Navagon: Anyone care to bullet the key points for the rest of us?
I've watched this yesterday (and I really recommend it, the 40 minutes fly by really quickly), so what I remembered: the most interesting thing is him talking about the way pricing works in the DD world. According to Steam data, a 70% off sale generates
40 times more profit (not revenue, profit!) than selling for full price and interestingly enough, after the price returns to the original point, sales remain higher than before the cut. (Similarly, word of mouth, guest passes and free to play weekends are by far the bast advertising method for Steam - Google Adwords actually lose them money).
Another bit is that in TF2's Mannconomy, the thing that sells the most is the single most expensive item (which is the Polycount pack, I believe). The second best seller generating the most profit is the one that costs the least. Puzzling, but true.
Thirdly, and this is very probably something they are going to explore with DOTA2, is that Valve is thinking of introducing varied pricing/reward models. Meaning that if you are a good, helpful and friendly player, you improve the game/service for everyone in ways that are outside Valve's control, and should be rewarded for it. Similarly, a griefing, mic-spamming idiot will be punished, somehow, in the pricing.
All in all, Valve seem to have opened up a world where traditional economy doesn't quite apply, and they are perfectly willing (and can easily afford) to do a lot of experiments in this new world to see what works and what doesn't, because it is much different than you'd expect. That's the general gist of Gabe's talk there.
Then there's something about Gabe's beginnings at Microsoft and what they are looking for in potential Valve employees, which is interesting for the kids who are listening, but I paid less attention there.
