Programming Wiz Tops Gaming Market

He answers e-mail faster than a speeding bullet. He's able to blow up imaginary worlds with a single keystroke. Gabe L. Newell '84 may not be a card-carrying superhero, but for fans of the computer gaming world, he comes pretty close.

Newell is co-founder and managing director of Valve Software, the creator of the action-adventure game "Half-Life." Released a year ago, the game has taken the computer gaming world by storm.

And even after winning 40 "Game of the Year" awards later from a variety of gaming magazines, Newell is still a little bewildered by the company's sudden success.

"It's odd. We did all of the nuts and bolts things you are supposed to do...but we had no inkling really that 'Half-Life' was going to be as well received as it has been," he says.

Not too shabby for someone whose first post-graduation job was working as towel boy in a German gym.

"I was fired the first day," he deadpans.

Newell spent his first year at Harvard largely undecided on a concentration before settling on Applied Mathematics. The first personal computers were still rare, he recalls, and programming was looked on as a hobby rather than a career.

"The main reason I ended up in Applied Math was that the thought of being yet another lawyer or investment banker was more depressing than the thought of writing COBOL," he says. "It wasn't a deeply reasoned decision."

His Harvard degree, Newell says, was probably helpful in getting his start in the programming business.

"It definitely got my foot in the door at Microsoft," he writes in an e-mail message. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't having a one-day towel boy item on my resume that aroused Steve Ballmer's interest."

His Microsoft stint lasted 13 years, during which he started the company's multimedia division and worked on applications for the Macintosh before Apple's famous computer had even been introduced.

But Newell says the thrill of those challenges waned as Microsoft evolved. He and one of his co-workers decided to go for broke with their own business.

"Mike Harrington and I both had a love of games, and were able to con ourselves into believing we could make a go of it as a game developer," Newell says.

So far, the gamble is paying off. "Half-Life" is still at the top of the market after close to a year on the shelves, and Valve's latest project, "Team Fortress 2," is in the final stages in development.

The small staff of Valve is a diverse group with one other Harvard alum--a fact unknown to Newell until after the employee had been hired. Career networking, he says, is more successful between programmers working on projects together.

"Most of the networking in the software world has occurred at the corporate rather than collegiate level," he says.

But that doesn't mean aspiring programmers should quit school and dash off to the nearest Internet start-up.

"There is a lot of interest in Harvard graduates as new hires," Newell says. "A Harvard degree is perceived as indicating potential but not guaranteeing success."

A Harvard education is still attractive, he says, because it provides a solid background in programming along with understanding of "the business beyond just the coding."

But while Harvard may have helped his career off the starting blocks, Newell's work since then has clearly spoken for itself.

"After a couple of years in the software business, where you went to school isn't nearly as important as what you have done since then," he says.