Jim Sterling

James Stephanie Sterling, also known as Commander Sterling and formerly known as Jim Sterling, is a British freelance video game journalist, critic, pundit, YouTuber, and professional wrestler. Before becoming independent in September 2014, sheEfn|Sterling is transfeminine and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns. and an author for The Escapist. Sterling is noted as an example of a YouTuber achieving success through crowdfunding.

Career Video game critic Sterling presents The Jimquisition, a weekly YouTube video series in which she discusses current issues surrounding video games, often involving consumer protection and ethics in the video game industry. The series originated on Destructoid's YouTube channel and was later moved to The Escapists channel, before being released on Sterling's own channel. Her main gameplay series are "Jimpressions" and "Squirty Play", where she discussed her impressions of a recently released video game while showing her own pre-recorded gameplay. She has often spoken against sexism in gaming, and has been open about the fact that her position on this subject has slowly evolved. Sterling also stated her desire to go back to writing articles and recording podcasts, which she was not able to do since leaving Destructoid. Gavin was replaced on episode 251 with Conrad Zimmerman, who had previously worked alongside Sterling at Destructoid.

In March 2016, Digital Homicide Studios filed a lawsuit against Sterling, seeking $10 million in damages for "assault, libel, and slander", following Sterling's negative review of their first game The Slaughtering Grounds. Sterling further accused Digital Homicide Studios of deleting negative feedback of the game on its Steam review page, and banning users who criticized it.

Sterling has been credited with coining the term "chungus", which would later be part of the name of the "Big Chungus" meme. Sterling started using the term as early as 2012 on her channel in a variety of unrelated contexts with different meanings for humorous effect. She was also credited with coining "asset flip" in 2015.

Wrestling Sterling wrestles under the name Commander Sterling. Sterling initially became involved in wrestling as a joke, appearing as a character called Sterdust, parodying Cody Rhodes' character Stardust, She has wrestled for promotions including Pro Wrestling EGO, Ryse Wrestling, BadBoys Wrestling (BBW), and the PolyAm Cult Party. She has also provided voices for Jazzpunk, We Happy Few, 2064: Read Only Memories, Volume, The Charnel House Trilogy, Lorelai, Mewgenics, and Oddworld: Soulstorm.

Reception In 2011 Sterling was featured in a list of "the 25 raddest game journalists to follow on Twitter" by Complex. and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have launched DDoS attacks against Sterling's website following reviews that were believed to be insufficiently positive.

Sterling's views on art games have been criticized by Spelunky creator Derek Yu. In 2014, Yu compared Sterling's view to that of art critic Louis Leroy writing in 1874 of a Claude Monet painting which Leroy criticized for being unfinished, while the style of painting would later become a major art style. In a 2015 video about polyamorous relationships in Fallout 4, Sterling said she is not monogamous. She is pansexual and queer. In June 2020, she was naturalized as a Citizen of the United States. In August 2020, Sterling came out as non-binary. Sterling uses she/them pronouns.