Human Brain Cloud
From Kyle Gabler, one of the brains behind the Experimental Gameplay Project, comes an equally experimental massively multiplayer online word association "game", Human Brain Cloud. To play, all you have to do is read the word (or words) on top, then type in the first thing that pops in your head. Don't censor yourself, just think, then type. Human Brain Cloud collects associations made by players around the world and dumps them into an interactive database. It's a fascinating experiment that just so happens to be an addictive "game" to boot.
As you type words in the box, Human Brain Cloud maps out your associations on the right, displaying each phrase with the number of other people that formed the same connections. The leaderboard, accessible from the top of the screen, displays a handful of stats such as the most words submitted, users who are most "in tune" with the rest of the players, and the strongest connections so far. Click "view the cloud" to see a goo-based display of a word with its associated entries. Click one of the blobs to explore a new word to see what connections the rest of the world made.
To date, over 3 million associations have been submitted, connecting over 300,000 unique words and phrases by over 200,000 people. That's a lot of random human thinking. While it's far from fool-proof scientific, Human Brain Cloud is an interesting experiment that could yield some thought-provoking results. Plus, it's really fun to play around with. Play Human Brain Cloud.
You might also like to keep tabs on Kyle's latest efforts, as he has recently launched a brave new indie game studio based in San Francisco named 2D Boy.
Now that's nice.
Some kind of cpu acount memory error happend while I was submitting words.
... Wow, my responses...
"PENSIVELY"
pencil
"SEQUIN"
milkshake
"LOWCALORIE"
diet
"YUMYUM"
pie
"METHODICAL"
distasteful
...There need to be more "games" like this. I can't stop! Me and my brother used to play this by just saying words and pretend we were psychologists.
I can't play it...it says "This Account has exceeded it's CPU Quota" can anybody look into this and see if it works?
secret_player
"This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota"
Shame, and it was just starting to get interesting too.
Never mind, it worked after I posted the last comment I made, anyways there was one word that was rude. Don't want to mention it though.
secret_player
we broke the servers. Geez, I feel bad.
Crap. we broke it. I'm sure I was confusing some people out there too
Thanks for the post! Sorry the server gets kinda flaky in the afternoons. There are some interesting stats so far if you're curious..
jig!
Kyle
Viewing the cloud causes my game to crash; solutions? other than never viewing...
If I can't immediately think of something, should I just skip? Sometimes i sit there for a while just staring at the word because I know there's something on the tip of my brain, but...
Oh, this is just way too addictive. Plus, I get to correct people's spelling!
Eek! I think I just marked like twenty words as misspellings... I clicked it once and then it just started going through words like crazy until I clicked onto the cloud view. D:
Aside from that, this is really fun, but it's kind of sad to find out just how many names of songs, tv shows, actors and so on I can automatically complete.
NERDS:
Awesome
AIRHEADS:
Popular
LAKE:
Tanganyika
BEACH:
Crepidula fornicata
Oh dear. I'm beginning to see a trend.
I love this game. I still have Funny Farm in my favorites, which Brain Cloud kind of reminds me of.
Only played it for 5 minutes before "Jay is Games" came up as a word.
not bad tough..: ) but i find it grew a little boring after that...
Human brain cloud seems to be corrupted...
The site's down. Dangit, it looks fun.
I got to play for a minute, then the site broke again. This must be more popular then I thought.
look at how many 'humans' there are!!!
This is a great idea, but unfortunately it's already COMPLTELY spammed up by people who don't understand the concept, can't spell, or simply want to ruin it for others. Only about one in ten entries is worthwhile. I really hope the misspelling, not a word and junk marked items get deleted.
But I'll keep playing!
It's fun to look for "cycles" in the cloud:
Example: Tale -> Of Two Cities -> A Tale -> Story -> Tale.
search 'wayside' or 'katamari' and see im not the only one that likes them
this game scares me.
when i was listening to the beatles some words like "yoko & john", "mccartney", "hey jude" appeared.. and then i start listening to muse, and "super massive black hole", and "knights of cydonia" appeared..
O_O weird
These are some of mine:
you want to->shut up
my milkshake->just melted
kiss kiss->chocolate
edible egg->no duh
nanosecond->blink
ensnare->untangle
I see no pattern whatsoever in mine. lol.
Wow! Searching the cloud can have some really interesting results. I searched for "Voldemort" which was connected to things one would expect (Harry, Potter, Harry Potter, evil, You know who, He who must not be named, lord, etc.) But then I clicked on "He who must not be named" and the things connected to that were really surprising. Among the connections were God, Yog Sothoth, Satan, George Bush, and (most interestingly) Herostratus who I've learned was an aincient Greek who committed a crime so terrible that everyone was forbidden to speak his name. Amazing that someone would have that at the top of their mind!
Haha. Bungee -> Halo.
I am just flicking through words and flagging bad ones, its "sorta" fun and filters the site.
Under "Science" weird and wierd come up. I bet it's about 50/50 the number of people that spell it correctly.
I just got to do "you want to"! I typed "dance" for it
I saw the "bungie --> halo" thing too, got confused, looked into it, and found out that one of the makers of the Halo series is bungie. Hm who knew?
Yes I realize I have no life...lol
lol!! i just got 'gastrointestinal' 'incredibly bizarre' and 'chewy candy' XD
I just assoctated "scoot" to "around the cornor" because they are together in the song "bop to the top"
and I assoctated "zag" with "zip" and both of THEM are in "bop to the top"!
"zig zag zop, flop like a mop! scoot around the corner. move it to the groove 'till the music stops..."
I just made a new game, think of a word, then go to view the cloud and see how quickly you can find it by using obvious word association.
ok, twice i found a word twice. what's happening!
it's down
WAh! ok there is a very big error or (so it says) its getting some work done.
but its been getting work done for the last 2 months or something!
I NEED IT BACK!
This game is no longer available.
where did it go?
It disappeared from existence! D:
Sounds fun. It would be nice if I could, y'know, actually play it.
Update