Some criticism in the form of sweeping generalizations:
Thirty minute long tutorial videos have never been particularly interesting or riveting to just about anyone that actually plays games. Assuming someone was to watch your entire playlist, that would be over 22 hours spent just watching someone else play. Surely you don't expect people to watch every single one, when they could be playing on their own?
I will say that attempting to capture the teacher-student discussion is novel and probably worth the watch for some people. Nice. However, if you were hoping to reach a larger audience with these videos they should be refined through careful editing. Providing copious links to wiki pages / informative forum threads in the description, providing an outline as to what your first tasks should be, using the video as a method of communicating complex ideas to viewers in a shortened amount of time, and perhaps most importantly spend some time explaining why people should be playing this game in the first place.
I would question the need for video in the first place - the success of various youtube personalities has tricked a lot of people into thinking that disorganized communication layered over moving images somehow improves upon the tried-and-true method of writing out how to do things. Mixed media isn't always better! Also, do note that the chances of your voice / personality being attractive to a large audience is largely dependent on your level of education, the culture you grew up in, and how confident you are in your thought. It's actually pretty rare for someone to be able to talk for thirty minutes and remain interesting, even with some sort of semi-scripted subject.
So while you have certainly provided a tutorial for a few thousand people, which is a lot more than I can say about my own attempts (which are non-existent), it really isn't the best it could be and only truly useful to a small subset of the growing numbers of people interested in learning this game.
If you don't think you can summarize your 22 hours down any further you are wrong, because you absolutely can. Identify the most important things for any new player to understand, like the big concepts, and focus on those things. People usually don't need to be told how to build a kitchen - 'b' -> 'w' -> 'z' is not a difficult task - but they DO need a conceptual understanding of the U.I. to self-derive where the 'kitchen' building might be located. Same with z-levels. Not difficult in practice, just shift-period to go down and shift-period to go up, but the concept of viewing discrete vertical planes one at a time, and using that perspective to conceptualize a multi-layered system, is probably something worth expounding upon.
If it's on the wiki, only explain it if it's needed for a larger concept. If it's something everyone learns after playing for a while, like little tricks for efficiency and whatnot, that's a more worthwhile tidbit to communicate. Things like atomsmashers and quantum stockpiles and macros. When I first learned so many years ago, these sorts of efficiency tricks were the most helpful kind of tutorial. Finally, if it's a trick or a practice that you've discovered on your own and you don't see it widely adopted by the community, then you should absolutely share that.
Consider doing a Q&A via comments. Not on these forums though, since like I said writing is just more efficient for explaining ideas. Why watch a rambling video when I can scan a thread full of succinct advice from veteran players?
because I'm thirteen and have the attention span of a goldfish on stimulants. also do note that this post is a rambling, inefficient way to communicate that your videos are too long for the content they provide. Irony never hurt anyone.
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Topic: New tutorial for beginners (Read 1181 times)