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Well this is sure to be an interesting one and will no doubt spark up some comments - Zarathustra is an in-development point and click adventure that looks intriguing but the way it's made will raise some eyebrows.

I have to admit…it does look pretty good but it's made with AI tools. Which in many ways, opens a big can of worms. Not just AI giving a bit of a hand, but a lot of it was done thanks to AI. The developer, Tim Rachor, doesn't hide it either and states it clearly on the itch.io page that "Most of the Art was created with Dall E 3 and the voice over comes from https://elevenlabs.io/".

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The developer said only the first day in-game is available, and they will continue it if people show interest for them to carry it on. They say it's a "rather casual experience with no dead-ends or overly difficult puzzles".

Find it on the itch.io page.

What do you think to this one?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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27 comments
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hagabaka Nov 23, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Guppyevery new teknologi that comes along encounters this, imagine if farm workers had the internet to voice their dismay on back when tractors first appeared:

"built on the backs of real farm workers!"
"Look at all the nicks and dings in those tractor harvested potatoes!"
etc..

Still the farm workers found other employment, and the world kept turning.

And yeah the "AI" is coming for my job too as a programmer - it will either be a miserable failure or I'll find other employment. The world will keep on spinning. ;)
Believe it or not, the whole mechanized agriculture model is still controversial. Lot of juries are out about the net impact there, which is still creating slums, eroding soil, destroying rural communities and associated with overuse of chemicals to this day.
So that's not necessarily a reassuring analogy.
If you go down this line of argument, lots of juries can be out about the net impact of farming too, and maybe the existence of the human race, and life itself.
Purple Library Guy Nov 23, 2023
Quoting: hagabaka
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Guppyevery new teknologi that comes along encounters this, imagine if farm workers had the internet to voice their dismay on back when tractors first appeared:

"built on the backs of real farm workers!"
"Look at all the nicks and dings in those tractor harvested potatoes!"
etc..

Still the farm workers found other employment, and the world kept turning.

And yeah the "AI" is coming for my job too as a programmer - it will either be a miserable failure or I'll find other employment. The world will keep on spinning. ;)
Believe it or not, the whole mechanized agriculture model is still controversial. Lot of juries are out about the net impact there, which is still creating slums, eroding soil, destroying rural communities and associated with overuse of chemicals to this day.
So that's not necessarily a reassuring analogy.
If you go down this line of argument, lots of juries can be out about the net impact of farming too, and maybe the existence of the human race, and life itself.
Um, no? I think maybe you haven't read anything about the issues I'm talking about. They are real and substantive. It's not just a matter of philosophy. The issues are complicated, but not undecidable.

Wanting to think that every technology that has ever been invented is somehow inevitably going to see widespread use and so there is no point evaluating them, on the other hand, is a philosophical stance (well, at best), and a rather naive one. Many technologies just aren't as useful as they look. Others have unacceptable side effects and have been banned. Most countries had very stringent restrictions on human cloning before it was even possible, just because most of the potential uses are squicky.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 23 November 2023 at 8:00 am UTC
Guppy Nov 23, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Guppyevery new teknologi that comes along encounters this, imagine if farm workers had the internet to voice their dismay on back when tractors first appeared:

"built on the backs of real farm workers!"
"Look at all the nicks and dings in those tractor harvested potatoes!"
etc..

Still the farm workers found other employment, and the world kept turning.

And yeah the "AI" is coming for my job too as a programmer - it will either be a miserable failure or I'll find other employment. The world will keep on spinning. ;)
Believe it or not, the whole mechanized agriculture model is still controversial. Lot of juries are out about the net impact there, which is still creating slums, eroding soil, destroying rural communities and associated with overuse of chemicals to this day.
So that's not necessarily a reassuring analogy.

I'm sure mechanized farming has it's issues, as do cars (personal injuries, environmental impact, ...).

But be that as it may, that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about technology displacing workers, and said workers being upset about it.

From my point of view, most use cases currently is for art "AI" is for projects that would never exist if not for the technology. If at any point it stops being horribly bad it may cost some ( or even most ) artists their livelihood, and it will be inconvenient for them to find another income source - but they will.
Eike Nov 23, 2023
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Quoting: GuppyBut be that as it may, that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about technology displacing workers, and said workers being upset about it.

