As an update to the story, this was confirmed by Gabe himself: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/gabe-newell-responds-to-fan-asking-about-bizarre-valve-throat-singing-story-3412684/
A fan then went straight to the source, emailing Newell to ask whether the story was real. In a reply shared online, sent from Newell’s Valve address, he provided more detail.
“Yeah, I had chatted with Paul Pena about it after I tried learning on my own,” he wrote. “I am entirely self taught and it shows.”
He added that he worked on the sygyt and kargyraa styles “and got to the point where I was really… annoying.”
Newell says he still hasn’t given it up entirely. “Every once in a while, I’ll pick it back up,” he wrote, adding that it takes a couple of weeks to condition his throat.
Pena was an American blues musician who taught himself Tuvan throat singing, later becoming the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Genghis Blues.
Remember when valve made games?
Who has made more games in the last decade: Rockstar or Valve?
Apparently the answer is Valve. Which says more about rockstar than anything about valve.
Valve have made games. It’s just not the same type of games that people that love them for their most famous titles.
Also, even though they made a blockbuster, single player, half life game recently, the majority of the HL fans were not able to play it, so we are still disappointed…
Jesus fucking christ, the last game that valve made with me as the audience in mind was fucking 15 years ago (Portal 2). (Half life 1 was releaed 13 years before that. )
Everything else is multiplayer or hardware bound.
Alyx ils amazing ans the Lab ils also great i really wish they added levels to those games. Especialy the archer and thé slingshot games.
I fucking bet they’re amazing but I don’t have a spare $1500 nor a spare room to use as a holosuite, since I need that $1500 as part of a down payment on a mortgage.
I’m not saying it’s easily accessible by any means, but you can definitely get a headset for a good deal less than $1500, and many (if not most) games can be played sitting at your desk in the same position you’d be in if holding a traditional game controller.
I agree it sucks that there’s no non-VR version. I just wanted to say that it isn’t exclusive to the obscenely wealthy or anything, if you already have a PC capable of running it you’re likely in a position to be able to swing getting the gear for it.
I have an 8 year old laptop with a muxing problem that can barely handle android studio.
I’m fucking cooked.
Well it’s a good thing PC parts are so cheap right now.
To be fair a brand new desktop tower can also barely handle android studio, I’ve never had a good experience in it not once
I thought there was a mod to play Half Life Alyx without a VR headset.
I wouldn’t be surprised is someone recreated in the Source 1/2 engine, but is there much gameplay if you remove the VR stuff?
Replaying the original Half Life 1 and 2 games, I realized there’s that HL2 onward got crippled by the devs making it too much about the Gravity gun. The fan community have made much more interesting combat engagements without the Gravity gun and adding a more varied weapon set.
Deadlock is pretty cool
They make way more money managing a game store. Why would they ever need to make another game? /s
But in all seriousness, Steam makes them a ridiculous amount of money. If I was Gabe, I’d slow down game production as well.
I figure they don’t want to make a game and it not be at least a 7/10. So they keep one or two working on something while everyone else keeps the servers up, builds compatibility with Linux, and whatever hardware they are working on.
That is the benefit to making ridiculous money. You can really take your time and produce a quality game instead of rushing and cutting corners to meet an arbitrary deadline.
They have a flat structure so employees self-assign work. If a game idea interests them they work on it. If not, no worries there’s plenty to do on Steam.
I’d ramp it up, but focus on quality, experimental, and artist games that don’t have to make profit immediately. They were doing that with Portal, but Gabe got more interested in owning yachts.
Well yes. The path to profit is the path of least resistance.
But the speaking valve can create Mongolian throat singing
No