To a discerning eye, his tweet would come across as a joke, but this is 2019.
We've all got our guards up, for good reasons.
We've all got our guards up, for good reasons.
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Game Journalism Of Thrones (The Jimquisition)
- Thread starter It’s Time To Go
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Jeff Grubb is an Era member. You don't have to be weird about it.
Also, yeah, there's a whole thread on how the Artifact streams took a turn for the bizarre yesterday.
I don't have time to watch this video, but something that people don't often consider is the fact that shared, communal experiences in video games are very rare. Because games take so long to finish, and because there's such a huge variety of genres and releases on any given week, there's no way a gaming website can say "Hey, readers, let's all talk about this game we just played and finished." Maybe a fraction of our readers will even play the latest AAA release, let alone play it to completion to the point where we can talk about the overall experience and what it means. And don't even get me started on indies or niche games. When I write about CrossCode, for example, I have to assume that most of my readers haven't even heard of it, let alone played it to the point where we can have an in-depth critical discussion about it as an entire work of art. (Hell, I've played dozens of hours and haven't even finished it yet.)
The reason Game of Thrones is so valuable is because it's something a large number of our readers are experiencing at the same time. You can't underestimate the power of that. It's a collective cultural moment that everyone's sharing. A huge chunk of our readers all watched it and finished it. They can all talk about it, read about it, or listen to us discuss it in a critical, thorough way. That simply can't happen with video games. Even with something massively successful like God of War or Red Dead 2, there are only so many people who have actually finished it all, and they don't all finish it at the same time. There's nothing like Game of Thrones in gaming because video games take dozens of hours to complete. The closest you'll ever get is a Nintendo Direct or E3, when we're all watching trailers and experiencing cultural moments together. Does it really surprise anyone that game sites (or podcasts) want to participate in this kind of zeitgeist?
The reason Game of Thrones is so valuable is because it's something a large number of our readers are experiencing at the same time. You can't underestimate the power of that. It's a collective cultural moment that everyone's sharing. A huge chunk of our readers all watched it and finished it. They can all talk about it, read about it, or listen to us discuss it in a critical, thorough way. That simply can't happen with video games. Even with something massively successful like God of War or Red Dead 2, there are only so many people who have actually finished it all, and they don't all finish it at the same time. There's nothing like Game of Thrones in gaming because video games take dozens of hours to complete. The closest you'll ever get is a Nintendo Direct or E3, when we're all watching trailers and experiencing cultural moments together. Does it really surprise anyone that game sites (or podcasts) want to participate in this kind of zeitgeist?
Wonder when Jim is going to do that promised episode on mid-tier games? Anyways i'm one of those weirdos that never really got into GOT (and honestly i'm happy it wasn't my thing given how long the books take to come out and hearing about how weak the ending of the show was) mostly because it was far too grimdark and overly nihilistic for my tastes(don't really need to see brutal rape scenes every other week, no thanks).
It does baffle me that games sites focus so much on this non-game stuff, I understand sites like IGN occasionally talking about films but Polygon just looks silly focusing this much on GoT.
Facebook is largely to blame for the whole "pivot to video" thing as people saw how many views their videos were getting(and those numbers turned out to be falsely inflated by a huge margin) and then many sites like Cracked jumped on the video bandwagon and when those videos tanked the websites as a whole got devalued(I did like a lot of Cracked's video content and I was sad to see it go).
I miss when MTV had good animated shows like Downtown, Daria, Spider-Man and Good Vibes. The most accurate critique of MTV nowadays was actually in the Jamie Kennedy film "Kickin it Old Skool" where the main character ends up in a coma in 1987 and awakes 20 years later and upon watching MTV he remarks "why is everybody crying all the time?".
I don't know who the fuck this Jeff Grubb guy is, but he sounds like a butthurt moron. Anyone who casually dismisses lootboxes as a "faux controversy" is a complete tool who cannot be taken remotely seriously.