From my point of view, most use cases currently is for art "AI" is for projects that would never exist if not for the technology. If at any point it stops being horribly bad it may cost some ( or even most ) artists their livelihood, and it will be inconvenient for them to find another income source - but they will.

It seems you're not differentiating between physical work and making art. In my humble opinion, there's a huge difference. We've dreamt of machines doing the hard work and the humans having time for art or whatever they're pleased to do - not the other way around.
Nezchan Nov 23, 2023
Quoting: Guppy
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Guppyevery new teknologi that comes along encounters this, imagine if farm workers had the internet to voice their dismay on back when tractors first appeared:

"built on the backs of real farm workers!"
"Look at all the nicks and dings in those tractor harvested potatoes!"
etc..

Still the farm workers found other employment, and the world kept turning.

And yeah the "AI" is coming for my job too as a programmer - it will either be a miserable failure or I'll find other employment. The world will keep on spinning. ;)
Believe it or not, the whole mechanized agriculture model is still controversial. Lot of juries are out about the net impact there, which is still creating slums, eroding soil, destroying rural communities and associated with overuse of chemicals to this day.
So that's not necessarily a reassuring analogy.

I'm sure mechanized farming has it's issues, as do cars (personal injuries, environmental impact, ...).

But be that as it may, that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about technology displacing workers, and said workers being upset about it.

From my point of view, most use cases currently is for art "AI" is for projects that would never exist if not for the technology. If at any point it stops being horribly bad it may cost some ( or even most ) artists their livelihood, and it will be inconvenient for them to find another income source - but they will.

You haven't looked very hard. I've seen a bunch of newsmagazine sites that give bylines to Dall-E and Midjourney for illustration that normally would be done by actual artists. Products lables are also a big market in illustration that's vulnerable to the "cost savings" presented by AI.

And surely you didn't miss the huge actor and writer strikes that just happened this year, a big part of which ended up hinging on major studios wanting to extensively use AI to replace them?

Never mind small actors like the ones making this game. Toss them in the same bin as NFT games (although isn't it fun a lot of the same people promoting NFTs a while back are promoting AI stuff just as hard now). This is technology tailor made -- and I would guess deliberately so -- for corporations to abuse at scale.
Purple Library Guy Nov 23, 2023
Quoting: Guppy
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Guppyevery new teknologi that comes along encounters this, imagine if farm workers had the internet to voice their dismay on back when tractors first appeared:

"built on the backs of real farm workers!"
"Look at all the nicks and dings in those tractor harvested potatoes!"
etc..

Still the farm workers found other employment, and the world kept turning.

And yeah the "AI" is coming for my job too as a programmer - it will either be a miserable failure or I'll find other employment. The world will keep on spinning. ;)
Believe it or not, the whole mechanized agriculture model is still controversial. Lot of juries are out about the net impact there, which is still creating slums, eroding soil, destroying rural communities and associated with overuse of chemicals to this day.
So that's not necessarily a reassuring analogy.

I'm sure mechanized farming has it's issues, as do cars (personal injuries, environmental impact, ...).

But be that as it may, that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about technology displacing workers, and said workers being upset about it.

From my point of view, most use cases currently is for art "AI" is for projects that would never exist if not for the technology. If at any point it stops being horribly bad it may cost some ( or even most ) artists their livelihood, and it will be inconvenient for them to find another income source - but they will.
Again, you're talking as if the net benefit/loss to people overall is undecidable and beyond our ken, and it isn't. Use of a technology is just like any other policy, like say free trade or contrariwise tariffs and import substitution policies--human agency can have an impact on whether or how it happens and humans can decide whether it is on balance a good thing or something else should be done.

And, like with free trade, jobs lost to a technology may or may not be regained elsewhere. There is nothing eternal about the total amount of vaguely useful (or in our society's case, profitable) work per person needed to reproduce society--and while in the abstract I'm fine with a reduction in that figure, unfortunately the people in charge of our society have reasons to like significant unemployment, so such reductions are unlikely to turn up in the form of a shorter work week for all.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 23 November 2023 at 4:02 pm UTC
Milanium Nov 25, 2023
The pixel art hides it a bit, but it is still quite odd.
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