Gabe Newell: On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions, and the Future of Corporations

What Hacker News said

Recommends pillowpants2 · 2015-01 · on “Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece”

For those interested, here is a really interesting video of Gabe Newell at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs talking about some of the in-game economic problems Valve has faced in the past few years. I think he briefly mentions Yanis somewhere in the middle of the video. [this video]

Recommends ilrwbwrkhv · 2024-08 · on “Five Most Productive Years: What Happened and What's Next”

So the first thing is the meta learning. Looking at companies like Valve and Wolfram, they provide a template of another way of running companies which seem to consistently produce the best kind of software and incredible wealth for all those involved. The two things you look for when running a software company. Next, Stephen livestreams his day to day as a CEO. This is so significant. I know the HN trope which dang warned about earlier, but I actually love it. Imagine if you could get detailed logs about how Steve Jobs lived his life. Not from books others write about him and make up fake stuff to make it sell more, but straight from the horse's mouth as they say. That is what his meticulou

Recommends petterroea · 2025-12 · on “Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm”

For an understanding of what Valve are doing, here is a 1 hour talk by Gabe Newell (CEO): Gabe Newell: On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions, and the Future of Corporations [this video] TL;DR: * The most skilled workers are the most undervalued * Make products to serve the customer * Management is a skill, not a career path * The only people they consider themselves to be unable to compete with are their customers, so enabling the customer to produce better content in their ecosystem is the most efficient way of producing things.

Cites danbolt · 2020-03 · on “Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield on 35 years of making games”

Agreed! I think it kind of goes to show that a game often needs a nice cocktail of interesting game state changes (eg: "mechanics") mixed with nice feelings. Audiences vary in how they like the two (eg: Chess compared to Mario Kart), but the right fit is really important to a successful product. Valve had a nice way of describing "player acknowledgement" [1][2] for cosmetic things like bullet holes or lighting affecting our lizard brains. On the other hand, a close friend of mine really enjoys the "Star Wars: Rebellion" board game. [3] The decisions and mechanics gives the sense of excitement he feels when he watches a Star Wars movie. I don't blame Garfield for making the kinds of games he