Jim Sterling- witty games journalist or unprofessional troll?

I tend to think Jim's somewhere in the middle. He's quite funny and on point most of the time, but occasionally he just goes way overboard. I don't think he actively seeks to be controversial just for controversies sake, but, it's pretty clear he loves to get a rise out of certain people from time to time. Take this recent reference to the state of the Final Fantasy series 'When did you start to realize that Final Fantasy was pissing all over itself like a four-year-old at a Yo Gabba Gabba dance party?' Really?...I mean...really? Joke or not that's a pretty sick image to conjure up. There's a difference between being an 'uncompromising' games journalist and just plain fucked in the head.

A witty unprofessional troll.

Neither, he's just an asshole.

@Mordukai said:

A witty unprofessional troll.

This. Sterling knows what drives page views. People love to get themselves angry over stupid shit, so he's more than happy to exaggerate his complaints and take in all the extra ad revenue.

probably a little bit of both

Hes straight trollin' and it's working for him quite nicely so can't really hate on that.

@Mordukai said:

A witty unprofessional troll.

He gets paid to do it, so I guess we can safely call him a "professional".

All I have to say about Jim Sterling is that after seeing a headline written by him that said "InsertGameNameHere makes me spurt jism out of my peepee" or something almost exactly like that I deleted my Destructoid bookmark.

It's a persona. He written a few opinion pieces "out of character" and they were perfectly fine, so I suppose that makes him a professional troll. For good or ill though, his "trolling" seems to have gotten more people to start using a wider range of their grading scales.

@JoeyRavn said:

@Mordukai said:

A witty unprofessional troll.

He gets paid to do it, so I guess we can safely call him a "professional".

His unprofessionalism pertains to his work etiquette and not his job description. However, you did put the word Professional in quotation marks so...

I still think Destructoid's a great site for RPG fans. Dale North puts out good content.

I like the man. He's not boring and doesn't recycle the opinions of everyone else. When most reviewers try to be overly professional and self important, Sterling lets it fly. Critics be damned the dude has balls and I love his trollin. He's the only reviewer that blasted Assassin's Creed II that i've read. I applaud him.

Where's the option for obnoxious fat bastard?

I think the term is "dick".

@craigbo180 said:

Hes straight trollin' and it's working for him quite nicely so can't really hate on that.

Yeah, I usually like seeing people react to him. Always enjoyable. Never been affected by one of his statements yet.

Option C: Person I don't know.

i like him. he writes entertaining stuff and it's fun to see people get angry at him

I think he has some good points some of the time, but he always comes off as either a total prick, or a whiny bitch so I don't read any of his articles for those reasons.

Where's the option for obnoxious fat bastard?

People take video games way too fucking seriously. I'm glad Sterling doesn't.

I think of him as the alpha nerd on a soap box but not in a good way. This guys shtick is to be abrasive, its just a show he puts on and I find that pretty sad.

I'd say the first. He has his troll-like moments obviously, but in reality, he's just as serious about his job as anyone on the GB crew. I think the only reason people call him a troll is because he happens to speak his mind a lot more often, which sometimes clearly strays from popular opinion, and for one reason or another, people get deeply offended.

@Evil_Alaska said:

People take video games way too fucking seriously. I'm glad Sterling doesn't.

@FourWude said:

Where's the option for obnoxious fat bastard?

This. He is a fat untalented bastard who I can't stand. Whenever I see a post by him I shudder because I know it's going to be an awful read. The whole site he writes for has this giant anti-Nintendo vibe that I just can't stand.

@JoeyRavn said:

@Mordukai said:

A witty unprofessional troll.

He gets paid to do it, so I guess we can safely call him a "professional".

Just because you get paid for something doesn't mean your a professional.

Yes he is very unprofessional, take the whole thing that happened with the Gears 3 review he did. He played the game and wrote the review in 1 day just so he could get it out when the embargo lifted. After reading that I decided his reviews are not credible at all nor is he professional. Then when his review gets a bunch of hate he writes a big long article trying to defend himself. He knew that his review caused a bunch of talk and so he tried to capitalize on it by keeping people talking and hitting the site about it.

Wow, seriously? Why the hate? He is just catering to his customers, a lot of people like his trolly, nonserious attitude and his articles always contain a grain of thruth behind the cover of his over the top dickishness. And saying that he is a bad writer is just a lie, he knows how to create an entertaining read for people who don't have a stick up their ass.

Yes everyone, the man who gets paid to write "<insert game name here> makes me jizz" stories and create videos of him "masturbating" to various videogame characters and videogame paraphernalia is truly a witty and interesting man who isn't afraid to speak his mind. Oh wait, he's just an obnoxious prick who thinks he's funny because he likes to go against popular opinion for pageviews.

