Gabe Newell: Valve - The Games

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**SPEAKER_3** (1:07)
Welcome to The Nerdist Podcast number 306 and also 307 Yes, a matching pair of podcasts being released on the same day.
Unprecedented on The Nerdist Podcast. I will explain all of it now to give it some context. I apologize, it's gonna be a little long-winded, but it will sort of explain what's going on and what this is, because this was a very special two-part episode, an accidental two-part episode of The Nerdist Podcast. But if you don't know what Valve is, I'm sure you do if you're listening to this, but if you don't, Gabe Newell, who is basically the papal father of gaming, has a company called Valve, and Valve makes games like Dota and Portal and Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Ted 2 and Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike.
And it's an amazing, amazing company that operates very uniquely and also has an incredible relationship with its fans.
And so a friend of mine works at Valve. Her name is Karen Prel. She is an animator and happens to animate Wheatley.
And also, just as a side note, is the puppeteer behind Red Fraggle and always has been. So the person who is Red Fraggle also made Wheatley, which is kind of a fun little factoid. But anyway, she said, hey, if you're ever up in Washington, let us know. And I'd love to give you a tour of Valve. And I was like, Karen, I would love to let you do that. So last year for Chloe's birthday, I thought, oh, this is gonna be really fun. Let's go up to Valve for your birthday. I know we're spoiled nerds. I word spoiled bastard nerds, but I want you to know one thing. I get to do a lot of cool stuff and I appreciate the fuck out of it. The reason that I speak in superlatives all the time and I think that everything's amazing and everything's incredible and everything's fascinating is because it fucking is.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:53)
So get over that.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:55)
I love that I get to do this stuff and you would too. So this was a tremendous honor that we got to go up to Valve. So we go up there and Karen gives us a tour of the offices, which is incredible. And we get to have lunch with the guys who wrote the script for Portal and Portal 2, Jay Pickerton and Eric Walpaw, who actually happened to be Nerdist Podcast listeners. Hello, gentlemen. And then, you know, right before we went up there, I said to my friend, Karen, hey, by the way, if Gabe Newell wanted to be on a podcast, I would accept that.
And cut to the end of the tour, we get shuffled into a conference room and sit down with Gabe and himself and then talk to him for about an hour and 20 minutes. And he was fucking awesome.
Awesome.
Huge Doctor Who fan. Just a really sweet guy, good guy, one of the smartest people he'll ever talk to. And as soon as we were done, we shook hands and took a picture and we were driving to the airport and I was kind of punching myself in the arm like, good job, you really pulled one off today. And then sort of stopped mid sentence and realized, oh fuck, we barely talked about games.
Because Valve as a company is so incredibly fascinating. If you want to find it online, you should look at Valve's employee handbook. It's incredible. It's a very unique organizational structure that they have at the company. But basically it's a straight line. No one outranks anyone else. And then Gabe kind of sticks above everyone else. But in general, the company just keeps themselves in check as human beings. No one has any titles. And it works. They're not just one of the greatest gaming companies in the world, but one of the greatest companies in the world. And you see it with the way they interact, like I said, with their fans and then with the product that they make.