The head of Valve admitted that id Software’s classic game gave him the final push to start the company. In a new interview, Newell recounted—using everyday language—how the contrast between DOOM and Microsoft’s approach to graphics ultimately led to the creation of the Valve we know today.

In his conversation with Zalkar Saliev, Gabe Newell was more candid than ever about the circumstances that led to Valve’s founding. It turns out the company’s beginnings date back to when Newell—still at Microsoft—was trying to convince his colleagues that not every app needed its own custom interface or graphics acceleration. DOOM was the proof he needed.

Newell needed a way to demonstrate that their fears were unfounded, and he noticed id Software’s people were performing much better than those at Microsoft. DOOM was, at the time, the most visually advanced game around. Newell saw an opportunity: to provide tangible proof that Windows could run high-performance, cutting-edge games, and to silence skeptics who insisted on clinging to inferior custom solutions.

“Everybody would create their own interface to the hardware, and they were all over the place. Some of them were unbelievably slow. We tried to explain why device-independent graphics were a good idea for their applications, but everyone just said it couldn’t possibly be the right solution. Then we’d check, and it was obvious they were barely scratching the surface of what the hardware could do. Sometimes just one person worked on it, and often they weren’t great at it. Many lived under the illusion that moving to Windows would mean a huge loss of performance.”

Id Software, on the other hand, distributed DOOM as shareware and operated with a completely different model: “I found it fascinating that more people were playing DOOM than using Windows itself. I got in touch with the folks at id, told them we’d port DOOM to Windows and give it back. They provided evidence that the usual approach to customer relationships was outdated in the networked age. It was like Microsoft’s old distribution, sales, and reseller mindset was missing the possibilities unlocked by networking.”

Newell said he always loved playing video games and used that as an excuse to launch his own company—because he had strong opinions about what made a game interesting. “Half-Life was the expression of those concepts. I was willing to risk my own money on the design of the game and the company, and that’s how we started Valve. That was my response to what I saw as a better approach to game design—and if I was wrong, I’d have gone back to Microsoft.”

So in the end, we owe Half-Life, Valve, and the entire direction of 21st-century PC gaming to those stubborn app developers who once ignored Gabe Newell’s advice about graphical interfaces…

Source: PCGamer