Very strongly disagree, the whole video I found quite interesting.
It does baffle me that games sites focus so much on this non-game stuff, I understand sites like IGN occasionally talking about films but Polygon just looks silly focusing this much on GoT.
Facebook is largely to blame for the whole "pivot to video" thing as people saw how many views their videos were getting(and those numbers turned out to be falsely inflated by a huge margin) and then many sites like Cracked jumped on the video bandwagon and when those videos tanked the websites as a whole got devalued(I did like a lot of Cracked's video content and I was sad to see it go).
I miss when MTV had good animated shows like Downtown, Daria, Spider-Man and Good Vibes. The most accurate critique of MTV nowadays was actually in the Jamie Kennedy film "Kickin it Old Skool" where the main character ends up in a coma in 1987 and awakes 20 years later and upon watching MTV he remarks "why is everybody crying all the time?".
I don't know who the fuck this Jeff Grubb guy is, but he sounds like a butthurt moron. Anyone who casually dismisses lootboxes as a "faux controversy" is a complete tool who cannot be taken remotely seriously.
Very strongly disagree, the whole video I found quite interesting.
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I meant no offense to the guy, I just saw someone refer to him as that. Apologies to him if he somehow sees this post though, then.
This is an interesting perspective on it, thanks for posting. I mean, haven't most of the big gaming sites been "gaming culture" sites for a long time now anyways? Seems like Game of Thrones was big with gamers too.
Again, there's an entire thread that talked about how Artifact streams on Twitch became everything from porn to pirate movie streams, to anime streams to Malcolm in the Middle. This isn't anything that needs discussion in this thread.
I don't watch YouTubbers for my gaming news because they don't have someone above them making sure they don't put out misleading shit, and the people who I do trust don't really cover gaming news, they just do commentary.
They probably don't get clicks because they're barely scratching the surface. Interesting pieces that cover hot topics in a meaningful way will almost always do well.
oh I think most people get that, but that does not excuse sites like Polygon from posting blatant spoilers only a day after the episode airs(hell some sites got in hot water for posting spoilers immediately after the episode finished airing in the central time zone and before they aired an hour later in the Pacific time zone) and including spoiler pictures in the header(they pull this spoiler picture crap with games like Red Dead 2 as well, sad part is it was a good article about how the game portrays a certain disease).
In response to that Hobbes guy, I use certain Youtubers for my gaming news because I know they won't be afraid to actually talk about what REALLY happened in certain stories(the Alex Mauer thing being a prime example, as many game journalists got that story flat-out wrong and tried to imply that her getting online threats somehow made it A-OK for her to hit videos with bogus copyright claims). and we don't have to worry about certain writers not offering proper disclosure that the game/person they are writing about they personally are friends with(this gets especially dodgy when writers promote games on Kickstarter that they themselves donated money to).
Yeah there are genuinely good pieces of games journalism, but it feels like lately they are becoming few and far between.
As TotalBiscuit mentioned years ago, traditional gaming websites are becoming more and more irrelevant and people find that Youtube is way better for getting proper information about games.
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Jim covers it as a means of keeping the lights on, but this is also a great way of looking at why websites cover things outside of gaming.
I would think as long as there are sufficient spoiler warnings for the article and any advance notice in any video/podcast talk it would be fine. Like Mr. Schreier said, it give them a way to join in the discussion of something "current" that everyone is seemingly a part of or went through "together."
I am totally with you on the spoilers in thumbnails thing. I think people should be more cognizant when getting those ready too (except for jerks on youtube who do it to troll, they should just stop altogether).
I remember when I still visited game websites like Gamespot and Eurogamer, that was a long time ago.
Makes me glad i'm not on social media much as I don't have to worry about seeing things like Endgame spoilers.
it's pretty amazing watching you two spin this nonsense over a couple of tweets you've apparently decided to interpret in the most nonsensical possible ways
he never said lootboxes are a fake controversy, and I don't think it requires a notable amount of immaturity to reference an infamous comic strip
I am 99% of the time in total disagreement with this guy. This is one of those cases.
