Crash Course (general thread)

I had high expectations of the new series - it would be something to reclaim the people who watched the History, Government & Politics and Economics videos, but the first episode was rather disappointing. For some reason they decided to begin by telling us that Environmental Determinism is wrong, rather than waiting for it to come up naturally. Even when the Economics series touched on Social Darwinism and said it was "completely wrong" they didn't spend a whole video on it.

I can't understand why they chose this as the series première.

Now it appears that the series has been withdrawn.

Well, it is starting to seem that Crash Course in general has gone downhill over this year. The Games series already proved itself to handle the subject atrociously (I suspect from what you said you haven't watched it, which is good, it's not worth watching), so this tying into an overall decline of quality would not be a huge shock.

A shame. They used to be better, but nothing good is guaranteed to last forever.

What's up with the games series? (Haven't seen it)

edited 28th Oct '16 10:14:01 AM by Ghilz

It's hugely indecisive about what the specific subject is. It's gone back and forth between being a history of gaming in general, a history of console video gaming, an analysis of modern game design and its effects, and back around again.

As a result of that, when it does focus in on history, it doesn't do so in chronological order. The complex interplay of ideas and approaches borrowed and shared between different developers (especially in video games, with technology added to that mix) means that talking about gaming in anything but some form of rough chronological order results in something that has all the depth of a puddle.

It's honestly an insult to any serious study of gaming at this point.

edited 28th Oct '16 10:38:09 AM by TotemicHero

Sorry for the double post, but on further thought, given that 1) a general thread for Crash Course doesn't exist yet, 2) we want threads to stay on topic, and 3) the topic of this thread is apparently canned at this point, I'm just going to holler to have this thread turned into said general thread.

Give him credit for taking responsibility for their mistakes. Good on him.

edited 31st Oct '16 2:50:40 PM by Odd1

I suspect a great many others in his position would have kept on going anyway and said it was the viewers' fault if they didn't like it.

I'd be more impressed if he hadn't made his "intellectual rigor" claim, considering the problems with the games videos I noted above.

Because let's be honest, the typical audience for a geography video is not going be the same for that of a games video. Relying on any Youtube audience to give you ample accurate feedback about it is already somewhat dicey, and becomes much more so when it's a subject that has an unfortunate habit of drawing less-than-intelligent discussion.

Or, more plainly, just because the majority of people aren't complaining about a lack of "intellectual rigor", it doesn't mean there isn't such a lack.

Crash Course Literature discusses Nineteen Eighty-Four. I notice they refer to the "Labor Party". [1]

Part 1 coz you somehow linked to Part 2 only