GC08: New Gabe Newell Interview

[DigiQ8]

Videogaming247 had an interview the Valve's boss Gabe Newell to talk about Left 4 Dead, Episode Three ,peer-to-peer functionality, how Steam is planned to contain apps like Firefox, and how the Wii is awesome.

Functionality and services.



One of the things we’d like to do is to understand what types of applications people have on their PCs. For example, if a whole bunch of people are running Firefox, then make sure that’s one of the applications they can get through Steam.



There are community features that we want to continue to add. There’s peer-to-peer functionality: the community has this tremendous amount of bandwidth. There’s a whole bunch of content that they’re downloading right now, and being able to replicate that throughout the community using peer-to-peer would be a really good idea. What they need is a structured interface on top of that so they can find the content that everybody’s already downloading. Those are the kind of things we’re looking at.

Don't miss this interview, Click here.

[leib10]

Cool! Glad to know that Episode 3 is progressing. I also suppose this puts down the notion that Valve wants to sell itself.

[Barnz]

Wii spinoff, please.

[MuToiD_MaN]

Yeah I bet they're interested in doing P2P. Though I have to say, I've always gotten stellar download rates from them during any of these updates.

[highlander]

Damn, still no big ep3 news but ah well.

Nice read!

[V-Man339]

I think the 360?s a great platform for Left 4 Dead. The 360 players that come in and play the game are really happy with it. So yeah, I think we?re comfortable.

The difficulty comes in continuing to try to broaden how many different platforms we?re doing simultaneously. We?ll do better over time.

The big concern I have right now is our ability to provide updates. On the PC side, we?ve done as many as four updates in a day, and that?s great: we can respond very quickly. If Nvidia puts out a new graphics driver and it changes some way about how texture management works, then before our customers know there?s any issue then the problem has gone away.

Or we can do the Pyro updates, and the Medic updates [and so on]. On the consoles, they want us to charge money for them, because that?s in their model, and our model is very much more to grow the community by giving out free updates. That?s harder for us.


TOLDJA!

No. So, Doug was trying to be complimentary to EA Partners. Before we started working with EA, all we were hearing were horror stories from other developers about what it was like to work with EA, and our experiences with EA have been very positive.

For example - I’m not sure how many people are interested in these nitty gritty games business details - in all our contacts we have the right to audit partners, and whenever we do an audit it always turns out that whoever we’re working with hasn’t paid us all the money that they owe us. We just did an audit of EA, and for the first time in our 12-year history, they’d paid us everything they were supposed to.

You audited EA?

We audit everybody. All of our partners. It’s a part of doing business. The thing that’s unusual isn’t that we audited them, it’s unusual that they were totally squeaky clean and had fulfilled all of their obligations. It sounds sort of strange if I’m saying that to a gamer, but if I say that to another game developer they’re like, ‘You’re kidding.’ So we found them great to work with. And Doug’s comments about EA were like, ‘Hey, they’re great to work with, and we love working with them.’

Guys, the apoclypse is near.

[Joest]

Wii version of HL2, pl0x. Come on, they were able to put it on the Xbox (Yeah, I know it was horrible) and the Wii is more powerful than the Xbox.

I would love to smack the Combine around with me wildly swinging my Wiimote around while wielding the crowbar.

[Fiberawptic]

The Episode 3 thing was overstated in the title and stuff. But hey, i shouldn't complain, its the most info we've gotten on it, and im sure it will be great not just because its being developed by valve, but because Gabes an honest guy, he wouldnt say 'episode 3 will be the best' just to sell more copies... I think his harvard education has taught him that.

So this is very interesting stuff. Boycott microsoft and by all valve games on PC so you dont pay for the updates!

[hool10]

I would say there might be a teaser with L4D for Episode 3, or at the end of this year.

[<RJMC>]

team fortress2 for wii will be a very good idea

[Asuka]

They said they are holding off on info for Ep3 until Left4Dead comes out. Which only makes sense.

[Hectic Glenn]

Good read, the audit checks on EA coming back clean made me giggle, it's company relations, Valve keeping them sweet I'm sure.

The idea for the 'big release' and being apart of it is so true, the releases after that providing many more opportunities for big community releases is so effective, I had no idea it increased sales 20% each time though. It's amazing other companies don't recognise that.

Also, Nintendo would be clinically insane not to inject money into Valve to support production of a Wii title. Wouldn't be a hard sales pitch. "We made Half-life" "Deal"

[lefty]

mortiferus said: August 21st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
So that is where he hides his money… tucked into the rolls of fat around his neck and waist. Ingenious!

I really wanted to post a comment on this, something like "And you hide dicks in your ass" but I didn't want to register on that site.

[Barnz]

Originally Posted by lefty

I really wanted to post a comment on this, something like "And you hide dicks in your ass" but I didn't want to register on that site.

Done.

[dogboy73]

Originally Posted by leib10

Cool! Glad to know that Episode 3 is progressing. I also suppose this puts down the notion that Valve wants to sell itself.

I liked that bit - interviewer asks about EP3 & Doug Lombard just sits there shaking his head And then says, 'It's coming along well. I think it's going to be the best episode of the 3'. In all seriousness he's hardly like to say anything else is he. 'We've put it on the back burner for now until Left 4 dead is out the way. I think it's going to be about as good as the previous 2 episodes'.