Like who cares, Game of Thrones is a worldwide event and gaming journalism is like journalism for children, they are are pretty much fluff pieces, and it is OK
Edit. I also dislike how this guy and others hold some high standard for gaming. C'moon, this is a hobby for people who scream at eachother over web stores and exclusives.
Like who cares, Game of Thrones is a worldwide event and gaming journalism is like journalism for children, they are are pretty much fluff pieces, and it is OK
Edit. I also dislike how this guy and others hold some high standard for gaming. C'moon, this is a hobby for people who scream at eachother over web stores and exclusives.
I don't necessarily disagree with the points you raise Jason - if you genuinely like something and want to participate in the discussion, then have at it. It's the frequency at which you continue to focus on one specific subject/topic and what detriment (if any) that does to coverage outside of that sphere where I feel people suddenly gain this perception that sites are doing it ONLY for the clicks...and nothing else. Regardless of how important a cultural moment is - whether it be a film, tv show, video game or simply an event - you're never going to have 100% of your audience dedicated to that focal point, hence you need to ensure that the content you put out is diversified. Again, they may well be doing it out of passion and/or interest, but if I see a front page where it's nothing but GoT or nothing but Endgame - regardless of whether or not said site is primarily dedicated to video games or not - I'm not going to bother clicking on your content. Forbes, as much as I find every other article they have in their Games section is Fortnite-related, does at least cover topics/areas outside of that sphere.
It all ties into the issues I have with the other side: content creators on YouTube. As a self-confessed, glass half-empty miserable bastard, even I'm rather tired of this growing period where the message seems primarily to be: "OH NO THE INDUSTRY IS SHIT. JOURNALISM IS SHIT, EVERYTHING IS SHIT GUYS!! Please donate to my PayPal." Yes, there are things people absolutely need to call out and criticize and rally to change for the better, but again, I'd much rather people on YouTube - and maybe some other sites too - diversify their coverage just as much and not simply focus on the negative all the time or narrow it down to one subject that will never pull in 100% of a target crowd. And I get the general argument that it's a supply and demand thing - that audiences want the next "best" thing to complain and get annoyed about or want something about their latest popular trend - but what's wrong with focusing on the positives in the industry and championing stuff you feel should get greater coverage?
It's part the reason why I actively avoid all this "Top 10 Shit Games That Ruined The Industry This Month" and other such long-term pointless content that appears to have only increased over the years. I could so easily write countless pieces on the latest popular stuff, but I decide against it because I feel it serves no long-term value. I'd rather cover stuff I think people might be interested in AND won't serve as a means to confirm a bias readers may hold. In conclusion, I think both sides - namely online outlets and YouTube channels - are just as guilty and the only real solution I can propose is finding a middle-ground between short-term content that focuses on such cultural phenomenons, and other subjects that still pertain to the field of video games that don't necessarily paint the exact same emotional outlook all the time.
This is a given, other types of media are better to cocer in that sense of "culture zeltgeist", and it brings clicks, which I suspect ultimately is the main reason to veer into other medias, right?
I mean if the ending of GOT came during the week of E3 for example, would Kotaku cover it the way it has? And I dont mean any of that as a negative, and you specially tries different topics all the time, with interviews and long form reporting, I cant even imagine other sites that rely more in news and just game review content. I guess the main question is, what is the line that prevents kotaku to turn into IO9?
So which parts of things Jim covers in his weekly videos are faux controversies then? He's extremely broad in his statement.
Again, I haven't watched Jim's video, but Kotaku's coverage of Game of Thrones has been limited to a couple of meme posts and our weekly Splitscreen discussions about the show, so you're not really making the right argument here. Polygon and GameSpot are all-encompassing entertainment sites and have been for a few years now - they're more along the lines of what you're talking about. And they have dedicated entertainment writers, so it's not like this is some big secret. Their traffic has grown exponentially as a result.
