D.I.C.E. 2013: Newell Claims "Our Users Have Defeated Us"

[Encaen]

D.I.C.E. 2013: Newell Claims "Our Users Have Defeated Us"

According to Gabe Newell, Valve is currently working on "console form factor PCs" for the living room.

In the D.I.C.E. 2013 Thursday Keynote speech, titled "A View on Next Steps," Gabe Newell gave his thoughts on the future of gaming hardware, expressed his skepticism of cloud-based gaming, and gave his thoughts on where user-generated content can take us in the future. There were two core ideas for his presentation, namely that "the PC ecosystem is going to expand into the living room," which is hardly surprising given Big Picture Mode [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120913-Steams-Big-Picture-Mode-Exits-Beta]'s December launch, and that "there's going to be a change in what we think a game is." He suggested that most games, at some point in the future, will be "part of a connected economy," where you'll be able to "exchange goods and services in DOTA 2 for goods and services in Skyrim."

According to Newell, the PC has been the "center of innovation in videogames," as the PC scales very well in function, but it has been severely lacking in novel input technologies, which consoles have done well with. Valve is hoping to change that by developing their own input devices for the PC, alongside development of a console form factor PC, which will basically mimic the convenience of a console in your living room, with all the benefits of the PC platform. "Our goal is to move things forward," he said, "We're really dependent on the success and vibrancy of the PC."

Additionally, Newell believes that user-generated content is the way of the future, where development tools are free-to-play apps, and a model is developed to share the revenue from user-generated content between the game makers and the creator. "They're building content that's just as good or better than what we're building," he said, "Our users have defeated us." Similarly, the current state of Steam's user-generated content has Valve itself acting as a bit of a bottleneck due to the approvals process, which Newell would like to remedy in the future.

Realistically, with the next generation just around the corner, I can't imagine consoles going away any time soon, but if Gabe Newell has his way, we'll all eventually be playing PC games on our television, farming for materials in one game, and spending the fruits of our labor in another.


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[Rellik San]

I think the future of gaming is more in local cloud, think about it, a dedicated home cloud server, so you can play your games on your laptop, tablet or of course TV whilst a dedicated tower in another room does the grunt work for you. With all the talk of "convergence" I think that's where the future will lay.

Think about it, you could record footage on your tablet or phone, immediately have it available for editing on a laptop and preview it on your TV with just a few clicks/button presses.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

how about we bring back games that require those old joysticks again, like flight simulators or spacefighters?
or maybe an actually functional Steel Battalion game that requires an additional input device besides your controller and mouse.

okay, thats all probably very niche but I'd be all over that shit.

 

[FoolKiller]

"exchange goods and services in DOTA 2 for goods and services in Skyrim."

I remember this being against the terms of service in many games. Just like you aren't allowed to do many things such as farm for money, use bots to farm, or give your account out for someone else to get achievements for you. I would love it though. I could get ahead in one game because I love farming in another.

 

[cerebus23]

and whats so bad about being able to earn some extra cash while playing your favorite time sink?

having seen some of this over the past few weeks i get the impression it is about creating content for your games and being able to swap that created content in that game for content in another, like the hat model you made for tf3 maybe someone wants to use that hat or have you make one for them in their game. he even talked about dividing profits between someone that made the model vs someone that takes that model and makes a skin for it, and being able to track what people had done to what and splitting the rewards according to the work involved.

the problem this runs against is making money off another game, i.e. most games you cannot charge for mods you create since that would be using another ip to earn income for yourself.

so game eulas would have to be amended to reflect this new earning money thru modding basically. but this also means that many valve games and games that would follow this trend there would be not more free open source mods anymore for these games they would all be pay modifications. handled more like dlc than mods.

this is the gist of what i got listening to gabe speak recently.

double edged sword i suppose, no more free stuff but then everyone can make coin by making skins, models, quests for their favorite games, this might lead to more sdks and dev kits for that purpose since valve and etc would get a good chunk of these sales, and any game that gets dev mod support gets its value extended in replay and life span 100 fold with good modding support. but then we have to see what these things will cost us.

 

[Vigormortis]

This article covers a very small portion of Newell's key-note speech. He discussed a lot more than is described here. And, went into a lot of detail on the topics he discussed.

All-in-all, the key-note speeches from this years D.I.C.E have been really interesting. A lot of big ideas and innovative concepts have been brought to the table. I'm interested to see how the next few years pan out for gaming. Hopefully, it's a fun ride.

I think the future of gaming is more in local cloud, think about it, a dedicated home cloud server, so you can play your games on your laptop, tablet or of course TV whilst a dedicated tower in another room does the grunt work for you. With all the talk of "convergence" I think that's where the future will lay.

Think about it, you could record footage on your tablet or phone, immediately have it available for editing on a laptop and preview it on your TV with just a few clicks/button presses.

What you're describing is essentially Valve's plan with the Steam Box. A form-factor PC with local-cloud-server and streaming capabilities.

 

[Vigormortis]

and whats so bad about being able to earn some extra cash while playing your favorite time sink?

having seen some of this over the past few weeks i get the impression it is about creating content for your games and being able to swap that created content in that game for content in another, like the hat model you made for tf3 maybe someone wants to use that hat or have you make one for them in their game. he even talked about dividing profits between someone that made the model vs someone that takes that model and makes a skin for it, and being able to track what people had done to what and splitting the rewards according to the work involved.

the problem this runs against is making money off another game, i.e. most games you cannot charge for mods you create since that would be using another ip to earn income for yourself.

so game eulas would have to be amended to reflect this new earning money thru modding basically. but this also means that many valve games and games that would follow this trend there would be not more free open source mods anymore for these games they would all be pay modifications. handled more like dlc than mods.

this is the gist of what i got listening to gabe speak recently.

double edged sword i suppose, no more free stuff but then everyone can make coin by making skins, models, quests for their favorite games, this might lead to more sdks and dev kits for that purpose since valve and etc would get a good chunk of these sales, and any game that gets dev mod support gets its value extended in replay and life span 100 fold with good modding support. but then we have to see what these things will cost us.

Mmmm, that's not quite what I've been getting from all of this. It's not so much monetizing user content but allowing users to bring their own content to other users in an easier, ordered, more open fashion.

I'm curious how this type of content release model would undermine open-source or free mods. Valve isn't looking to lock out content. They're talking about opening it up. Relegating mods to "paid DLC" is the exact opposite of that concept.

Really not seeing where you're getting the idea of "no more free content". Perhaps I missed something from his key-note speech?

Man, I wish I could find a video of his speech. All of the speeches, in fact, from this years D.I.C.E.

 

[Failsafe Operator]

PC's have always been at the fore front of innovation. Consoles are just an easier way of getting games and other content to mass users. However with such powerful second generation hardware way more affordable than the first generation stuff, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to build one.