User:Kizzycocoa/sandbox/Jim Sterling

Jim Sterling (born James Stanton, January 1, 1984) is an English video game journalist, reviewer, consumer advocate, and the former review editor for the websites The Escapist and Destructoid. He produces a weekly YouTube show called "The Jimquisition".

Personal life
Sterling was born in the United Kingdom, where he lived on the poverty line for much of his childhood and was psychologically abused by his mother's lover, a Hell's Angels outcast. He currently lives with his wife and step-son in Jackson, Mississippi, United States.

Career
Sterling joined Destructoid in 2006, eventually becoming reviews editor for the site. He garnered attention in 2009 where he gave a controversially low score to Assassin's Creed II. Sterling hosted the sites official podcast from 2011 until 2013 and was a regular guest on the site's video series Office Chat as well as other numerous site projects. He remained a full-time employee of Destructoid until November 2013 when he became reviews editor at The Escapist.

The Jimquisition
On Destructoid Sterling began the weekly series The Jimquisition in June 2010. The weekly program focuses on the video game industry, with a strong focus on community advocacy. Sterling uses a comedic persona in the program, with the catchphrase: "Thank God for me!".

The Escapist
The Escapist had been host to The Jimquisition since 2011, and in 2013 Sterling had become reviews editor for the website. He also created and produced a new, original series titled Movie Defence Force, where he defended movies which are commonly mocked. The series ran from January 2013 through to September 2014.

Sterling also co-produced two other original series along with Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the first called Jim & Yahtzee's Rhymedown Spectacular, a show where Sterling and Crowsaw presented a poem each week. The show ran from March 2013 until May 2014. The show was replaced with a competitive gaming show called Uncivil War, where the two versed each other in a gaming challenge each episode, with the winner receiving a point which tallied throughout the season. The show only had one season with Sterling winning, a second season was never produced due to Sterling leaving the site. It ran from July to November 2014.

On the 15 of November 2014, Sterling left The Escapist and became self-employed.

Independent works
As an independent producer Sterling has continued to publish The Jimquisition, as well hosting written media and the podcast Podquisition on his website. Recently his brand has also expanded into a clothing line.

Outside of his direct brand, he stars in the weekly podcast FistShark Marketing, a sketch comedy, where Sterling and his co-stars play fictional executives of a marketing firm. Fistshark was created as a spiritual successor to a previous podcast Sterling starred in called The Dismal Jesters, which was also a sketch comedy co-starring Conrad Zimmerman along with Jonathan Holmes. The show ran for 30 episodes, ending when Holmes decided to quit the show.

Voice acting
Sterling's voice has appeared in multiple independent video games, such as Jazzpunk, Volume, The Charnel House Trilogy, and You Are the Reason. He is also set to appear in episode 2 of Albino Lullaby.

He also played the role of Ditto in two episodes of the web-series Teenage Pokemon hosted on Machinima.

Views
Sterling's opinions are often polarising, if not outright controversial. His views have been described as "controversial yet accurate" by Oscar Gonzalez of Original Gamer. From the views espoused by his character in The Jimquisition, Jim positions himself firmly as someone who believes in the rights of the developers as creators to express themselves fully, while disparaging the industry selling the material, who he has often cynically branded as being over-interested in making money and under-interested in producing a quality product. He bills himself as a consumer advocate. Despite his character's reputation for provocation, however, Sterling demonstrates a progressive attitude against sexism in video games, and has argued against it in interviews, having evolved over time on the subject. He regularly criticises games for using women solely as "window-dressing" or to add exposition to the plot without any character development.

In the past, he has been accused of homophobia allegations to which he reacted strongly. In a Google+ discussion with another journalist, he implied his sexuality was more fluid than the rigid heterosexuality he felt his opponent had assumed, and in his recent video on Fallout 4 he said "Look, I am not a monogamous guy, nor am I a straight one either". Also recently, his views on sexuality appear to have evolved even further; a Jimquisition episode centering ostensibly around Dragon Age: Inquisition was made to answer the larger questions of the role of sexuality in video games, and how much water the arguments of those who wish to see a return to more traditional arrangements held.

Criticism of Steam Greenlight and developer incidents
Due to the perceived extreme low quality of the games on Steam Greenlight, Sterling has been highly critical of the service's handling by Valve, asserting that the service is in dire need of quality control. He noted that while the system was intended to be democratize game development and game publishing, it is instead now closer to anarchy. He regularly takes aim at shovelware and often talks about the practice of "asset flipping"; purchasing ready-made assets from asset stores provided by game engines like Unity or Unreal, and re-selling them as a game with little-to-no modification.

In late 2014, the developer of indie game The Slaughtering Grounds, Robert Romine, took such offence to one of Sterling's Squirty Plays of the title then James Romine filed a DMCA takedown request through YouTube due to defamation and harassment from the Youtuber's subscribers. After uploading a Best of Steam Greenlight Trailers video of the game Island Light, which highlighted the game's lackluster state,

Two games shown in his Best of Steam Greenlight Trailers series—Island Light

In response to continued abuses of the DMCA system, YouTube set up the YouTube Fair Use Protection Program, which protects select content creators from misuse of the DMCA system. One of the four videos they pilot-protected was Jim Sterling's Greenlight video covering two of Moo Tech's games, being Raging Citizens and The Simplest Game, which had a false DMCA levelled against it several weeks prior to the announcement. The video is now restricted to US audiences only, and is also being held up by YouTube as an example of a video protected under fair use. Jim has said that he is hoping to restore the video to non-US audiences.

