Gabe Newell: 'We're Way Closer to The Matrix Than People Realise'

While his studio makes Half-Life: Alyx, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has been working on something a little more future-forward - brain-computer interface research - and says “we’re way closer to The Matrix than people realise.” In an interview with Ryan McCaffrey for IGN First, Newell was asked what a typical day looks like for one of the most influential men in gaming. Newell’s answer centred on the fact that he prefers to avoid having a ‘typical day’, but said that, “the area I'm spending a lot of time on has been growing out of a bunch of research that occurred a while ago on brain-computer interfaces, and I think that's kind of long lead stuff. So that's the kind of background thread that I get pulled back into when other things aren't demanding my attention.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/18/ign-first-half-life-alyx-gabe-newell-interview"] Later in the interview, Newell returned to the idea as it pertained to the opportunities that Valve has in front of it to change the medium of gaming, as it’s trying to do with Half-Life: Alyx and VR - and he led with a bold statement: “We're way closer to The Matrix than people realise. It's not going to be The Matrix - The Matrix is a movie and it misses all the interesting technical subtleties and just how weird the post-brain computer interface world is going to be - but it's going to have a huge impact in the kinds of experiences that we can create for people.” Brain-computer interface tech - the practice of connecting the human brain to a device to allow for control of one over the other - has come a long way in recent years, with researchers now able to facilitate brain-based control over tablets. Newell didn’t make it clear exactly what his work centred on, but it’s clearly in the formative stages: “I think it's one of those things where we're going to learn a lot as we progress - there'll be some things that turn out to be ridiculously hard, and other things that'll turn out to be ridiculously easy. Like, I think connecting to people's motor cortex and visual cortex is going to be way easier than people expected. [...] Reading and writing to somebody's motor cortex is much more of a tractable problem than making people feel cold, and you never would have guessed that. I never would have guessed that until going into it. But it turns out that your brain has really good interfaces for some things, and really badly-designed, kludgy interfaces for doing other things.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=half-life-alyx-first-screenshots-4k&captions=true"] One thing Newell does make clear is that this isn’t aimless research - he very much sees brain-computer interface technology as a next step for gaming, not to mention other forms of entertainment: “I think that it's an extinction-level event for every entertainment form that's not thinking about this. If you're in the entertainment business and you're not thinking about this, you're going to be thinking about it a lot more in the future.” As of right now, however, Newell and his team are thinking about how to change the medium in a different way with Half-Life: Alyx - arguably VR gaming's first blockbuster project. We're running an IGN First on the game all month, and can tell you about the first 4 hours, how Zelda inspired its new gravity gloves, and answer your burning questions. Of course, we also have the full half-hour interview with Gabe Newell and Half-Life: Alyx developer Robin Walker, where they talk about far more than just Matrix tech, from how Artifact is a disappointment, but a learning experience, to why a new Half-Life took so long. [ignvideo url="https://uk.ign.com/videos/half-life-2-developers-react-to-50-minute-speedrun"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he's ready for one of those Zion parties. Follow him on Twitter.