Counter-Strike Co-Creator Says Gabe Newell Got So Obsessed With Mongolian Throat Singing at Valve HQ That Staff Started Closing Their Office Doors to Escape the Noise
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.
https://nordic.ign.com/counter-strike/113290/counter-strike-co-creator-says-gabe-newell-got-so-obsessed-with-mongolian-throat-singing-at-valve-hqOpen linkView original on sopuli.xyz
114 replies
Other billionaires setting up cults and trying to bring a new age to techno fascism.
Gabe's colleagues: " sometimes he sings in his office and it's a little annoying and distracting."
Other billionaires response: buy media companies and government lobby, manipulate the narratives. Make a mockery of the legal system while hiding behind corporate entity.
Gabe: "yeah I asked a trusted colleague for honest feedback and feel a little bad about that.".
It's really not hard to not piss everyone in the world off or high effort.
I hope there is a good succession plan for Valve, because losing them would be tragic for PC gaming.
I hope it ends up like one of those nature reserves with a 1,000 year lease and a charter that specifies how content creators and gamers can be treated.
Can we please transfer wealth from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to Linus Torwalds and Richard Stallman. Unless, of course, you all want to distribute it all back
I don't think this guy needs a lot of money:
(Although there's a second desk in another corner, littered with hardware and a 3D printer.)
I really don't care
I'm not that sure about a guy who eats his own toe jam in public...
I'll take it over a guy who throws nazi salutes. I mean, the real answer is that nobody should have so much money, it can't do any good to anyone. But if the only controversy we can find about him is that he did that one gross thing to his foot that one time 20 years ago, I'll take it, oh how much I'll take it
I agree with you, extremely rich people are horrible for the world; but I feel that Stallman is just a disgusting person all around. He's also misogynist and I bet that if he was rich, he would totally act like Musk. He just doesn't have the money to do so.
Re-watched it. Still more appealing than Elon musk
Still a ridiculously and insanely wasteful person who's significantly greedy.
he's not diddling kids or sexually harrassing his employees, as far as we know. It's a low bar but I'll take it.
You set your bars too low.
you're not wrong.
Only way I stay sane in an age of insanity.
He's not diddling kids: he's just giving them gambling addictions!
Another shit stain billionaire that the gamer dudes fantasize about being.
How we describing "significantly" here?
Other billionaires setting up cults and trying to bring a new age to techno fascism.
Musk's colleagues: " sometimes he makes us eat mustard and it’s a little annoying and distracting."
I'm sorry, are you willfully or accidentally profoundly ignorant of the reports of what working for Musk is like?
By contrast it's showing how dumb of a comment the one I replied to was.
Ah, gotcha, misread it as defending Musk.
Ftfy
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 have an 8 year old laptop with a muxing problem that can barely handle android studio.
I'm fucking cooked.
I thought there was a mod to play Half Life Alyx without a VR headset.
IOInteractive
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.
I wonder if Hideo Kojima ever asked Valve if they wanted to publish a game with him?
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.
Sounds like Bell labs... Neat.
It's has produces some games that are obviously labors if love, but it has also left players of some games with no content bug fix updates for literal years.
Well yes. The path to profit is the path of least resistance.
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.
Deadlock is pretty cool
Deadlock is awesome. It combines some of the things I love most about playing boomer shooters--the movement tech and fast-paced gunplay--with the stuff I love about DOTA2--the build flexibility, character variety, and ability to coordinate timing spikes throughout the match. Unfortunately it also includes some of the stuff everyone hates about DOTA2, like inconsistent matchmaking and rude bigots with microphones.
Half-Life: Alyx is 6 years old. CS2 is only 3 years old. They're still publishing games, just not HL3.
No
But the speaking valve can create Mongolian throat singing
Honestly went to a concert for "the hu" Mongolian metal band... amazing
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.
They are awesome!
Were you there when you were young?
South of Ulan Ude from what I'm told.
Sorry, I meant to ask "very young"
But yes I was also curious about the area.
Apparently I saw the Grand Canyon in the US when I was 1 year old. I don't think that counts. (:
I can see that, unfortunately I have that curse of remembering pretty much everything. The almost 40 years I've been alive have been... very long.
That's useful though! Do you have the ability to chronologically recall things?
I can remember distinct details, but I have almost no ability to remember when they happened without context clues.