Digital Homicide
Jim Sterling has been involved in a long-running conflict with Digital Homicide, a two-man team who developed The Slaughtering Grounds. It started when Digital Homicide created a video which added subtitles to Jim's gameplay video, chastising him for not turning off the music, not holding an empty gun while collecting ammo and coining the phrase "I'm Jim Fucking Sterling, son". After this, Jim replied by talking over the subtitled video, laughing at the various accusations. Digital Homicide in turn replied, releasing a response of plain text on a black background, over the audio of Jim's response. Following the controversy, Digital Homicide filed a DMCA takedown request on his gameplay video of The Slaughtering Grounds. The developer's behaviour, which became increasingly erratic, was widely covered by gaming media. This fiasco earned Digital Homicide place as the focus of a Jimquisition episode, once the takedown claim expired.

This erratic behaviour continued further, as Jim reviewed more of their games as they were released, attacking Jim personally, pushed through more games made mostly of Unity store assets and deleting comment threads and critique. After Jim Sterling reviewed "Medieval Mercs", Digital Homicide threw insults over Twitter, repeatedly demanding an interview.

The interview, held over Skype between James and Robert Romine of Digital Homicide, and Jim Sterling, was set up so that Robert and Jim were to discuss their history, with James allegedly reading from their 17 page dossier they had compiled on Jim. During the interview, they discussed the history of the games and argue over their worth. Throughout the interview, Robert attempted to liken his work to Jim's by relating his use of assets to Jim's use of fair-use images. Robert accused Jim of being a leech for making money off of his gameplay videos. Later on, Robert accused Jim of being sexist for having and using a Dildo Bat-used in the Saints Row series of video games-as a prop in his videos. Robert later quoted a previous Jimquisition from 2012, where Jim stated he was creating a race of "sub-human creatures" to dismantle public places, which they considered proof of Sterling encouraging his viewers to harass game developers. Later, Robert tried to sell The Slaughtering Grounds based on the realistic gun sounds he put into it, then insinuated that Jim is related to Courtney Stanton to imply a conflict of journalistic interest, which was shot down quickly. After then failing to get Jim to promise to not cover their games, the interview ended.

Several weeks after, they released Temper Tantrum 2. Jim left the game alone, to lay rest to the claims Digital Homicide made that he directed traffic to them. The experiment was delayed due to Digital Homicide taking down and reuploading the game to Greenlight, but later on, he reviewed their trailer anyway, laying out his experiment, showing that Digital Homicide's games were largely panned, regardless of his involvement, and that generally, his fans alert him to what's on Steam Greenlight, not the other way around.

After this, Digital Homicide went off the radar for several months, until it was discovered that they had released a further 9 games onto Steam and it's Greenlight process, under several aliases. This was discovered after a link was found between Digital Homicide and BundleBlitz, a website which was advertising free keys for steam greenlight votes. After calling out Digital Homicide on this in his look at their "E.L.T: The Extra Large Testicle" trailer, Robert Romine had a short phone call with Jim Sterling, in which they attempted once again to get Jim to stop covering their games, talking about their lawyer's eagerness to sue him over an alleged defamation count, while claiming this wasn't a threat. When Jim then said he would think about their "not-threat", he would have to talk to his lawyers, at which point Digital Homicide ended the phone call.

After further videos ousting games as being developed by Digital Homicide, Jim created another Jimquisition, exposing their phone call discussion and their creation of 9 new games, bringing the total of their game count to 20 in just over a year. In the video, he noted that the real ECCGames promptly sought legal action to stop Digital Homicide's use of their name.

Blog threats
In October, a tumblr blog was discovered, accusing Jim of "asset-flipping" with his design of the "#FucKonami" shirt, because of the modified twitter logo. The accuser, Xenobyte Studios, had a twitter rant about Jim, before linking to an image of their failed Steam Greenlight game, which was published under the name, "Victory Games LLC". This name was used as an alias for Digital Homicide's previous game, "E.L.T: The Extra-Large Testicle". Digital Homicide has since claimed the perpetrator to be unrelated to their own company. The name "Xenobyte Studios" was later found to be stolen from a Scottish game developer, who claimed the Twitter handle when the account was deleted.

In November, another blog was discovered, claiming that Jim Sterling had doxed himself by filming in a suburban set for his Halloween special, among other scenes. The site makes thinly veiled threats, ending with "Oh Jim, it’s taken us a while. But now, at long last, I think we’ve finally reached an understanding". Soon after, an impersonating twitter account hurling abuse at Jim was discovered. The twitter account was mimicking Peter Lazarski, who's game "Halloween Forever" had been praised by Jim a week and a half before the blog was discovered. The main character of the game, "Pumpkin Man", was the avatar for the fake blog, tying it to the fake twitter account. Within the fake twitter account were numerous references to "Xenobite Studio Russia", linking the two blogs. After being found out, the Jimflipsthebird and Jimdoxeshimself blogs were deleted, along with the impersonating twitter account.