Current Events > Jim Sterling puts microtransaction apologists in their place

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't have a problem with microtransactions. In fact, I don't have a problem with a lot of the various little business models that are associated with video games. But I do have a problem with is the AAA development scene taking these ideas - DLC, microtransactions, season passes, gatcha and loot boxes, etc - completely taking the piss with the idea and ruining any chance that the idea would be beneficial for the gaming industry.

About the only thing they haven't ruined yet are patches that update your game to keep game breaking bugs and glitches to a minimum, but you could argue that this model allows companies to shirk quality testing and get the games out the door sooner, using their customers as beta testers while they work on patches for the problems.
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People still claiming Jim told people to go pirate Nintendo games.

Lol.

Alucard188 posted...

I don't have a problem with microtransactions. In fact, I don't have a problem with a lot of the various little business models that are associated with video games. But I do have a problem with is the AAA development scene taking these ideas - DLC, microtransactions, season passes, gatcha and loot boxes, etc - completely taking the piss with the idea and ruining any chance that the idea would be beneficial for the gaming industry.

I agree with this so much, these companies driven only by their insatiable greed took once promising and interesting ideas and twisted and mangled them into things we now hate.


Alucard188 posted...

you could argue that this model allows companies to shirk quality testing and get the games out the door sooner, using their customers as beta testers while they work on patches for the problems.

They've been doing this for years and it's tied into pre-order culture as well as they'd never pull these stunts if people weren't stupid enough to give them money upfront for a game before it's even finished
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NibeIungsnarf posted...

People still claiming Jim told people to go pirate Nintendo games.

Lol.

Well, he did and he didn't. What he did do was tell people that because Nintendo doesn't respect fair use in relation to their IPs, we shouldn't respect their IPs in response.
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He laid out the moral justification for why you shouldn't feel bad if you do it, then he said that since it's illegal you shouldn't do it.

They cater to the market. You people complaining are the ones that go and buy this garbage. The rest of us just don't care one way or another. I don't complain - I don't buy microtransactions - I don't BUY THE GAMES THAT ALLOW micro transactions in the first place.

Which brings me to my last point: if you buy a game that has microtransactions IN IT - you are by extension supporting that business model. thxbai.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Sad_Face posted...

Come on guy. He's a massive contratrian. When everyone raved about BotW, he went and gave it a 7/10 to get the spotlight for the week and had a video out complaining about Nintendo fanboys the day after he released the review. Then he made a video telling people to go pirate Nintendo's games. All throughout, there was an uptick in his subscribers. He knows damn welling that crap on Nintendo brings home the bacon.

This is sad.

"He gave a nintendo game a positive review. Clearly he's crapping on Ninteno intentionally for attention!?"

Can you not see how much of a fanboy you sound like?

More like

"Everyone is praising this one game to high heaven, let me give it an average review score and the media will give me the spotlight for having the contrarian opinion which means more visibility and more potential subscribers"

Being a contrarian is his MO, and it works well in his favor here because anyone who calls him out on it will just get called a fanboy.
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I'm still buying the game because I liked the first a lot, and am looking forward to this one.
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kirbymuncher posted...

if you play a game like Overwatch and can't control yourself enough to not buy loot boxes to gamble on getting skins that literally have no effect on the game whatsoever and are 100% optional and you can only ever use one at once and that you can get by just playing the game anyway, that's your fault not Blizzard's

Sure some of the responsibility is the player's but there's a reason casinos and gambling have all the restrictions they do. Don't try and act like the companies are totally innocent here

the only limit at a casino is your bank account..they're never gonna stop you from spending your money. there's a reason casinos are the only place in the country where ATMs have a $1000 option
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Sad_Face posted...

More like

"Everyone is praising this one game to high heaven, let me give it an average review score and the media will give me the spotlight for having the contrarian opinion which means more visibility and more potential subscribers"

Being a contrarian is his MO, and it works well in his favor here because anyone who calls him out on it will just get called a fanboy.