I still go there occasionally, but most of the time when I go to game websites, it's usually for stuff like game guides on how to do certain parts and rarely for articles.
Another problem with games journalism that for the most part youtubers don't have is they are not dependent on games publishers PR to give them early access to games(I.E. IGN First), so unlike people like Schrier who have outright defended lootboxes(because he has a financial incentive to do so) youtubers are not beholden to PR companies as much therefore people like Angry Joe can get away with telling it like is and calling out bullshit exploitative business models in games, they are also more likely to be more fair in terms of reviewing games as websites often give out far too many high scores for games and ignoring blatant issues they might have(such as a terrible PC port or frame-rate issues/glitches) or giving way too low scores to games that the writer clearly barely played much of if it all(IGN's infamously terrible 3/10 God Hand review being a prime example).
Also there's the issue of most gaming sites feeling the need to still use ratings, which thanks to Metacritic can give people the wrong impression about a game since despite sites using different ratings systems, MC will treat a 9/10 the same as a 4/5 for it's nonsense aggregate score even though they aren't the same thing, and hearing about people like Obsidian losing bonuses because the Metascore for a game wasn't high enough makes me despise ratings even more. Honestly I was kinda glad when Jim stopped doing written reviews as I always felt like his use of ratings compromised an other well-written review as more often then not the rating didn't seem to accurately reflect the actual content of the review. Plus there's the issue of many readers just skipping the text and only looking at the numbers. Rottentomatoes has this issue to a lesser extent, where it can be random as to what reviews will be deemed "rotten", sometimes 2.5/4 reviews for films are rotten, sometimes they are positive, it's totally random and there's no consistency. That's one reason I don't depend on reviews to tell me whether or not to buy or watch something, I just consume whatever looks interesting to me personally regardless of what others are saying about it(i'm REALLY glad I didn't listen to all the mostly poorly written negative reviews about Days Gone as that's easily in my top 10 games of this year).
It all made perfect sense to me.
Dont get me wrong, I listened to your got podcast and enjoyed it, I just feel kotaku has a specific take on this because you have sister sites that cover other media, even with io9 and av club having different takes of the same topic at the same time, so kotaku dont really have the space to flex its muscles to other media as much as other sites, losing the opportunity to gather more audience. Its an interesting problem I guess.
Sounds like somebody clearly didn't watch the full video, as Jim repeatedly said many times that he "understood" why websites talked about non-gaming stuff like GoT and Jim has never held a "high standard" for games(he's a Dynasty Warriors fan for fucks sake)
Also wouldn't call gaming journalism "journalism for children"(that would be bullshit right-wing websites like Daily Caller, Faux News, Brietbart and Washington Times).
Well as Jim himself has pointed out, the problem is positive content simply does not do as well as negative content does, Jim himself has done numerous positive videos but they never do well compared to the more negative ones,his Yoshi video outright tanked.
Jim does "focus on the positives"but the problem is there is more negative then positive stuff in the industry right now so you kind of have to accept that people are going to talk about it.
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Are you kidding me? I'd never do anything like IGN First, I've gotten blacklisted by multiple publishers because of my coverage, I've never taken a press junket in my life, and the YouTubers you're worshipping are all literally getting paid by publishers to play their games. It's shit like this that makes me wonder why I bother.
Kinda ironic for a person making videos about whatever dumb outrage gamers are having for views to poop on websites for covering GoT for clicks. What will Jim do when we finally stop getting upset over video game shit?
there's no point responding to knuckle dragging nonsense like this it's a waste of time. not your post but the one you were quoting, mind you
Buddy....let me tell you about a thing called "Game Changers"
We really are still in and era where people think popular youtube guy is doing it for the love.
I feel that's like asking what will gossip rags do when people stop caring about celebrities.
