About half the people at Valve have run their own companies, so they always have the option not just to take a job at another game company, but to go start their own company. The question you always have to answer is, 'How are we making these people more valuable than they would be elsewhere?'

I'm a utility infielder. There's always somebody who is better at a specific task than I am, but I can pitch in at a bunch of different things as needed.

The PC is successful because we're all benefiting from the competition with each other. If Twitter comes along, our games benefit. If Nvidia makes better graphics technology, all the games are going to shine. If we come out with a better game, people are going to buy more PCs.

Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet.

George Lucas should have distributed the 'source code' to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius.

Traditional credentialing really doesn't have a lot of predictive value to if people will be successful.

One of the things that's important about family is the narrative history they create for themselves.