>>12158654His whole career is built around saying the safest opinions possible while looking like a truth-telling maverick. He poses as a consumer advocate, yet will only attack minuscule devs that can't hit back or huge corporations that won't hit back because of PR. Easy targets. Also he never criticizes bad things in the industry if it would harm either his popularity or his standing with the clique. Remember when ridiculous amounts of nickel-and-diming DLC were considered normal by everyone but /v/? Well after ME3 hit, the public opinion finally turned against it, and of course, so did Sterling, pretending he was against that all the time.
Ditto for Sarkeesian; a year or two ago the public in general finally cast her off the pedestal journos had placed her on, and all of a sudden Sterling "has some objections about her videos". So brave. Basically, whatever is /v/'s opinion now will be regurgitated by Sterling once it becomes the mainstream opinion a couple of years down the line.
Another example: I've seen TB stick his neck to defend his friend Sterling from Twitter mobs several times. Meanwhile, occasionally the clique would dogpile TB for being a neo-nazi goobergator MRA whatever. Guess how many times Sterling returned TB the favor.
To sum it up, he always prioritizes the opinions of his fans and those of the clique, in that order. If a popular game is poo-poo-ed by the clique, he'll give it a decent score. An unpopular game will get a bad score, regardless of what the clique thinks about it. He'll probably address any "problematic" aspects the game might have as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge to his buddies, then go back to bashing it. He says what his audience wants to hear always, and what the clique wants to hear whenever possible.
