Gabe Newell's Top 10 Rules For Success

The magic happens when we're all on the same page collaborating and building something together. There's always this temptation to assume that the way things are today is the way things are going to be. We're always sort of experimenting. The International itself was an experiment. Approach the problem of, "If I'm a fan and I hear about this, this gets me really fired up and excited." The rate of innovation is not remaining constant. It's not like we're plateauing. In just about every dimension, innovation's increasing. We thrive on the feedback we receive. We We get better when we know what people think, both positive and negative.

If you have a limited amount of time, that's the scarcest resource we have.

There wasn't some magic pioneer fairy who hit us on the head and allowed us to do pioneering work. But that's how we evolve, usually by people deciding that I have a bad idea.

He's the co-founder and managing director of the video game company Valve. He spent 13 years working for Microsoft, ultimately becoming a Microsoft millionaire. According to Forbes magazine, he has a net worth of $2.2 billion. He's Gabe Newell, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

You're testing your ideas, you're stimulating each other. That's what makes us successful. It's not some flash of brilliance by somebody who then codes 24 hours a day for 3 weeks. It's what happens— the magic happens when we're all on the same page collaborating and building something together. There's always this temptation to assume that the way things are today is the way things are going to be, and having been through this long enough in the games industry, I think I and everyone at Valve know that, you know, that you're only as successful as what you've done lately. So, you know, the idea that Steam is somehow the anything, the answer answer to digital distribution, I think ignores the fact that, you know, every 2 or 3 years something is going to change dramatically. It's like along comes the Wii and that overthrows a bunch of ideas. Along comes social gaming, you know, and that throws over a bunch of ideas about what things are like. You know, I think Steam is the same way. It's like if you stand still and if you're not looking to the future and doing the things that you need to be valuable in the future to customers and partners, you're going to get left behind really rapidly. So that's what we focus in on, is what do we need to do next? What are the tools and services and features and capabilities to make gamers happy and other software developers happy? We look at all of our games and evaluate them in terms of what we think would be best for the community. You know, we're always sort of experimenting. The International itself was an experiment. You know, Counter-Strike was an experiment all the way back at the beginning where we were like, maybe we can do an online-only game. So we're always sort of looking for, you know, each game will sort of leapfrog the other. Then what we learn goes back to all of our other games. Of course, your first game was Half-Life, which was very successful. What was the key to that? I think part of the reason that the community responded to it is we approached the game like fans, right? We wanted to It seemed like people were looking at what id had been creating with Doom and Quake and had picked out some of the least interesting details of those games to build upon. If a double-barreled shotgun was better than a four-barreled— if a double-barreled shotgun was good, a four-barreled shotgun was better. And what we had thought when we were playing the game was, you know, there was so much atmosphere and so much environmental storytelling that was going on in these games, you know, that they sort of opened the door to this new way, this new kind of entertainment, and that, that viewing it as just a shooting gallery, which is what all of the Doom copies and later Quake copies seem to be, you know, extracting from the success of Doom and Quake, was missing the whole point of what we as fans had seen that had gotten us really excited, you know. And so that's what the impulse was behind our games, is to take those pieces of, as fans, that we had really loved about those games and try to amplify that and build on that as much as we could. And I think it turned out that we were on the right track, that, you know, approaching it that way with sort of the fans' enthusiasm and sensibilities about what was compelling about and what the opportunities were to push even further, that ended up really working in our favor. And I think that trying to think like a fan is a super valuable thing to any game developer. Don't think about it in terms of constraints or budgets or what, you know, management somewhere is thinking, but approach the problem of, if I'm a fan and I hear about this, this gets me really fired up and excited. That's, you know, that's a valuable tool in approaching this business. I get a lot of questions from other people who run companies about organizations. I think that if you— the important thing that you do is about measurability and repeatability, then hierarchical organizations are appropriate. But that's not what is happening in our industry. The rate of innovation is not remaining constant. It's not like we're plateauing. In just about every dimension, innovation is increasing. And the most effective organizations are those that can self-organize and that are relatively— that are extremely flat. And that the question when you're trying to think about how your company is organized or how you want it to grow is how you can deliver— help people deliver— smart and creative people create the most value and deliver it as efficiently as possible to your customers. The decision to break into episodes wasn't really driven by the story requirements. The story sort of ended up being fit into 3 buckets. Typically in any of these larger arcs, it's not too surprising that you can think of them as, as 3 acts. I mean, that's a very traditional Hollywood-esque approach to storytelling. The decision to go with episodics was more driven out of the experience we had working on Half-Life 2, where we really weren't able to give anything to our customers for like a 5-year period. And that was very hard on us as, as game developers, because we thrive on the feedback we receive. We, we, we get better when we know what people think, both positive and negative. And so with episodic, it really allowed us to tighten that loop up enormously. There are lots of benefits in terms of managing scale, in terms of reacting to what's happening on the hardware side, but one of the biggest reasons is simply so we don't get into a situation where we have to wait 5 years before hearing from the people who play our games about what worked and what we need to do better.

