LitleWiggle
Since: Feb, 2013
12/21/2017 00:00:00
The best reviews are always the one day that don\'t really make any sense and spend a whole paragraph bitching about people\'s opinion about two JRPGS
Glowsquid
Since: Jul, 2009
12/22/2017 00:00:00
this piece of writing confirms every prejudice I have against jim sterling\'s target audience
Elmo3000
Since: Jul, 2013
12/22/2017 00:00:00
James M. F. Sterlingson.
Nice.
SpectralTime
Since: Apr, 2009
12/22/2017 00:00:00
...I do think that it could maybe use a bit less posturing, yeah. Not to, you know, contradict the auteur theory or anything, but I think you got a bit too wrapped up in trying to add lots of personality and ended up being a bit less... coherent than I\'d prefer? I mean... I liked the in-jokes, but they wouldn\'t really be that useful to someone unfamiliar with his work looking for an opinion.
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They may take our freedom, but they'll never take our CHUNGUS!
Let it be said from the off that, if you are a person with any level of passion for the video game industry... love his rhetoric or hate it (but seriously, do the first one), James M. F. Sterlingson is on your side. Whether you're one of the enlightened ones who praise Final Fantasy X for the indisputably singular masterpiece it is, or one of the awkward, stuttering unfortunates that like Final Fantasy VII because idk claude is cool I guess he has a big sword that's bigger than he is and I find that cool also sephiroth and aeris cause she dies and i like the hair what's in it a lot, he represents you and has your best interests at heart at any and all times.
Jim Sterling may not be the hero gamers (a consumer base that accommodatingly allows an increasingly avaricious industry to blatantly exploit, hornswoggle, and forcibly insert their greedy money-sucking tentacles into every orifice within range, due to their own lack of integrity and complacency) deserve, but certainly one we need right now. An incorruptible force of nature who will face potentially debilitating (but—to be fair—only if he were a lesser man) legal action in the name of truth and justice.
A man to respect; a man to fear. A man hundredfold as stubbornly opinionated as I could ever hope to be, yet steadfastedly unbiased and level-headed in his carefully chosen critical strikes at the festering, rotten heart of the bloated Megalodon that is the modern video game industrial complex. Though I fear it may well turn out to be his Moby-Dick, instead. There is no true Messiah without a noble sacrifice for others to follow, after all. A Messiah, and a very naughty boy.
Even beyond the relatively inconsequential significance video games have to the world at large, Jim Sterling's labors are a sobering and constant reminder that companies don't give a shit about you or any of your opinions. All they want is your money. They don't care about you or about being your "friend," and anyone who says differently is either naïve, a liar, or inevitably bound to compromise in this belief. Such are the wiles of capitalism, this uncaring Elder God that will consume the planet and everything in it unless we do something about it. It's the consumers that have the power; everything else is a constructivist fantasy with all the inherent force of a slightly dusty banana peel.
For persisting in a battle worth fighting with wit, verve, and humor (and a fuckton of spandex, cereal, and greasepaint), Jim Sterling has my full respect. And believe me, that there's some respect that is worth having. Yes, he almost makes me want to thank some possibly non-existent deity for his decidedly existent... existence.