It seems so weird to me this ideology, as I will call it, that critics are not allowed to dissent with the consensus on something. With someone like Armond White at least you can trace a history of contrasting views that have the appearance of trolling. With Jim Sterling all I ever see regarding this Zelda review is "he's a contrarian" with maaaybe a mention of how he dares give Uncharted 4 a measley 8.5/10.

Nobody ever mentions how he broke with the critical consensus that said that Final Fantasy XIII was a good game, because in that case every on the userside agreed with him, in which case he is allowed to be a contrarian.

Maybe he just thought Legend of Zelda was a 7/10 game. Maybe he uses a personal scoring basis rather than the industry standard that says a decent game gets an automatic 7/10. Maybe he has bigger issues with things in the game that other reviewers were able to overlook, which is reasonable since people have different tastes.

Spoilers: All of the above are true in regards to his BotW review. It's not like he just slapped a 7/10 on the game. He gave a reasoned argument for why he thought gameplay elements like the weather and the durability of weapons were a huge detriment to his experience with the game.

KiwiTerraRizing posted...

Who?

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dont buy them simple
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Sad_Face posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

Sad_Face posted...

Come on guy. He's a massive contratrian. When everyone raved about BotW, he went and gave it a 7/10 to get the spotlight for the week and had a video out complaining about Nintendo fanboys the day after he released the review. Then he made a video telling people to go pirate Nintendo's games. All throughout, there was an uptick in his subscribers. He knows damn welling that crap on Nintendo brings home the bacon.

This is sad.

"He gave a nintendo game a positive review. Clearly he's crapping on Ninteno intentionally for attention!?"

Can you not see how much of a fanboy you sound like?

More like

"Everyone is praising this one game to high heaven, let me give it an average review score and the media will give me the spotlight for having the contrarian opinion which means more visibility and more potential subscribers"

Being a contrarian is his MO, and it works well in his favor here because anyone who calls him out on it will just get called a fanboy.

If you actually took time to read the review, he quite liked it. Unfortunately, the hunter-gatherer mechanics and the weapon durability problems present in the main game contributed significantly to the score being a 7 out of 10. A 7 out of 10 isn't a bad score.
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apolloooo posted...

Melonfarms posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFKnv1YzI3k

Here is another troubling video from a better YouTuber who points out that companies are avoiding taxes and making something like half their profits off of micro transactions. He focuses on Blizzard pretty heavily.

Super bunnyhop is underrated here. His videos range from real journalism stuff like this, snd great essays about videogames to silly weaabo videos and socks.

I like it.

Agreed. The Super Best Friends turned me on to him and I really dig his content. He deserves a lot more views and subscribers.

As for Jim Sterling, I love him. His style is very divisive and I can see someone not liking his sense of humor or over the top character he puts on, but I usually find him pretty amusing. Even if he didn't tickle my funny bone, I'd still always watch his videos because they are always quality work. I don't always agree with him, but he usually has a point to make or an ax to grind and never shies away.

The thing I love most about Jim is that when he is passionate about something he never backs down, no matter how much of the "norm" it becomes. Bullshit DLC or microtransactions can become commonplace in video games and a lot of people will just eventually accept the scumbag business moves. He however never lets it go. Even if he makes his 50th video bashing Steam's quality control and his fanbase may be sick of seeing him go on about it, the real takeaway is not that he won't stop complaining, it's that Steam refuses to fix the problem. Microtransactions are one of his many ongoing battles and even if it is a fight the fans can't win, he won't let the companies slide.
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NibeIungsnarf posted...

Sad_Face posted...

More like

"Everyone is praising this one game to high heaven, let me give it an average review score and the media will give me the spotlight for having the contrarian opinion which means more visibility and more potential subscribers"

Being a contrarian is his MO, and it works well in his favor here because anyone who calls him out on it will just get called a fanboy.

It seems so weird to me this ideology, as I will call it, that critics are not allowed to dissent with the consensus on something. With someone like Armond White at least you can trace a history of contrasting views that have the appearance of trolling. With Jim Sterling all I ever see regarding this Zelda review is "he's a contrarian" with maaaybe a mention of how he dares give Uncharted 4 a measley 8.5/10.

