>>111051811He means it's a luxury, and Valve has to make it worth it for people to spend $50-60 bucks on a new game from them.
Reposting the interview, save it so you don't have to keep making me post my terrible essay.
part 1/2:
Thanks a lot Gabe, I really appreciate it. So I'm just going to fire a handful of questions your way, and if you could answer them that would be awesome!
Q: What is your job like? What do you do on a typical work day and are there any interesting atypical experiences you'd like to share?
A: I don't have a very typical work day, as it changes a lot depending upon what's up for the company. However, the primary characteristic of it is that I get to work on interesting problems with really smart people more or less independent of what kind of problems those are. Some days those are technical issues, some days those are people issues, some days those are marketing issues.
Q: How did your type of work interest you, and how did you get started?
A: I was at Microsoft starting in 1983, when Microsoft was the third largest software developer on the east side of Lake Washington. What was very fun and educational to me was how small groups could build technologies and products that would have a large impact, and be able to do that repeatedly. At the time, this was fairly revolutionary, as the dominant model in the business world was mass manufacturing, where if you spent 20 years you might end up on a team that got to design a bumper assembly.