I do and it actually gets annoying because as you get older you start to notice cognitive decline in friends and family. One day, they don't remember what happened and then you realize there's no point in making an argument over it.
Recently, my mom traveled where I lived for a bit with grandma. And this was over thirty years ago, the caveat is that I was roughly 3-4 years old when I lived there and I knew exactly where I was and how things changed over time.
I will say it was probably a weird conversation for my aunt because I could describe everything in the area and bring up old memories--some of which she didn't remember.
Sorry, I meant to ask "very young"
But yes I was also curious about the area.
Apparently I saw the Grand Canyon in the US when I was 1 year old. I don't think that counts. (:
Didn't the hu make the opening song for Jedi: Fallen Order?
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???
Mongolian throat singing is amazing.
You know, where I live, they have these guys coming out with leaf blowers in late April, making a racket in my neighborhood, and they just move street by street like a roving gang of crazed leaf blowers, and getting rid of all the crap that was accumulated under the snow when it thaws.
Every year, if I'm home at that time, I bring my big speakers to the window, open it wide, and blast Mongolian throat singing for them.
It mixes with the sound of leaf blowers extremely well. Whenever one of them starts wondering what the hell is going on and removes their hearing protection, I instantly mute it, and as soon as they put them back on I start blasting again.
It's a spring ritual for me.
AUUUUUUuuuuUuUUUUUuUuUuuuuurrrrrRrRrRRRRRRrrrRrrRrrRrrrrrarrrrRrRR-iaaaaaaaAAAaaaAaaaaAawwawRrrRRrRrrrRrrrrrrrrreyooooOoOOooOooOOOoOo
That's too funny, I hope this is real. But even if it's not, pretty funny
I got video.
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?
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
Knew it
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
Kargyraa is the tits!
This video showcases a bunch of various styles.
Honestly, based.
Huh throat goat
That's hilarious. It was a niche viral trend online, but this guy really ran with it lol
Once you learn how to do it , it's very addictive
Was it annoying because it was loud and out of place for an office, or did he sound like a cat being strangled? 🤔
gotta be both.
as cool as throat singing is, it's gotta be a hell of a thing to witness the immense amount of practice that has to happen before good throat singing is achieved
or really, any singing now that I think about it
...or any music really. My partner is an enthusiastic amateur musician in several instruments, and it can get painful 🙃
same here! my partner is a saint for putting up with all the noises I generate hahaha
lol
Example:
https://youtu.be/6WlI24rv__g?t=23
Personally I'm a fan of The HU. It's a more modern take on throat singing.
I was able to see them live a couple of years ago, they were great!
Good example, but from what I can hear, it doesn't much showcase an important feature of throat singing: emitting two notes at the same time. That comes in properly only at the very end.
P.S. Here's a good demonstration of various styles of throat singing.
This one was my first exposure that I can remember: https://youtu.be/VTCJ5hedcVA
Buy this concert one is my absolute favorite to put on repeat: https://youtu.be/i0djHJBAP3U
Hm, they're getting to the age where I should probably download them before they succumb to link rot.
This my favorite tune.
Love how his mother sits off camera, with equal measures pride and silent condemnation over his less-than-absolute-perfection performance.
I dream about being the kind of rich that allows me the mental space to get hyper fixated on stuff like that.
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.
Mouth harp mixed with a digeridoo.
Valve's morning ritual.
Genghis Blues was a great documentary. Cool to see Paul Pena popping up again. Didn't expect GabeN to be obsessed with throat singing.
Hahahahaha We don't call him Gaben, Jesus of gaming for no reason... He's freaking multi-talented pal and also real down to earth
It also figures into the Feynman memoir "Tuva or Bust!".
I mean...
You show me one man who doesn't wish they could. And I'll do you a liar.
Ok?
Same
In case you didn't know, Popeye was a tuvan: https://youtu.be/zaH7VPuiZ1E?t=151
(interview with Billy West on Fox ... I recommend the entire interview but the linked part is great too)
But but but Gabe is the bestest billionaire and cannot be held accountable.
Oh no he was mildly annoying
On the spectrum of shit billionaires are known for doing this is incredibly mild. Like ridiculously so.
I want to move to the world you're from, where the worst the Epstein class ever did was play music too loud at the office
He is a gamer billionaire. That's even more appealing than space billionaire.