People tend to abuse the term "trolling", using it as a means to invalidate a differing opinion...similar to how they abuse the term "bias".

I tend to agree with a lot of what he says about the industry. I take his reviews for what they are...opinions.

@oblique_ said:

All I have to say about Jim Sterling is that after seeing a headline written by him that said "InsertGameNameHere makes me spurt jism out of my peepee" or something almost exactly like that I deleted my Destructoid bookmark.

My point exactly. The guy is either incredibly immature or has some weird sexual issues going on. Despite the fact that he can provide a good laugh on occasion, I really wish Destructoid would either just get rid of him or else severely limit the number of posts he can make. Most of his articles don't have any discernible meaning to them other than to show of his 'wit' and ms paint 'skills'- somebody needs to tell him that rehashing jokes and memes that were on 4chan months ago doesn't quite qualify as doing your job; he's practically spamming the website he himself works for. The blatant unwarranted self importance has gotten really tiring too.

I like Jim, if he hates a game he'll tell you.

He is neither.

I didn't have a problem with him all that much before, sometimes it seems like his reviews didn't reflect his scores and that was about it. But recently, I've grown to not even bother looking at his posts.

The biggest problem I have with his 'articles' is that when he is posting news and things going on in the industry, reading his post about a specific issue and then reading the source are 2 completely different things. Things are conveniently left out in his posts just so he can start a hate parade in the comments. Because for some reason most people don't actually read the sourced article to see what is actually going on. So in that respect, he is totally unprofessional and I just wont read his articles anymore.

I like Destructoid, but it's hard to read sometimes because of this issue I have with him.

He is a Professional troll

I've no idea, since I haven't seen enough of his work to weigh in on the matter. That quote, however, is just confusing. When was Final Fantasy pissing itself? What does that even mean?

From what I've seen of him, (not much) the dude was just expressing his opinions, and sure, maybe some of those opinions are there to increase viewers. But hey, if you're gonna get pissed cause of what some guy you'll never meet says about video games, don't.

@Evil_Alaska said:

People take video games way too fucking seriously. I'm glad Sterling doesn't.

Well he is a Professional either way

I kind of dislike the guy but its interesting to see how the internet reacts to some of the things he says

@Damotello said:

@Evil_Alaska said:

People take video games way too fucking seriously. I'm glad Sterling doesn't.

Kind of a silly thing to say when it's a part of his job.

He is just your typical internet asshole. I stop reading destructoid because of him, there are much better place to find games editorial on the internet.

Prick, just about sums him up.

Jim sterling is a nazi terminator robot Console Noob built to assist hitler in a war against PC games since He is too dumb to understand PC's and has never been with in 500 feet of a real PC in his entire life or anything else for that matter since He had a pathetic amount of console noob video games growing up too and never even played most things he talks about he just act like he knows like when ever he talks about the sega CD then he will go on to say he never touched one after he gives his Verdict.

this is also the case with Crysis 2 xbox where he said it was good and crap like that going on about the graphics having never been with in 9000 feet of a PC that could run Crysis or Crysis 2 on max settings and thus would have No fucking clue what he is talking about is his fucking lame attempt to compare it to Crysis on the PC this making anything he says about it or any other Console noob first person shooter or PC port fucking hilarious.

You can see him in this rare world war 2 photo from the 1940's during the conquest of some small country nobody cares about, he killed over 9000 scientist that was developing the first PC components setting the rise of the pc back over 30 years. Later after he failed his mission he was shocked and horrified they was using them as nazi killing simulators in wolfenstein 3d years later and he vows revenge on all PCs and PC games.

His mistake is when he failed to kill the people at companys like IBM fairchild and intel in the USA years later and thus let things like the ramac slip through his evil grasp he was also to fucking lazy to lift the first harddrive this is why we have them today.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2498/4247371635_9598cc6fa4_o.jpg

Never heard of Jim Sterling or a Yo Gabba Gabba.

If he were funny, even some of the time, I might find him almost tolerable.

Professional troll seems to suit him well. He basically gets paid to write articles that have no other purpose than to get a rise out of the internet.

Listening to him on the DTOID podcast and the Jimquisition on the escapist, I know he's an intelligent guy, maybe it's fans who get angry for no reason. It's OPINION people, the only time to get angry is when writers make factually incorrect statements.

His review for Deadly Premonition was awesome, but I dont find him to be very insightful and he is painfully unfunny.

Some sort of weird unholy mutation of both.

yo somebody on the internet said something and you don't like it. tough shit. thats life. people say things that others don't like. ignore and it move on.