I loved the beginning, the art style, the Myst vibes, discovering new areas and a specific “WTF” moment.

But I really didn’t understand the need of piling up similar puzzles with minimal variation.

You could have slashed 2/3 of the puzzles and the game would have been tighter and more satisfying imho.

Brevity is be the soul of wit (not of the Witness).

Reading that is a “500 hours game” instantly drains any interest I might have for Order of the Sinking Star, heck, there are not many pleasant activities I can think of I would like to do for 500 hours.

If you are convinced that AI content is inferior and less engaging to human-generated one (and I fully agree with that) then simply enforcing that rule without advertising it should already be effective.

Uh, what is your positive comparison point?

I have been using MS apps since MS-DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 (including doozies like Windows Millennium and Vista) and Teams and W11 are some of most stable, "it just works" pieces of software coming from them I can think of...

I agree, as my time is much more valuable than money.

"You could say that you prefer to do something else during that time and would happily pay to free it up."

Correct, it is applicable to just about everything you pay money for.

As soon as I received them and realized they expire this year, I switched to a $20 membership (billing cycle starts tomorrow), assuming you don't.

After consuming them, I will decide to whom subscribe next.

I definitely don't think they will disappear, or the current dynamics will change substantially, only their scale will.

As someone that is not artistically inclined, I have the same chance of producing appealing art and assets with AI than I have with pre-AI tools (yes, I tried).

But for people that ARE artistically inclined, skilled at using composition, color palettes, have strong fundamentals, etc... AI will be just another tool in their belt, and if they are able to integrate it with their own sensibilities and existing tools, there is little reason to think they won't be able to come up with art that it at least as compelling as that created with "old" tools, especially as now it is increasingly possible to exert a level of control on what is being generated.

Tools available to digital artists have evolved from having to paint pixel by pixel in the 80s to advanced layer and filter editing in photoshop (not to mention all the advanced tools available for 3D), this is "just" another evolution.

And yes, regardless of that, the market will be flooded by AI-generated slop, as the barriers of entry have lowered significantly; but the market was oversaturated already, and low-effort and asset flip games were a large part of daily releases.

Users still reward appealing, high-effort games, and they will likely keep doing so; the top of the iceberg will remain the same, and the ignored, forgotten bottom, augmented by the slop releases, will just get 10 times bigger.

Even if you spend just 10 minutes of it, I would say $0.50 it's not a bad deal.

I keep it at my parents’ house and I maybe use it 3/4 times per year, but it’s enough for my needs when I’m visiting and it feels wasteful to throw it away or store it for good. I fully understand that it is a 14yo machine and it is unreasonable for a company to support old hardware indefinitely, but still, it does feel like a waste.

For most people posting on HN, I would guess, money would not be even in the top-3 of reasons.

If I were a vegan/vegetarian for ethical or religious reasons I don’t think I would want food that reminds me of meat.

As an occasional meat eater that also enjoys the many natural options for plant-based protein, why would I want something that replicates taste/texture of something I can already eat?

Public opinion can change very quickly, and it usually it does not need to change significantly to have a big impact (see Brexit).

40 years ago public opinion was heavily influenced by the Chernobyl disaster, the last major nuclear accident (Fukushima) happened 15 years ago and it is quite far from memory.

Much more pressing matters today are energy costs and independence, so I expect a new referendum would have at the very least a much closer outcome.

Jokes asides, @simonw any plan to include a 3D model version (make a 3D model of a Pelican riding a bicycle in Blender)?

Given that Astra seems to have improved a lot in 3D modeling capabilities (and that matches my experience) I'm actually quite interested to see if/when other models catch up and how they stack against it.

Or if anyone knows what would be a useful existing benchmark for that skill.

Most of those might be not as good as fan translations from dedicated people with good knowledge of English and the original language (especially for very context-dependent languages like Japanese) but they are definitely good enough to follow the story and play through the game.

A more apples-to-apples comparison would be with API cost in OpenRouter at the same tok/s rate for the same models that you can run locally, maybe.

I listened to "Thinking fast and slow" recently and I was surprised how closely in behavior a LLM approaches the "System One" as defined there.

I approve of the clever branding!

I believe you refer to the "Ultra" mode that does what you say and it is also mentioned in the blog post, but I don't think the two modes are related.