EDIT: My point being, there will always be stuff gamers are getting upset about.
User banned (1 week): vilifying games journalism, trolling over a series of posts
Never once claimed that you did, maybe try some reading comprehension next time(That's one thing i'd expect a journalist like you to actually be good at, but i digress) i'm well aware of the blacklisting. Does not change the fact that you've still defended lootboxes despite ample evidence that they are psychologically manipulative and the fact that many countries have either banned them or are considering banning them, so you'll forgive people if they don't 100% trust every single thing you say. You're overly defensive responsive here only further proves my own point.
Also way to stereotype youtubers,not EVERY single youtuber on the planet that plays video games gets "paid" to do so by the publisher, Angry Joe usually buys all of his games personally so you can't call him biased. I have to say games journalists strawman view on Youtubers makes them look like old men telling kids to get off their lawn and is one reason why games journalism has an image problem right now. So maybe you might want to cut out painting all youtubers with the same brush as it does not make you look like a very good person.
At the end of the day, as much as I may sometimes roll my eyes when I check Polygon in the morning and see nothing but posts about The Avengers, I'm very much in support of whatever model allows websites to pay journalists decent wages to write about video games independently and without having to worry about shilling for access. Put another way: I'd rather see all of the major gaming sites turn into entertainment sites than I would see more IGN Firsts or magazine cover exclusive reveals.
I've heard of game changers, not saying ALL youtubers aren't biased, but on the whole I still trust them more then I trust a lost of games journalists(and no i'm not a GGer before anyone busts that argument out).
Some popular Youtubers like Angry Joe do this because they genuinely do love games, sure they get paid a lot but money isn't their main motive.
Your post is the only bit of "ignorance" I see here.
All of my points are perfectly valid, i'm more of less just saying the same thing TotalBiscuit was saying for years.
You literally argued that Jason is a shill for defending lootboxes while in the same breath calling Angry Joe a "telling it like it is" source of truth.
Angry Joe.
Angry Fucking Joe.
A N G R Y
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I'd say that you should quit while you were ahead, but you never were.
Oh let me guess, you're one of those crazy people that has an irrational and obsessive hatred for Joe. You'll forgive me if I don't take you , some random crazy person on the internet seriously.
You should've quit while you were ahead, oh who am I kidding you were never ahead to begin with. Anyone that hates Joe for no reason like you is not someone who is to be taken remotely seriously, Jim happens to respect him quite bit, so i'd cool it with the baseless personal attacks against Joe if I was you.
I agree with a lot of what you write here. I roughly feel the same overall and look for opinions accordingly - but most of all I just buy games that look interesting to me and I very, very rarely end up buying a dud. I also <3 Days Gone :)
LOL, imagine how all the sexual harassment controversies would look like if everyone just said "yeah, that's bad" and moved on.
Oh look, it's another jim thread that's 90% people that didn't watch video making wrong assumptions about it, cuz they don't actually care what's video is about, but instead about validating their pre-established opinions.
What's wrong with Angry Joe?
I get that his "thing" doesn't appeal to everyone, but I think he's quite honest and sincere in his game critiques.
I don't harbor any sort of obsessive hatred for Joe. I just find the whole angry shtick tired and look elsewhere for more informed and less abrasively delivered reviews, opinions, and commentary. Angry Joe is just one of those people I put in the Screaming YouTuber bucket and set aside, never wasting my time thinking about.
This is entirely what's wrong with this situation. Jim Sterling *is* the man, and his fanbase refuses to hold him to the higher standard that his influence warrants.
Jim has 800k subscribers, Kotaku has around 300k. An average video of Jim's gets 500k view, while most Kotaku videos are in five digits. This is apples and oranges, obviously, since Kotaku does a lot of their stuff outside Youtube (Jim does too, but it's less so), but it's probably not controversial to say Jim has further reach than any individual Kotaku writer and any one of his videos probably reaches more people than most individual Kotaku articles, even if the institution as a whole probably has more influence than he does. At the very least, he's no longer tossing stones from outside the walls. He is very much a part of capital J games journalism, and a stakeholder in the entire edifice. He can no longer credibly claim to be an outsider or a plucky upstart.
