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 culture at Valve is pretty much crowdsourced. The handbook is a wiki. One of the first things we say to new hires is, 'You have to change something in the handbook.'

I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.

Everybody understands that you're supposed to say 'our employees are our most valuable asset' to the point where, even if it's really true, they're not going to really trust you until you've earned that - same with customers.

I think it's highly likely that we'll continue to have high-performance graphics capability in living rooms. I'm not sure we're all going to put down our game controllers and pick up touch screens - which is a reasonable view, I'm just not sure I buy into it.

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.

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?'