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Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is a downright mythical figure among PC gamers, and a new interview with the man isn't doing anything to break that illusion. Certainly, we have to ask: is a man who spends his work breaks scuba diving multiple times a day truly a normal human like the rest of us?
"I get up, I work, I go scuba diving, work some more," Newell says in an interview when asked about his daily routine. "I either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat, so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work."
Hearing Newell talk about living on a boat and going for multiple daily scuba dives is pretty surreal - almost as surreal as seeing this interview take place on a YouTube channel with just 37 subscribers. I had not heard of interviewer Zalkar Saliev before today, and I have no idea how he scored an interview with the notoriously reclusive Gaben but, well, this is the reality in which we find ourselves.
"I work seven days a week," Newell adds. "I'm working from my bedroom, as you can tell. I like working. It's fun. To me, it doesn't feel like work. The kinds of things that I get to do every day are super awesome. I've said it before, but when you retire, you want to stop doing your horrible job and then go do what is sort of most fun and entertaining. So in that sense, I've been retired for a long time."
I guess as someone who writes about video games for a living, I can relate to the notion of a fun job, but I'm not quite to the 'hanging out with my friends on a boat all day' stage of my career. But then, I didn't facilitate the creation of one of the biggest gaming marketplaces in the world, either, and I suspect being a multibillionaire adds to the ways you get to set your daily routine.
Elsewhere in the interview, Newell shared some thoughts on the future of AI, suspecting that the tech will lead to a "funny situation" where "people who don't know how to program" could be "more effective" than people "who've been programming for a decade." That's perhaps a less endearing take from Gaben, but hey - he's only human.
Check out the best Steam Deck games if you want to live in the garden Gaben built.
