I < 3 Valve

So last week I talked about the transition from identifying as a passive consumer, to a critical consumer or even creator of content, and specifically about communities supporting this shift; about how communities often improve themselves and those making this transition. Picking up from there, lets talk about what it looks like when company, a more formal, business oriented group directs its resources to encouraging that.

"Gentlemen, how do we help our customers? Yes, Johnson?"
"I don't understand sir."

If you want to see what it looks like for a company to value that transition (or something very close to it) you want to look at Valve. You know, the company behind Steam, the platform that does ~51% of the digital distribution of PC games (according to 2011 numbers)? Every time I watch a talk  by Gabe Newell, it makes me feel better about the company, its views,  and the directions its going.

Now, I said "something very close to it" earlier because Gabe is generally talking about content creation from more of an economic perspective, as a opposed to the sort cultural and intrapersonal perspectives the vlogbrothers and Jim Gee were coming from. While they talk about how it benefits someone to feel included and productive, and develop their ideas and abilities or how society benefits from more perspectives and new ideas, Gabe tends to talk about connecting creators to markets, or providing monetary incentives to become a creator to people who previously had none (for this type of work).

Its a different way of looking at the at the situation, but it makes perfect sense when you're talking from a business standpoint. It also shows why Valve is encouraging this type of capability growth; by setting itself up so it profits from market activity, its incentivized to help as many creators as possible reach as large a possible audience as possible. As opposed to the way most people think of a simplified model of a business where its incentivized to get as many people to give it as much money for its product.



"Ok, that part I understood"
"Johnson, stop being such a strawman and try to keep up."

So this sort of demonstrates how a system can be set up to where a company is monetarily encouraged to support these community effects that can be so positive, directly benefitting from them rather than it just being a nice bonus that marginally helps your specific game, product, or service.

The really interesting part of considering Valve though is considering how it got to this place and what its continued trajectory looks like, based on that past. Steam may have started as a way for Valve to distribute and verify its own games, but it grew into a convenient way to affordably buy games, lowering the barriers both in terms of availability and cost. Its one of the things Gabe talked about: connecting producers with markets they didn't have access to and making games easily widely available, regardless of what was physically available in your region.

And then there was the step of not just lowering barriers for consumers, but for creators;
making indie games more visible and available. Offering software to make games on Steam. Adding the workshop, so people can make and share pieces of games, and develop their skills.

Without even using training montages.

To the rage of Half-Life fans everywhere, now they seem more concerned with providing interesting tools and spaces for other people to make stuff than making stuff themselves. But the way they moved there from producing, and clearly have people who are still very focused on how to incentivize and influence behavior and who are interested in "creating markets" and enabling creators is what really makes them interesting to watch.

I said Gabe Newell makes me feel good about the company when he talks, but everytime they rollout something new picking apart its design and purpose is what really drives it home . If you don't think they want more creators, look at the workshop, and if you don't think they're still just as sharp on how to manipulate users, look at the trading cards and badges system. There's allot of amusing snark and/or ranting about companies doing one thing and saying another, but this post is about Valve because what they're doing and saying lines up, and what they're doing is very interesting compared to what most everyone else is doing.

Oh, another action/adventure/shooter game as a white male protagonist 
now with microtransactions? Cool, cool.
 Yeah we'll just be over here lowering barriers to entry
and enabling innovative new ideas at lower risk.

Of course if I'm going to talk about them now, I probably should address the Steam universe and Steam box. But its just continuing this trend, albeit very ambitiously. Putting steam in the living room opens up a larger audience to participate in playing games, and even contributing to them from there. But that's not the really ambitious part. Competing with consoles is kind of ambitious, creating an open platform, to enable the hardware competition and peripheral variety PCs have, is pretty ambitious, but again, not what I see as their biggest challenge.

If Valve is in the living room, with this track record, unless they screw it up first, they have to be eventually aiming to reduce barriers for other media: movies, tv, music, whatever. Eventually it'll be competing with (or working with) Youtube and Netflix and iTunes and whatever other media they can.

Yea, he shall be the lord of media distribution,
and this shall be his crown.

Now that much content under one banner is terrifying, for any group to have that much power over communications. But we have massive media empires right now, and I will be very interested to see, if Valve can get to that level, what it'll look like to have one with this creator focused, barrier breaking model driving it.



Ok, I may have gone off the rails at the end, but what do you think of Valve? Am I giving them too  much credit or vastly misreading they're direction? Can you think of are other companies that support a transition to a critical consumer or creator?
Let me know what you think in comments.

photo credit: ign