Gabe Newell Interview (Steam Box) Jan 8, 2013

[Rosey]

clicky

> Windows 8 was like this giant sadness.
> We don’t want to waste people’s money by just throwing in a touch pad. Once we understand what the role is of multitouch in these kind of applications then it’s easy to say you can use your phone for it.
> The internet is super smart. If you do something that is cool, that's actually worth people's time, then they'll adopt it. If you do something that's not cool and sucks, you can spend as many marketing dollars as you want, [they] just won't.

~gaben

thoughts?

[Hatred]

windows 8 being a re-re-re-re-re-re-hash of all the previous OS's not worth the time or money ... they should start from the ground up and give us something new ... not just putting a pretty dress on a turd ...

ability to use touch on valve im guessing was what the question is ? does anyone remember mouses where you move the ball with your thumb ... prolly be like that ... or like using a touchpad ... crap

and the last point ... well its true ... games these days for the most part are crap ... its all lets attract ppl with graphics and put half the effort into the game itself ... i still to this day rather games like super metroid and ogre battle and suikoden ... why cause the story is immersive even if the graphics arnt the best they had origonal story and concept and gameplay that was of the best ... they had tonnes of hidden stuff and puzzels and stuff ... with all the important factors missing they cant be supprized when ppl DL a hacked copy test it and are happy they didnt spend there money on it ... like RE5 and D3 and SC2 and and and i could go on ... but i'll spare you ... take nintendo consols for example ... nintendo made snes instead of giving you the same 2D stuff on the 64 they added new possibilities with 3D and analog ... though the controller shape sucked ... then they came out with game cube ... not a bad system except they added loading cause of disks and then gave you the same old shit ... it bombed bad ... they got there shit together and came out with the Wii a completly different exp than before tonnes of great games and playablity ...... games you dont need to invest your life in to have alot of fun ... now lets look at x-box ... it came out and rocked the world with many amazing games and new titles ... then the 360 ... everyone expected it to be as incredible as when the origonal came out ... but it wasnt ... not even close ... barly better graphics and same old shit with a new price tag .... and Playstation first was the best ... so many games i could play through over and over cause of the factors i mentioned before ... PS2 came out and expanded on that poorly ... then PS3 came out around the time of x-box 360 and was almost crushed by it too ... even scrapped the idea of a new system till ... everyone realized x-box was crap and they boomed big time ... blu ray, a nice interface and no subscripion required and considerably better graphicslots of title re-hashes but they were good enough to buy ...

where did all the imagination go ffs ... whats next to look forward too ? nothing i can see im a builder not a thinker lulz

[Rosey]

windows 8 being a re-re-re-re-re-re-hash of all the previous OS's not worth the time or money ... they should start from the ground up and give us something new ... not just putting a pretty dress on a turd ...

ability to use touch on valve im guessing was what the question is ? does anyone remember mouses where you move the ball with your thumb ... prolly be like that ... or like using a touchpad ... crap

and the last point ... well its true ... games these days for the most part are crap ... its all lets attract ppl with graphics and put half the effort into the game itself ... i still to this day rather games like super metroid and ogre battle and suikoden ... why cause the story is immersive even if the graphics arnt the best they had origonal story and concept and gameplay that was of the best ... they had tonnes of hidden stuff and puzzels and stuff ... with all the important factors missing they cant be supprized when ppl DL a hacked copy test it and are happy they didnt spend there money on it ... like RE5 and D3 and SC2 and and and i could go on ... but i'll spare you ... take nintendo consols for example ... nintendo made snes instead of giving you the same 2D stuff on the 64 they added new possibilities with 3D and analog ... though the controller shape sucked ... then they came out with game cube ... not a bad system except they added loading cause of disks and then gave you the same old shit ... it bombed bad ... they got there shit together and came out with the Wii a completly different exp than before tonnes of great games and playablity ...... games you dont need to invest your life in to have alot of fun ... now lets look at x-box ... it came out and rocked the world with many amazing games and new titles ... then the 360 ... everyone expected it to be as incredible as when the origonal came out ... but it wasnt ... not even close ... barly better graphics and same old shit with a new price tag .... and Playstation first was the best ... so many games i could play through over and over cause of the factors i mentioned before ... PS2 came out and expanded on that poorly ... then PS3 came out around the time of x-box 360 and was almost crushed by it too ... even scrapped the idea of a new system till ... everyone realized x-box was crap and they boomed big time ... blu ray, a nice interface and no subscripion required and considerably better graphicslots of title re-hashes but they were good enough to buy ...

where did all the imagination go ffs ... whats next to look forward too ? nothing i can see im a builder not a thinker lulz

This was much harder to read than it was to understand.

Nostalgic rambling doesn't have much to do with the interview

[Beartato]

windows 8 being a re-re-re-re-re-re-hash of all the previous OS's not worth the time or money ... they should start from the ground up and give us something new ... not just putting a pretty dress on a turd ...

I haven't used much of Win8, but it looks to me far from a dressed up rehash. It's pretty clear that Win8 is heading in a totally different direction than its predecessors. Decades of previous versions were made that could function both as home and as work computers, but now they are aiming for an OS that is primarily casual. Some of the main changes include interoperability with tablets and smartphones and probably a bunch of other peripherals (ike A/V systems, home control/security, probably smart grid appliances in the near future, etc).