If you have a limited amount of time, that's the scarcest resource we have. Every decision you make with your time is a vote about what the company's priorities should be. So the question you should ask as a programmer is, what's the best way for me to spend my time right now that creates value for our customers?

There wasn't some magic pioneer fairy who hit us on the head and allowed us to do pioneering work. It's really a consequence of a bunch of other decisions you make along the way, how your games are being funded, uh, how you select your colleagues, uh, how you organize your teams are really the things that are going to allow you to do pioneering work. Um, in our case, we've designed the company in such a way that we really not only give everyone who works there the opportunity, but they all have the expectation that they're going to be doing original and creative work. I am a big believer in one person, one office. Um, DeMarco's Peopleware, if anybody's read that. You know, I sort of treat that as a Bible. And so I was like, I hated cubicles, like, with a passion and a vengeance. It's like, you know, they grew out of this Data General philosophy of, if you're screwing your employees, you're probably doing something right. And so I was like, okay, everybody always has their own office. And You know, and you've got a do not disturb button on your phone, and you have a door you can close, and you can decorate your office however you want. And people kept sneaking into other people's offices, and then they started tearing doors down. So people— everybody had their own office, but nobody was ever in it, right? So they were all congregating in our conference rooms, and so we had all these empty offices and all these, uh, clustered, uh, clusters of people in conference rooms, and You know, that's when I realized, you know, they were making the right decision, right? They were deciding that the— there were benefits to being in closer proximity to other people and that Gabe's rigid adherence to one person, one office was actually hurting their productivity. So even, you know, after being hit on the head long enough, I realized that everybody else was making a decision that was correct for them. And so now we just say everybody designs their own office space. So our largest single room right now has about 80 people in it. I share an office with 2 other people, but each person, you know, has to— that's one of the things that you think about. You think about how you communicate with other people. You think about what's an optimal optical optimal work environment for the goals that you have. Desks are all on wheels. We only have 2 contact points with the floor, so you can pack up and join a different group of people in about 15 minutes. Some people are working on the design of— if anybody's done paired programming, there's some people who are trying to build a desk that's more optimal for paired programming and giving you a shared thing. And they have to make the decision whether it's more worth their time to work on something like that than it is to do the work that they already are. So we just sort of said, okay, each person has to make their own decisions about what they work on, who they're working with, what are the tools they need, and what, you know, what their offices ought to look like. But that's how we evolve, usually by people deciding that I have a bad idea. And this wonderful mask.

Alright, thanks, Gabe. Thanks.

Oh, can I get a picture with you as well? Sure. Put on the mask. Put on the mask. I'll put on the mask.

Alright.

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Thank you so much for watching. I made this video because Kinaru Helio asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Gabe Newell's top 10 rules meant the most to you, had the biggest impact on your life? Leave it in the comments and I'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.