This is the strange thing about Jim Sterling. For the record, I'm not accusing him of shitty politics; in this field, he is refreshingly free from bigotry and animus, and he's generally on the right side of things. Which is odd, because he seems to have learned the lessons of conservative media more than anyone else in the Youtube game.
I remember seeing a video of his, I think it was about the EA financial report, when he was critiquing loot boxes. His analysis wasn't anything that anyone familiar with business journalism would find persuasive, but he seemed awfully proud of himself for having taken the trouble to look up the earnings report in the first place. And it's like, dude, you -are- a journalist, you don't get a pat on the back when you do minimal diligence for your job, even if you were right that nobody else in the mainstream media does it, and you're not right about that.
But that's not an uncommon tactic in the world of conservative media, even in mainstream outlets like Fox and especially in alternative distribution channels like YouTube. Anything these journalistically inadequate outlets do that resembles traditional reporting will be trumpeted to the heavens, in comparison with a mainstream media that they hold to dramatically higher standards than they hold themselves on account of that media being 'mainstream.' Like conservative news, Jim positions himself as an outsider speaking truth to power when in fact his reach and financial stake make him as much of an incumbent in the current media landscape as any of the outlets he's critiquing. Like conservative news, Jim uses comparisons to a mainstream press to burnish his image, selectively following some standards of journalistic integrity but not others to make his work seem more considered and trustworthy.
(To be fair this isn't exclusively a conservative phenomenon - in many ways Jon Stewart and the daily show pioneered this formula back in the early '00s.)
And, like conservative news, Jim has been entirely captured by the economic logic of the outrage cycle. It is not, as some posters in this thread have suggested, that he discusses the problems with loot boxes and gambling and even mainstream media - all of which, after all, are hardly issues that the mainstream press ignore. It is that he speaks about them in the ways guaranteed to optimize the number of clicks and eyeballs he will get, to be as inflammatory and strident as possible. It would be inaccurate to say that his videos were entirely free of nuance, but they are, at best, always polemics, in an industry where not every problem is amenable to simplistic good vs. evil stories and where the solution is not always as simple as identifying the bad guys and removing them from power.
But polemics sell. Outrage sells. Good vs. Evil narratives sell, whether they're appropriate to the situation or not. There's no better way to get a loyal following on Youtube than to pick a couple of villains to take aim at and blame everything that's going wrong on them. After the fiftieth such video, it's hard to fight off the feeling that we're not seeing a real Jim Sterling at all, just the results of an economic algorithim that zeroed in on his particular style as the one most memeitically fit in the current YouTube ecosystem.
That's why it's ironic that he's criticizing mainstream outlets for keeping themselves afloat with GoT coverage. It's not ideal, certainly. But Sterling has compromised the integrity of his core journalism in order to make money. Personally, yes, I would prefer to see GoT articles on Kotaku rather than have Jason Schrier start writing the blog post clickbait equivalent of Jim's videos.
Yup same here, with my autism I have like a reverse Sturgeon's law where for me 90% of everything is good and only 10% of it is bad. I've played a lot of games and very few I outright hated, even if a game isn't very good i'll still finish it because it will bug me if I don't(Takedown Red Sabre is one of the only games I never finished because it was so broken).
His name is kind of a misnomer though and it's a legacy name as he often does not get all THAT angry, he's usually pretty calm actually. The few times he does get mad, it's well deserved(I.E. when he goes after publishers for terrible business practices) so no it's not "tired schtick" at all, you sound like you haven't seen one of his videos in a very long time, putting him in the "Screaming youtuber" bucket is most definitely unfair and kind of ignorant.
