video Got a question?

[RadiantBlader]

I've been following this game practically since launch, and there is something I have noticed in that time:  People ask the same questions a lot.  So, I have decided to post here and offer my assistance.  If you have a question about ARK, or just dinosaurs in general, post it here or send it to my Twitter @RadiantBlader.  Next Friday, February 9th, I will put up a video response answering as many questions as I can.  Also, don't worry about what kind of question it is.  Even if you just want to know how to pronounce something, that's fine.

[TheyCallMeGunny]

Radiant, while I could at one time relate to your approach, I have some advice for you: Avoid the "how to" or "tutorial" route.

This is going to sound a bit blunt, but bear with me: Look up the top listed "how to" videos on a topic you wish to help people learn. Take note of what is said in the video. From taming the newer Ubers (Basilisk/Reaper) to something as simple as how to get a fast start as a new player: They're all the farthest thing from useful information. I don't know how to put it without offending the people who post them, but the top rated guides in Ark are generally the worst ways to do something, and are popular due to branding rather than their actual viability.

If I may take a line that a member of my team wrote recently to explain why we started on a new channel in a new direction, as we now do building videos to inspire creativity, rather than try to teach it:

 

Quote

Hello everyone, Blue here. We wanted to take some time while showcasing our second build to discuss our intent with this channel and the builds we show here. Sandbox games create these beautifully immersive worlds that practically beg to be filled with every individual players creative contributions but in Ark a lot of the build content that other creators have put out focuses on function over form. And largely what does exist that could be called creative expression ends up over simplified so that it can be easily reproduced. Admittedly we understand why so many creators on YouTube do this.
If you want to give someone step by step instruction on how you did your build without scaring them away with complexity or build time, then the build has to be relatively simple. Make it too big, the video is too long. Add too much detail, the video is too long. Use any shape more complex than an octagon, the video is too long. But what if you take the focus away from trying to teach people to build your builds? If you just let your work stand on  its own foundations (pun very much intended) all of a sudden you open up so many more possibilities for what you can present. And instead of encouraging servers full of painfully similar log cabins, you encourage variety and ambition in arks building community. And that’s what we are here to do. We want to inspire and foster a creative community in ark that explores a part of the game that at present is extremely underrepresented by showing what can be done. We don’t want you to recreate our builds, we want to show you what all is possible so that you get excited about your own.  There are so many amazing locations and amazing mods to work with. Every location we build in, we have multiple ideas for. With so many different possibilities to explore, we wanted the freedom to build quickly. Ark is a bit of an anomaly among sandbox games in that it doesn’t really have a built in creative mode. So what we’ve done is rented a server and with the help of some very handy mods customized our own creative mode. This way instead of showing you one build every two weeks or so we can show you two builds a week. So in conclusion, just because the game is called ark survival evolved, that doesn’t mean that surviving is all there is to the game. That’s the beauty of sandbox games, they’re only as limited as your creativity and your ambition. So we’ll exhibit both and see who can keep up

In the event that it isn't self evident, the point made in that video is that there is a trend of dumbing things down to the lowest common denominator, and it is the most popular trend of the Ark community in media format. So I switched from teaching the most advanced builds ever done in ark by anyone, to just doing them without the teaching part so that people might just get inspired and create something of their own, instead of building the exact same thing over and again they may learn to use the parts they SAW by being interested enough to find the WILL to learn.

And things are feeling a lot better for me now (and working better, too): Because I stopped doing what doesn't work. People don't want to learn Ark, and if you're looking to teach you will find a very small audience awaits you, contrary to what people may say about themselves. You'll find more gratification  in making them WANT to learn. Do something crazy and just stop telling them how you did it every 5 seconds: Take the definition of "possible" and throw it out the window. Because the best way to teach someone something, is to give them their own desire to learn it: not train them to snap objects step by step so that all they ever do is that again and again, or tell them how you prefer to tame a specific dino so that they always approach it the same exact way even when context dictates that a usually good approach is suddenly a bad one, lacking flexibility or ingenuity.

if you actually have something inspiring to show the world, don't take questions: Make statements.

I used to do what you do. It isn't gratifying. It is demeaning. And hopefully, I can help you realize that there are far more gratifying and rewarding routes than being errand boy to people who, had they wished to learn what you have to tell, probably would have had the motivation to learn it themselves just as you did before them. Find something never done before, use that as your proving grounds. Not a Q&A where the first viewer to respond asks "how many flowers does it take to tame a giga?" because he isn't there to learn anything but just to see how far gillible you'll be in responding to him and taking the time to try and teach him for his amusement.

TLDR: If they wanted to learn, they'd do the same as the rest of us and find out from their own desire to learn. Save yourself the trouble and do something uniquely you.