Nobody ever mentions how he broke with the critical consensus that said that Final Fantasy XIII was a good game, because in that case every on the userside agreed with him, in which case he is allowed to be a contrarian.

Maybe he just thought Legend of Zelda was a 7/10 game. Maybe he uses a personal scoring basis rather than the industry standard that says a decent game gets an automatic 7/10. Maybe he has bigger issues with things in the game that other reviewers were able to overlook, which is reasonable since people have different tastes.

Spoilers: All of the above are true in regards to his BotW review. It's not like he just slapped a 7/10 on the game. He gave a reasoned argument for why he thought gameplay elements like the weather and the durability of weapons were a huge detriment to his experience with the game.

No, you don't understand, BotW deserves high praise from all reviewers. It is objective fact that BotW is an amazing game and anyone who gives it a score lower than 9 is just looking for a fight, and to try and take away the score Zelda deserves.

That is how some people actually think.
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Capitalism at work. Don't like it? Make your own video game company you sjw communists.


*purchases $99.99 pack of loot crates*

take that liberals!
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Who would apologize for that shit?

NibeIungsnarf posted...

It seems so weird to me this ideology, as I will call it, that critics are not allowed to dissent with the consensus on something. With someone like Armond White at least you can trace a history of contrasting views that have the appearance of trolling. With Jim Sterling all I ever see regarding this Zelda review is "he's a contrarian" with maaaybe a mention of how he dares give Uncharted 4 a measley 8.5/10.

Alucard188 posted...

If you actually took time to read the review, he quite liked it. Unfortunately, the hunter-gatherer mechanics and the weapon durability problems present in the main game contributed significantly to the score being a 7 out of 10. A 7 out of 10 isn't a bad score.

A few things. 7/10 is a passable score. This isn't the film industry where a 30% is still watchable. If a game doesn't hit the 70% mark, it's not worth buying in this industry. It doesn't matter what the individual reviewer says his score means when he's using the same score system as everyone else ( a score from 1-10) and knows people just go straight to the score from the start. So BotW receiving a 7, means it's as decent as the standard bare minimum highly marketed title, when it has accomplished something people have been clamoring for years that no other open world has accomplished, an open world with full environment interactivity.

The more glaring issue I have, which you guys haven't addressed, is that the whole fiasco surrounding the review. The guy drops his review on a Sunday, less than a hour later, his site gets DDoSed (you'll hear his site got DDoSed for the review before you even hear about the review). And then his next video is about how bad Nintendo fanboys are, right on schedule the next day. These things, the attack on his site and the criticism are just too convenient in his favor. And he has been recorded to be with a group that have DDoSed other sites before.

Of course, the attack on his site could be genuine, but the whole picture for me is just too convenient, he has the spotlight for that week since everyone long since had their reviews out, he's making money off of this all the way through, and any dissenters are going to immediately be called disgruntled fanboys. This is why I call him a contrarian. He knows what he's doing.

And yes, I've read the review and read through a topic of people directly responding to him and poking holes in his review.
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Sad_Face posted...

The more glaring issue I have, which you guys haven't addressed, is that the whole fiasco surrounding the review. The guy drops his review on a Sunday, less than a hour later, his site gets DDoSed (you'll hear his site got DDoSed for the review before you even hear about the review). And then his next video is about how bad Nintendo fanboys are, right on schedule the next day. These things, the attack on his site and the criticism are just too convenient in his favor. And he has been recorded to be with a group that have DDoSed other sites before.

I can't speak for the full order of events as I wasn't event following them that closely, but I can confirm that Jim has a quick turn around on making videos, and it wouldn't have been the first time he's recorded, edited and uploaded a video in a day or slightly longer than. He's also works very late nights on occasion until like 3 or 4 am. So I think he deserves at least some benefit of the doubt.
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That's a good point.

I honestly wouldn't be nearly as suspicious if it weren't for the DDoS attack. But again, it could be genuine. But what's done is done and it's just something to speculate.
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anyone who thinks 7/10 is a terrible score needs to stop drinking the koolaid
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