There's no irony there, Jim wasn't criticizing the outlets he was just doing some light-ribbing, sounds like you didn't bother to watch the full video. Jim has not "compromised the integrity" of anything to make money, hell his JQ videos are ad-free. So calling his videos "clickbait" is frankly a bullshit claim.
Jim never called himself an outsider, it sounds like you are grossly misinformed about what Jim actually does.
All of Jim's anger has been "appropriate" and Jim Sterling's passion about this is "real", you clearly don't know him nearly as well as you think you do. Jim has in fact discussed real problems with lootboxes on Podquisition
Jim clearly wasn't expecting a "pat on the head" for looking up the financial, but it's not something the average journalist or youtuber would do so it's good that he actually did take the time to do it. It sounds like you have a rather irrational dislike towards Jim for no real reason.
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I have never, ever defended loot boxes and even a cursory search could tell you that I've consistently called them exploitative for years: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from:jasonschreier loot boxes&src=typd
I think it actually makes a lot of sense for gaming news sites/boards to get a lot of traffic for non gaming related activities. I know personally my posts are probably 30:70 gaming side to off topic side. It's not just that coverage of other topics brings in a bigger audience, but when a group of people have a similar fandom background (gaming) then their discussions about other topics can reference back to that common meeting ground. It's why I love discussing anime/manga/sports on places like resetera but hate those discussions on more dedicated anime/manga/sports sites.
I think what Jason talked about in his posts above is probably a big reason why publishers are pushing that gaas model. Titles like fortnite and overwatch continue to get discussion and stay in gamers minds, while stuff like KH3 or RE2 come and go as after a month most everyone who will play the game is finished, discussed, and has moved onto other things.
I think what Jason talked about in his posts above is probably a big reason why publishers are pushing that gaas model. Titles like fortnite and overwatch continue to get discussion and stay in gamers minds, while stuff like KH3 or RE2 come and go as after a month most everyone who will play the game is finished, discussed, and has moved onto other things.
Oh really? Care to explain this tweet then?
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1050402136155131905?lang=en
Pretty weak post actually, anyone that unironically compares Jim to conservative news sites clearly has no idea what they are talking about.
Sadly, that's exactly what I see in comment sections and other places when game sites do cover that stuff, especially if they do follow up articles about it. The worst still for me was back in 2011 when Kotaku wrote a series of articles about Aris Bakhtanians sexually harassing a Competitive Fighter pro (the is where his response of, "You can't. You can't because they're one and the same thing. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture" comes from, at the Cross Assault event (in fact I think it was Schreier above who reported it) and the comments were riddled with that "This isn't news", "Let's it go" etc attitude.
And given that Aris despite many telling Schreier at time that he doesn't represent them of the FGC, still gets to participate and commentate at fighting game events, even big ones like EVO and ones hosted by big names like Bandai Namco and Netherrealm while never ever really punished for it and what he did nearly all but forgotten, it's sadly a tactic that works for them.
Jim Sterling is an ex-games journalist turned entertainer. He doesn't do journalistic work anymore or claim to be a journalist. There are journalists in this industry who do long hard pieces on exploitation of workers, then there are others who just write pop-culture blog pieces. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone has to be.
But JS isn't even a basic run of the mill journalist. The reason there is some spikey feelings towards YouTubers and the likes is they can amass huge traffic, without necessarily accruing the crippling student debt of a journalism degree and years of trying to climb corporate ladders/open doors. But everyone best remembers for the top 5~10% of YouTubers there are millions with next to no traffic making next to no money.
I don't know why you're going on about Fox News and Conservative news considering when Sterling does do his schtick on capitalism and workers rights, it's anything but Conservative.
But sure, the good vs evil trope is long played out, whether it's fictional media, or non-fiction writers angling for the little man vs the big man. As I said though, hate his act, jokes and schtick or not, lots and lots of gamers are concerned about loot boxes and that is why it amasses interest/traffic.
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