As an update to the story, this was confirmed by Gabe himself: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/gabe-newell-responds-to-fan-asking-about-bizarre-valve-throat-singing-story-3412684/
A fan then went straight to the source, emailing Newell to ask whether the story was real. In a reply shared online, sent from Newell’s Valve address, he provided more detail.
“Yeah, I had chatted with Paul Pena about it after I tried learning on my own,” he wrote. “I am entirely self taught and it shows.”
He added that he worked on the sygyt and kargyraa styles “and got to the point where I was really… annoying.”
Newell says he still hasn’t given it up entirely. “Every once in a while, I’ll pick it back up,” he wrote, adding that it takes a couple of weeks to condition his throat.
Pena was an American blues musician who taught himself Tuvan throat singing, later becoming the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Genghis Blues.
Never heard it until I watched a video just now. Sounds like a jaw harp. I can see why people trying to concentrate would be a little peeved, though if someone were paying me good money to do something cool like make games, I’d probably happily put on some headphones and ignore it.
But but but Gabe is the bestest billionaire and cannot be held accountable.
Honestly, based.
Honestly went to a concert for “the hu” Mongolian metal band… amazing
Nothing like it on Earth, it is such an incredible sound. It’s amazing that the human body can even make it. It feels like the vocal equivalent of people doing the Wrong Warp in Mario 3. Like… how??? You can do that???
Hanggai also kicks ass, in the rarefied yet delightful niche of Mongolian metal.
Totally a great band, I can emulate the singing if I’m drunk enough lol
Also, apparently I’ve been in Mongolia when I was a child.
I mean…
You show me one man who doesn’t wish they could. And I’ll do you a liar.
Sygyt is the style that sounds nasal-y but with a high pitched overtone.
Kargyraa is the really growly sounding one.
Source: im gabe newell
Dammit, stop it with the throat singing and release half life 3
Source: im gabe newell
Knew it
Kargyraa is the tits!
Can you do like a 1 time grace period on family transfer please lol
And can you fix lan based voice chat where it just doesn’t work and I have to use discord
At least it wasn’t doing unspeakable things to kids.
Weird that it’s an either-or situation.
Wait a minute though. What does it mean that I have never heard my boss throat singing?
Your boss is throat slinging instead?
Remember when valve made games?
Who has made more games in the last decade: Rockstar or Valve?
Apparently the answer is Valve. Which says more about rockstar than anything about valve.
Valve have made games. It’s just not the same type of games that people that love them for their most famous titles.
Also, even though they made a blockbuster, single player, half life game recently, the majority of the HL fans were not able to play it, so we are still disappointed…
Jesus fucking christ, the last game that valve made with me as the audience in mind was fucking 15 years ago (Portal 2). (Half life 1 was releaed 13 years before that. )
Everything else is multiplayer or hardware bound.
Alyx ils amazing ans the Lab ils also great i really wish they added levels to those games. Especialy the archer and thé slingshot games.
I fucking bet they’re amazing but I don’t have a spare $1500 nor a spare room to use as a holosuite, since I need that $1500 as part of a down payment on a mortgage.
I’m not saying it’s easily accessible by any means, but you can definitely get a headset for a good deal less than $1500, and many (if not most) games can be played sitting at your desk in the same position you’d be in if holding a traditional game controller.
I agree it sucks that there’s no non-VR version. I just wanted to say that it isn’t exclusive to the obscenely wealthy or anything, if you already have a PC capable of running it you’re likely in a position to be able to swing getting the gear for it.
I thought there was a mod to play Half Life Alyx without a VR headset.
if you already have a PC capable of running it you’re likely in a position to be able to swing getting the gear for it.
I have an 8 year old laptop with a muxing problem that can barely handle android studio.
I’m fucking cooked.
Deadlock is pretty cool
They make way more money managing a game store. Why would they ever need to make another game? /s
But in all seriousness, Steam makes them a ridiculous amount of money. If I was Gabe, I’d slow down game production as well.
I figure they don’t want to make a game and it not be at least a 7/10. So they keep one or two working on something while everyone else keeps the servers up, builds compatibility with Linux, and whatever hardware they are working on.
That is the benefit to making ridiculous money. You can really take your time and produce a quality game instead of rushing and cutting corners to meet an arbitrary deadline.
They have a flat structure so employees self-assign work. If a game idea interests them they work on it. If not, no worries there’s plenty to do on Steam.
I’d ramp it up, but focus on quality, experimental, and artist games that don’t have to make profit immediately. They were doing that with Portal, but Gabe got more interested in owning yachts.
Well yes. The path to profit is the path of least resistance.
But the speaking valve can create Mongolian throat singing
No
Gabe didn’t co-create Counter-Strike.
Ok?
Genghis Blues was a great documentary. Cool to see Paul Pena popping up again. Didn’t expect GabeN to be obsessed with throat singing.
It also figures into the Feynman memoir “Tuva or Bust!”.
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