Gabe Newell says he ditched Microsoft and made Valve and Half-Life to prove "a better approach to game design" at a time where "there were more people using Doom than using Windows"

Steam and Valve's Gabe Newell.

In a more detailed unpacking of Valve's origins, co-founder Gabe Newell says the company and its flagship release, Half-Life, were partly a "response" to what he saw as out-of-touch practices at Microsoft, where he worked early in his career.

In a new interview with Zalkar Saliev, Newell reflects on the ideas and motivations of Valve's earliest days, when it was more of a nascent idea than an underdog company. At the time, he pushed hard on Doom as an example of how games could go beyond the old way of insular models.