From a development standpoint, Win8 is also drastically different. MS is looking at creating what is essentially an app marketplace for your PC. There is a lot of controversy surrounding this; Notch, the developer behind Minecraft, illuminated one such qualm with this a few months back. I aso hear that all of this will be affecting what programming languages developers will choose when developing for Win8. I hear it's going to push things toward "less powerful languages" like JavaScript (which is generally just meant for websites, but is rather favored for developing apps).

Ultimately, this follows a pretty typical MS game plan: Release a drastically different OS and then follow it up with a similar OS with most of the major problems ironed out. Consider the last four major PC OS iterations from MS: WinME --> WinXP and Vista --> Win7. This new OS is likely just a public Win9 beta in essence.

and the last point ... well its true ... games these days for the most part are crap ... its all lets attract ppl with graphics and put half the effort into the game itself ... i still to this day rather games like super metroid and ogre battle and suikoden ... why cause the story is immersive even if the graphics arnt the best they had origonal story and concept and gameplay that was of the best ... they had tonnes of hidden stuff and puzzels and stuff ... with all the important factors missing they cant be supprized when ppl DL a hacked copy test it and are happy they didnt spend there money on it ... like RE5 and D3 and SC2 and and and i could go on ... but i'll spare you ... take nintendo consols for example ... nintendo made snes instead of giving you the same 2D stuff on the 64 they added new possibilities with 3D and analog ... though the controller shape sucked ... then they came out with game cube ... not a bad system except they added loading cause of disks and then gave you the same old shit ... it bombed bad ... they got there shit together and came out with the Wii a completly different exp than before tonnes of great games and playablity ...... games you dont need to invest your life in to have alot of fun ... now lets look at x-box ... it came out and rocked the world with many amazing games and new titles ... then the 360 ... everyone expected it to be as incredible as when the origonal came out ... but it wasnt ... not even close ... barly better graphics and same old shit with a new price tag .... and Playstation first was the best ... so many games i could play through over and over cause of the factors i mentioned before ... PS2 came out and expanded on that poorly ... then PS3 came out around the time of x-box 360 and was almost crushed by it too ... even scrapped the idea of a new system till ... everyone realized x-box was crap and they boomed big time ... blu ray, a nice interface and no subscripion required and considerably better graphicslots of title re-hashes but they were good enough to buy ...

where did all the imagination go ffs ... whats next to look forward too ? nothing i can see im a builder not a thinker lulz

I'll admit now I stopped reading that about halfway through, but only because it was pretty incoherent.

If you don't think there are games that create a full and immersive story then you are simply missing out on those that do. What about Borderlands? The amount of work that went into the design and writing of that game is incredible. And then you have Skyrim. Did you forget that one? And then there's the Mass Effect Series, Bioshock, Farcry, Dead Space, erc. (Sorry if my examples are a bit dated; I'm not so big on gaming as I once was. Plus, I fixate way more on game play than I used to.)

And that brings me to another point: Technologies have allowed for developers to discover new possibilities for games. There are now tons of games that try to create immersive game play using highly realistic graphics and audio because it simply is possible today. If this could have been done on the NES, you bet your ass there would have been a slew of realistic shooters back then instead of games that had to create an engrossing alternate reality because the graphics and audio were crude (but permissible by their time period's standards). And even then, not every game is trying to exploit tech for its ability to create words that take a player in by creating a different reality. There are a ton of games that use advances in CPU power to create entire worlds from simple seeds, like Dwarf Fortress (yeah, just look to this title if you think there is something wrong with game development today; this is one of the most amazing games made to date), Minecraft, Terraria, etc. And these games rely on being nothing more than a framework for players to create their own adventures and stories. They create an enormous amount of possibilities but absolutely no goal so that the player can create it all him/herself. And similar to that is the realm of online gaming, which is heavily community driven (e.g., TF2, duh).

So ultimately, I would say that games are not worse than they had been before; they are simply different. If you want to compare whatever appealed to the lowest common denominator now and twenty years ago, you certainly can say that it was better then now, but that's not a fair assessment because the amount and diversity of games available today is ridiculously larger than it was decades ago. So why bother creating the strawman argument of "Legend of Zelda" vs. "Call of Duty 12: Now With Microtransactions Edition" when there are things like Faster than Light and Torchlight II coming out as well?

Every time you want to say that something is worse than it was twenty years ago, just consider that there is probably someone who already thought "I believe that the feel and vibe of that thing [game/movie/TV/whatever] I liked twenty years ago is missing from the current things coming out; I'll try to recapture it in a modern version of that thing I remember" and did it. So just go out there and look for that new old thing.

[Shotgunbob]

windows 8 being a re-re-re-re-re-re-hash of all the previous OS's not worth the time or money ... they should start from the ground up and give us something new ... not just putting a pretty dress on a turd ...

Were you referring to Windows 7 as a turd or as Windows 8 as a turd?

Windows 7 is perfectly fine and is one of the best Windows Operating Systems to date. 8 however was basically touchpad support tacked onto 7.

[CaptainEspion]

I use Windows 8 myself, and I just don't understand all of the negative hooplah.

For me at least, my FPS in certain games has increased by a TON ever since I installed Windows 8. The performance aspect of the OS is incredible.

It may be different, but it surely isn't a bad thing.

[Fencerboy]

People who upgraded from Windows 7 tend to dislike Windows 8 because, although better, it's not a huge step up.
Those who switch from earlier OSs really love it.

[CaptainEspion]

People who upgraded from Windows 7 tend to dislike Windows 8 because, although better, it's not a huge step up.
Those who switch from earlier OSs really love it.

I upgraded from Windows 7 myself. I just enjoy change sometimes, ya know?