Friday, September 1, 2017

Taunt (x6)

Doing research on procedurally generated content creation- perhaps after yesterday's experiment with the 36 dramatic situations, perhaps that's just coincidence. Either way, there are publishers and authors out there whose books are designed not to be read, but to sell copies. With that in mind maybe my wariness is justified, regarding cranking stories out as opposed to letting them percolate and build organically. Maybe I'd be able to take a scenario that preexists, into interesting places, quickly, but I'm incapable of putting out arbitrary content, wherein quality of work's an nonissue.

Not all procedurally generated, artificial content is depressing, though. That's what I really want to talk about. Not sure how much you'll get out of this if you don't play Hearthstone, but still probably a lot. Our humor reflex is stooped in absurdity, and absurd is absurd. Computers operate with no knowledge of context, a simple childlike innocence, and the end results are similar.

This guy procedurally generated Hearthstone cards, feeding the data (in this case Hearthstone cards) into a computer and having it anticipate future cards, like it's reading a pattern. Only the computer has no idea what Hearthstone is, or what it's doing. The results are, well...

I laughed so hard I almost pooped myself then died. I was crying. I'm not sure if it's the hardest I've laughed in my life (I can't recall quite how close I came to death laughing reading Hitchhiker's Guide for the first time, but it was pretty darn close;) it's probably only the second hardest I've laughed in my life, seeing as how I wasn't rolling around on the floor like the other time (though I didn't almost poop myself this time, so it might even out.) Even if it is only the second hardest I've laughed in my life- holy crap that's the second hardest I've laughed in my life.

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