, but they are similar to the prevailing opinions trying to be impressed upon marketing people and executives.

The current feeling is that big publishers should aim for 1 plus 1 more per major subsidiary. So for example, all of what Microsoft got from ZeniMax means a +1 to how many they try to have going, they then might count a cluster of their smaller acquisitions as another +1, personally I'd say Microsoft could justify 3 total, EA maybe 2, Ubisoft could easily pull off 2, Square Enix could handle maybe 1, 2K can handle 3, Activision-Blizzard can take 2, and Capcom can pull off 2. If you attempt a new one, be ready to kill an older one, and try to only compete in genre and theming with other corporations, not with yourself. Which is a similar bit of logic applied to MMOs these days, and it has proven profitable, while not being too risky, unlike the day of WoW killers and the damage it did to studios.

As for what to do about the rest of your customers' play time? Releasing single player games and more traditional multiplayer games. Stuff that follows the old model of business from before live service games. While games are getting more expensive to make, it's mostly due to scope increases. The price to make a game of a given size either goes down of stays about the same as time goes on.

As for market saturation, the discussion is mostly directed towards the idea that there is space for one per genre, maybe two, but anyone going in with illusions of massive instant success is doomed to be the next Marvel Avengers, and instead support needs to be scaled towards the amount of success achieved and how well it's being maintained.

What's really going to happen is we're going to see companies move away from blockbusters and towards something smaller to cut costs, while using big block busters to attract investors and awards.

 

[Oliver Onions]

(troons are infamously bad at this), who make what they feel is a big life-changing decision out of peer pressure/grooming, and in order to be able to tell themselves they were right in that decision they try their hardest to convert other people into making that same decision.

You could call it a...sunk cost phallusy.

Remember to tip your waitress, folks.