In recent months, as some of you know, I have been working with Gabe Newell (of Valve Corporation) exploring the social economies that have spontaneously emerged within the vast and intriguing communities of video game players. Convinced that students of economics, politics and public policy in general have a great deal to learn from this weird and wonderful universe, I took the initiative of suggesting to the LBJ Graduate School of Public Affairs that they invite Gabe Newell to give a talk on these matters from his perspective. The result is the following invitation to whomever happens to be in the Austin area this coming Wednesday. See you there, if you will…

On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions and the Future of Corporations: Reflections of a Video Game Maker

Speaker: Gabe Newell, President of Valve Corporation

When: 12.15, Wednesday 30th January 2013

Where: SRH Room 3.124, LBJ Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin (Click here for map)

A few words on Gabe, Valve and his forthcoming talk: Gabe Newell worked for many years at Microsoft as a leading designer of the first three releases of Windows. In 1996 he left Microsoft to found, with Mike Harrington, Valve Corporation – a video game company which has proved immensely successful and whose anarcho-syndicalist structure poses interesting questions about the possible future of corporations. Valve’s trading platform, Steam, has evolved into a major electronic market, with 55 million active customers spread all over the planet. In this talk, Gabe will relate his experience of how the passage from standard video game manufacture to creating online communities of gamers changed his views on the meaning of productivity, shaped his understanding of interconnected economies, impressed upon him the need for new international governance institutions, and led him seriously to question the proposition that future corporations will resemble the corporations of today.