The Conversation 16: Interview with Gabe and Jason

[Hectic Glenn]

Hello all, I return from my break, apologies for bringing this 2 days later than sent to us! (thanks Arthur)[br]The Conversation is a techie video podcast who this week brought Gabe Newell and Jason Mitchell on to talk about Steam for the Mac, embracing customers and modders, building cross-platform games, release schedules, and how Valve is approaching developing games for the Mac community.[br]You can watch the whole episode here which also features John Siracusa of Ars Technica.

 

[ríomhaire]

Is there any transcript for the video?

 

[Sliver]

http://5by5.tv/transcripts/conversation/2010/conversation-ep16.txt?1274290606

Not sure how full it is though.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I've listened to about three quarters of it and the major topic they hit on is that the mac versions of Valve games have been way more stable than their PC versions. They're not entirely sure why though. Interesting stats though.

 

[hool10]

Was it my imagination or was the first Q "what is Steam"? Gabe then goes off on a completely weird thing about plastic and sheet metal and something about graphics all the while looking nervous wringing his hands. Then a Valve employee is like :| next to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

 

[PimpinPenguin]

I've listened to about three quarters of it and the major topic they hit on is that the mac versions of Valve games have been way more stable than their PC versions. They're not entirely sure why though. Interesting stats though.

I supposed it's because they fixed quite a few of the issues that plagued the older Source engine such as the looping sound crash and stuttering in the new version. The new Source engine is way more stable.

 

[Dekstar]

I found all of the guys there quite incomprehesible for most of it. Sorry Gabe.

Interesting stuff though, once they got into the meat of it.

 

[Surrogate]

Was it my imagination or was the first Q "what is Steam"? Gabe then goes off on a completely weird thing about plastic and sheet metal and something about graphics all the while looking nervous wringing his hands. Then a Valve employee is like :| next to him.

Actually he did answer. But I think that the answer was expected to be a simple explanation of Steam as in its a distribution system. Instead he goes in to very high detail, explains the progress of the industry since the beginning, the advent, effects and future of the Internet, the success and future of platforms and a plethora of other things. In essence, he says that Steam is a distribution system that they believe have the best chance at future success.

So not a stupid answer. But on a level that is very hard to follow. He continues to talk like that. Now I heard it all through, and it was all interesting. But he is a hard man to understand, because he seems to go in too much depth about everything.

I liked that he was lured into talking about the PS3. He managed to steer clear of his real opinion, because as we know, he hate that platform. But in general, it just seems he dislikes closed platforms of any kind, and indirectly bashes Xbox Live. He view all open platforms (PC, Mac, Linux, you name it) as the future, and believe things like Xbox Live will die because they are too inflexible to evolve. (And apparently he really like World of Warcraft, albeit he talks only about its effect on the market, not the genre nor gameplay)

 

[-smash-]

Gabe giving his super detailed answers, as usual.

Good interview relating to Steam & Mac.

 

[Shinobi]

Did they happen to talk about how they plan to catch up to other engines in regards to toolset? Or if they even plan to?