It’s Your Birthday: Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell was born today, the 3rd of November, in 1962. He turns 47 today.

Gabe Newell is the co-founder, along with Mike Harrington, and managing director of Valve Corporation (founded in 1996), the company responsible for many great game series, like Half-Life.

Interesting facts about Gabe:

• He dropped out of Harvard University.
• He worked for Microsoft for thirteen years.
• Gabe and Mike funded the development of Half-Life out of their own pockets with money they earned at Microsoft.
• He is married to Lisa Newell and has two sons.
• Gabe hates the PS3.
• Gabe likes the PC.
• Gabe’s Wikipedia article is semi-protected because of vandalism.
• There is a video game character with the same name as his: Gabriel "Gabe" Logan from Syphon Filter.
• Gabe describes himself as the producer on the first three releases of Microsoft Windows.
• People often make fun of his weight.
• Gabe can't fold his arms.
• Gabe was briefly in second place in a Victoria’s Secret competition this year, before his entry was disqualified.
• There’s a fake Gabe on Twitter posing as Gabe Newell. The real Gabe doesn’t have a Twitter account, yet. Kotaku fell for this hoax.
• Valve and Gabe Newell came under fire after announcing that Left 4 Dead 2 was under development at would be released this year. Even a boycott group was started, which has since been “disbanded” by the founders, who were flown to Valve HQ to see the game in action.
• Recently, Gabe and Erik Johnson flew to Australia to see someone’s Left 4 Dead campaign, after the guy raised $ 3000 for his flight, although Gabe actually paid the amount himself, in the end.
• Gabe said he might consider a Half-Life movie if there is ever a script worth directing. Quentin Tarantino was once rumoured to be interested in making a Half-Life movie after claiming that even though he disliked video games as a whole, he liked Half-Life 2.
• Gabe wouldn’t ever consider Uwe Boll to direct a Half-Life movie (thank Christ).
• Gabe plays PC games two hours a day.
• Gabe owns a BMW 745i.
• Gabe’s current PC: Unspecified Core i7 (overclocked), ATI Radeon HD 4800, 42" Panasonic Elite 1080p monitor, Razer mouse, MS ergonomic keyboard.
• Gabe has very eclectic tastes when it comes to music.
• Gabe collects knives as a hobby. I assume he means like combat knives and such, and not those little plastic knives you get at some take-away restaurants.
• Gabe has expressed interest in having fans fund video game development.
• Gabe is no stranger to hiring people who work on mods, especially for Valve games. He claims that half of Valve is made up of (former) mod-makers.

It’s Your Birthday: Gabe Newell