On: Steam Machine

[frakkingcylons]

Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge.

Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.

[elbear → frakkingcylons]

Yanis Varoufakis?

[frakkingcylons → elbear]

Yes he was a visiting professor for like a semester or two.

[cgio → frakkingcylons]

He was also working for Valve for a while.

[frakkingcylons → cgio]

Yes that’s why he and Gabe were speakers at the talk. In game economies were the topic.

[pdpi → cgio]

And CCP (EVE Online)

[yeasku → frakkingcylons]

Yanis basically created steam market and the dota/cs economy

[wiseowise → yeasku]

No he didn’t.

TF2 economy existed long before him and he sure as hell wasn’t “basically created dota/cs economy”.

[andruby → wiseowise]

nitpick but Yanis Varoufakis was born in 1961 and TF2 was released in 2007 so he definitely existed first.

I do agree that he didn't create the dota/cs economy

[yeasku → wiseowise]

He started to work at Valve in March 2012 and steam market was released 9 months later.

He created the dota 2 economy and the cs team copied the Dota 2 economy.

[fulafel → frakkingcylons]

His recent stuff is pretty relevant to tech. Eg https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/category/books/technofeudalis...

[icemelt8 → frakkingcylons]

but games are a niche, nobody in my circle or extended circle plays video games.

[croon → icemelt8]

Windows is a niche too.

[devnullbrain → icemelt8]

Your bio says you were formerly a game developer?

[happymellon → devnullbrain]

Presumably why they are "formerly".

[bccdee → icemelt8]

I think you may live in a bubble. By some estimates, the game industry is worth as much as music and film put together